Tell Abu Hureyra
Tell Abu Hureyra was an Epipalaeolithic - Neolithic settlement in present-day Syria . It was about 120 km east of Aleppo on the right, southern bank of the Euphrates . The remains of the settlement were uncovered by Andrew Moore in an emergency excavation in 1972/1973 , immediately before they were flooded by the Assad reservoir .
Several settlement phases could be detected here:
- Layers of the Natufien , 11,500-10,000 BP . The settlement, in which hardly more than 100 to 200 people should have lived, consisted of a few sunken round huts made of wood and other perishable material. These were later replaced by buildings at ground level. The settlement seems to have been inhabited all year round. The inhabitants were initially still hunters and gatherers and mostly ate gazelles and wild grain . Among other things, nuts and the seeds of rushes (Scirpus maritimus / tuberosus), wild lentils , wild pistachios (Pistacia atlantica) and goosefoot were collected .
The migration of wild animals and the disappearance of many plants with climate change ( Younger Dryas ) perhaps forced the inhabitants to domesticate plants such as rye (Secale cereale L. subsp. Vavilovii (Grossh.) Zhuk. Or S. iranicum Kobyl.), Which previously was not grown. The grains have been AMS dated . This marked the beginning of the Neolithic in the Levant . - Intermediate period, 10,000–9,400 BP with lightly built houses similar to those of Abu Hureyra I.
- The second settlement (Abu Hureyra 2), which arose after a gap of several millennia (9,400-7,000 BP ), was about ten times the size of the first and, with an area of 15 hectares, is one of the largest settlements of that time. It consisted of rectangular adobe houses. The human bones indicate heavy physical labor, presumably tilling fields. Were grown Emmer , bread wheat , durum wheat , barley , chickpeas and broad beans . Around 5900/5800 BC. The settlement was abandoned.
literature
- Gordon Hillmann: New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates , in: The Holocene 11/4 (May 2001), pp. 383-393.
- Andrew MT Moore: Neolithic in the Levant , Oxford 1978, pp. 163-175.
- Andrew MT Moore, Gordon C. Hillman, Legge, AJ, Village on the Euphrates. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2000.
- Gordon C. Hillman , Peter Rowley-Conwy , P., AJ Legge 1997. On the charred seeds from epipalaeolithic Abu Hureyra: food or fuel? Current Anthropology 38, pp. 651-655.