The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (44 page)

We cannot reconstruct the full extent of this residence because it had, in Mallowan’s words, been “sacked and burned by an invader.” This elite family—possessing more than their share of polychrome pottery, alabaster vessels, and Turkish volcanic glass—had evidently been the target of a successful raid.

One of the most interesting discoveries at Arpachiyah was that its leaders were closely monitoring exchanges of goods. Their way of doing this was to seal shipments with blobs of clay. While the clay was still wet, someone serving in an official capacity pressed a carved stone seal into it, leaving a distinctive impression. The impressed blob was not supposed to be broken until the shipment had arrived at its destination (
Figure 40
).

FIGURE 39.
   In the villages of the Halaf period not all of the circular or keyhole-shaped buildings called
tholoi
by archaeologists had the same function. Some, like the tholos from Level TT 7–8 at Arpachiyah, appeared to have ritual functions. Others, like Tholos 137 from Yarim Tepe III, had been filled with domestic refuse after abandonment, making it impossible to determine their original function. (The tholos from Arpachiyah was about 60 feet long.)

In the future the sealing of shipments in Mesopotamia would become a complex procedure. In Halaf times it was still relatively simple. The most common seal impressions found at Arpachiyah had been made on oval clay lumps, formed by hand around a knot made in a cord. This knot could not be untied until the clay lump had been broken. Each lump bore one or more impressions made with a seal. Many of the seals found at Arpachiyah bore a loop or had been perforated so that they could be worn around the neck of the person authorized to make the impression.

Now the significance of the seal pendant found with Burial 40 at Yarim Tepe II becomes clear. That cremated youth was too young to have been a village official. The fact that a seal was included with Burial 40 might mean that some youths were being groomed to inherit their fathers’ positions within Halaf society.

FIGURE 40.
   At Arpachiyah in northern Iraq, certain shipments of trade goods were closed with blobs of clay; the clay was then stamped with the distinctive seal of the person overseeing the shipment. Many of the seals bore loops, allowing them to be hung on a cord around the owner’s neck. Above we see three stone seals. Below we see a blob of gray clay bearing three seal impressions, presumably removed from an incoming shipment. Most seals of this period were no larger than a postage stamp.

The Superimposed Villages of Tepe Gawra

One Northern Mesopotamian community celebrated for its temples was Tepe Gawra. It lay to the north of Arpachiyah, on a rolling plain that would become one of the breadbaskets of the later Assyrian empire.

The village of Tepe Gawra was founded nearly 7,000 years ago, during the heyday of Halaf pottery. It was then occupied and reoccupied for so many centuries and through so many superimposed layers of mud-brick houses that the accumulated remains created a mound rising 70 feet above the surrounding plain.

For eight years E. A. Speiser and Charles Bache dug down through more than 20 building levels, not halting until their excavation was 15 feet below the plain. They exposed a remarkable 100 percent of each village in the upper levels (I–X) and up to a third of each village in the lower levels (XI–XX).

For the purposes of this chapter, only the 11 deepest (and therefore earliest) levels at Gawra are relevant. Those levels were published by Arthur Tobler, restudied by Ann Perkins, and published in more detail by Mitchell Rothman, always with new insights. Tepe Gawra, in other words, is an archaeological gift that keeps on giving.

Level XX, the deepest reached, was occupied during the peak popularity of Halaf painted pottery. Perhaps Speiser’s most interesting discovery was a well or cistern that had penetrated the underlying alluvial plain. This well had become the final resting place for some 24 persons, most of whom simply appeared to have been tossed down the shaft. An exception to this hasty disposal of human remains was a single skeleton at the top of the shaft. This individual was buried in a formal position on his or her left side, with knees drawn up and hands to the face, lying on a layer of wooden pole impressions that may represent the remains of a litter or bier. In many societies burial on a litter would be a sign of prestige.

Levels XIX–XV, which date to perhaps 6,500 to 6,000 years ago, represented six consecutive stages in the life of a two-to-three-acre village. By this time the Halaf painting style was in decline. What took its place was a somewhat simpler painted style, named for the site of Tell al-’Ubaid in southern Iraq.

In each of these six levels Speiser excavated roughly a third of the village. Although the details of each level were different, there were at least five types of structures that showed up over and over again. They were as follows:

  1. Mud-brick residences of five to 20 rooms, including living or sleeping rooms, kitchens, storage facilities, and courtyards.

  2. Pottery kilns, sometimes in the courtyards of residences and sometimes near storage units some distance from the house.

  3. Areas of low, parallel walls resembling railroad ties. These walls may have allowed the circulation of air below storage units of perishable material.

