Tell Aswad
Coordinates: 33 ° 23 ′ 58.4 " N , 36 ° 34 ′ 35.9" E
Tell Aswad ( Arabic تل أسود, DMG Tall Aswad 'Black Hill') is a prehistoric Neolithic hill of ruins about 5 kilometers east of the airfield of the Syrian capital Damascus . The settlement hill is the type site of the Aswadien named after him .
The first settlement took place between 9300 and 8600 BC. Chr. ( Late PPNA to early PPNB ). The first major excavation campaigns took place from 2001 to 2002.
The houses were built of clay and plastered with lime, as the excavations from 2001 onwards showed. They were elliptical or rectangular one-room houses with rounded corners, in the middle of which a structure for supporting the roof could be demonstrated. The houses were up to 7 m in diameter. Storage jars were located along the walls, stoves or ovens in the open courtyards around the houses. The houses were used for a relatively short time and there is no evidence of repairs or new buildings. Different parts of the tell seem to have been built on at the same time, so that the settlement moved over the hill, as it were.
Tools and weapons were made from flint . Obsidian was imported from Anatolia . Since the beginning of the settlement there was basket weaving , weaving and the making of clay figures.
The clay figures often depict animals, including mainly goats and sheep, which were used for their meat and slaughtered when they were one to two years old. They have been introduced from the Levant since the middle PPNB.
The skulls of four heads arranged around a child's skull were over-modeled with clay faces. Such rituals had recently been demonstrated nearby, on Tell Ramad, as well as in Jericho, Beisamoun and 'Ain Ghazal.
The trigger for the first excavation, an emergency excavation , was the construction of the Tabqa dams in 1971 , today Medinat el Thawra , which was to be flooded in 1974. It was the first British excavation in Syria in more than a decade. In 2001 new, extensive excavations took place.
literature
- Danielle Stordeur , Rima Khawam: Les crânes surmodelés de Tell Aswad (PPNB, Syrie). Premier régard sur l'ensemble, premières reflexions , in: Syria 85 (2007) 5-32.
- Danielle Stordeur: Des crânes surmodelés à Tell Aswad de Damascène (PPNB, Syrie) , in: Paléorient 29,2 (2003) 109-115.
- Jacques Cauvin : The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.
- Danielle Stordeur: Neolithic plastered skulls from Tell Aswad (Syria). A funerary tradition in the Near East , in: Nuria Sanz, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen (Eds.): The Chinchorro culture. A comparative perspective, the archeology of the earliest human mummification , UNESCO, Paris 2014, pp. 177–196.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ Theya Molleson: The Ordinary People of Abu Hureyra in: Katina T. Lillios, Michael Chazan: Fresh Fields and Pastures New. Papers Presented in Honor of Andrew MT Moore , Sidestone Press, Leiden 2016, pp. 187–206, here: p. 198.
- ↑ A picture of the five heads can be found in Danielle Stordeur : Neolithic plastered skulls from Tell Aswad (Syria). A funerary tradition in the Near East , in: Nuria Sanz, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen (Eds.): The Chinchorro culture. A comparative perspective, the archeology of the earliest human mummification , UNESCO, Paris 2014, pp. 177–196 on p. 186.
- ↑ Peter MMG Akkermans: The northern Levant during the Neolithic period: Damascus and beyond , in: Margreet L. Steiner, Ann E. Killebrew (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Archeology of the Levant c. 8000-332 BCE , Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 134-146, here: p. 138.
- ↑ Katina T. Lillios: Andrew MT Moore: A Life in Service of Archeology and the Academy , in: Katina T. Lillios, Michael Chazan: Fresh Fields and Pastures New. Papers Presented in Honor of Andrew MT Moore , Sidestone Press, Leiden 2016, pp. 11–20, here: p. 14.