  4. Tholoi roughly 15 feet in diameter. Some of these were circular, while others were keyhole-shaped. The ground plan of the Level XVII village suggested that there might have been one tholos for each large residential compound (or, to put it differently, one for every 15 to 25 persons). We suggest that whatever public or ritual role these tholoi may have performed, they served only the extended family or lineage and not the entire village.

  5. Mud-brick buildings whose ground plan identified them as temples. Each had a long central chamber, which Mesopotamian archaeologists call, by the Latin term,
cella.
This cella was flanked by two rows of small accessory rooms. Each temple was entered through an antechamber that ensured privacy. The cella usually had a podium of hard-packed clay on which burnt offerings could be made.

The earliest of the Gawra temples (in the village of Level XIX) exceeded 30 feet in length. Its central cella alone was 26 feet long. The temple in the Level XVIII village was 35 by 23 feet and had two small storage rooms, probably for ritual paraphernalia. Since there seems never to have been more than one temple in each level, we conclude that these buildings served the entire village.

The ‘Ubaid levels at Gawra, in other words, suggest two kinds of ritual behavior. Each lineage may have built and maintained its own tholos; the entire village probably built and maintained the temple. Tholos ritual may thus have involved each social segment’s ancestors, while the temple was dedicated to celestial spirits.

Tepe Gawra underwent a series of dramatic changes from 6,000 to 5,500 years ago. During the period represented by Level XIV, its population fell dramatically. When Gawra was reoccupied in Level XIII, the nature of its occupation had changed. At this point the summit of the mound towered more than 20 feet above the surrounding plain, making it visible for miles on a clear day. Taking advantage of the fact that Gawra was now a local landmark, its leaders built three temples of regional significance.

Although these three temples shared a 60-by-50-foot central patio, careful excavation showed that they were all built at different times, using different sizes of bricks. The corners of the patio, as well as the corners of all three temples, were oriented to the cardinal directions. Tobler reconstructed the temple-building sequence as follows:

  1. The easternmost temple was the first built. Its façade exceeded 65 feet, and it had been made with standardized mud-bricks 22 inches long.

  2. The northernmost temple was the second built, using standardized mud-bricks 14.2 inches long. This was the smallest but best preserved of the temples, measuring 40 by 28 feet (
Figure 41
).

  3. The third, or central, temple was built in the space between the first two. Its façade was 47 feet long; its other dimensions are unknown, owing to later erosion. This temple had been made with yet a third set of standardized mud-bricks, 19 inches in length. Once this central temple had been completed, it obscured the façade of the northern temple and presumably replaced it.

FIGURE 41.
   The North Temple from Level XIII at Tepe Gawra, northern Iraq, measured 40 by 28 feet. Archaeologists refer to the long, central room of the temple as a
cella.
Note the ornate brickwork used to relieve the monotony of the walls.

When a village builds its temple out of mud-brick, it runs the risk of creating a fairly drab building. The architects of Tepe Gawra avoided this problem by designing a complicated system of decorative brickwork, including recessed piers, pilasters, and wall niches. This design relieved the monotony by creating patterns of light and shadow where bricks protruded or were recessed. The builders also covered the walls with white plaster and, in some cases, bright red to purple paint.

By the time construction began on the central temple, the eastern temple had fallen into disuse and was being used as a place to discard refuse. In the ruins of this building archaeologists made an unexpected discovery: a series of nearly 100 miniature mud-bricks, scaled to one-tenth the size of the bricks used to build the central temple. It was clear to Tobler that these model bricks had been used to work out the most satisfactory methods of building the complicated recessed piers and pilasters found in the temple. In other words we now know how ‘Ubaid architects worked in the era before blueprints: they built a scale model one-tenth the size of the final building, giving their bricklayers a template to follow.

A series of fine pottery beakers and an incense burner had been left behind in the cella of the eastern temple. The beakers had been painted with nested geometric figures, reproducing the pattern of niches on the temple façade. The incense burner had a pattern of cutout slots and triangular windows, framed by recesses like those of the temple niches. Almost certainly these were vessels used by the skilled specialists who carried out rituals in the temple—“priests,” for want of a better term.

The Troubled Times of Gawra XII

With the abandonment of Level XIII, Tepe Gawra ceased to function as a temple center. In Level XII-A it returned to being a small village. At this point the mound of Gawra had become a conical, artificial hill with a slightly concave upper surface, rising more than 30 feet above the surrounding plain.

Some 5,700 years ago the occupants of Level XII took advantage of Gawra’s height to turn it into a defensible, densely packed village whose population we estimate at between 130 and 240 persons. All of these people had decided to live together on the one-acre summit of the mound, presumably because its height gave them a measure of safety. One could only enter the Level XII village through one of two narrow, curving streets. Separating these two streets was a substantial watchtower, composed of three mud-brick rooms with a total area of 260 square feet. Behind the tower were six small rooms, arranged in a row that curved back into the village (
Figure 42
).