Wadi Rabah culture

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The old Orient
The city gate of Nimrud
Timeline based on calibrated C 14 data
Epipalaeolithic 12000-9500 BC Chr.
Kebaria
Natufien
Khiamien
Pre-ceramic Neolithic 9500-6400 BC Chr.
PPNA 9500-8800 BC Chr.
PPNB 8800-7000 BC Chr.
PPNC 7000-6400 BC Chr.
Ceramic Neolithic 6400-5800 BC Chr.
Umm Dabaghiyah culture 6000-5800 BC Chr.
Hassuna culture 5800-5260 BC Chr.
Samarra culture 5500-5000 BC Chr.
Transition to the Chalcolithic 5800-4500 BC Chr.
Halaf culture 5500-5000 BC Chr.
Chalcolithic 4500-3600 BC Chr.
Obed time 5000-4000 BC Chr.
Uruk time 4000-3100 / 3000 BC Chr.
Early Bronze Age 3000-2000 BC Chr.
Jemdet Nasr time 3000-2800 BC Chr.
Early dynasty 2900 / 2800-2340 BC Chr.
Battery life 2340-2200 BC Chr.
New Sumerian / Ur-III period 2340-2000 BC Chr.
Middle Bronze Age 2000-1550 BC Chr.
Isin Larsa Period / Ancient Assyrian Period 2000–1800 BC Chr.
Old Babylonian time 1800–1595 BC Chr.
Late Bronze Age 1550-1150 BC Chr.
Checkout time 1580-1200 BC Chr.
Central Assyrian Period 1400-1000 BC Chr.
Iron age 1150-600 BC Chr.
Isin II time 1160-1026 BC Chr.
Neo-Assyrian time 1000-600 BC Chr.
Neo-Babylonian Period 1025-627 BC Chr.
Late Babylonian Period 626-539 BC Chr.
Achaemenid period 539-330 BC Chr.
Years according to the middle chronology (rounded)

The Wadi Rabah culture has been an archaeological culture since 1958 , the settlements of which are mostly to be found in the Jordan Valley and on the Mediterranean coast to the west of it. The Wadi Rabah culture is dated between 5500 and 4500 BC. Dated.

This culture is part of the Ceramic Neolithic and follows the Yarmukia , which stretches along the coast to Byblos in the north, and the Lodien (Jericho IX), although the Yarmukia is absent in the Chula Plain , in the northeast of the region, as well as on the lower reaches of the Jordan.

This means that the culture belongs either as a transitional culture to the late Neolithic and the early Copper Age , but possibly only to the latter epoch. Most reliable radiocarbon data is from the late 6th millennium, and some from the early 5th millennium. There may be a hiatus between the Wadi Rabah culture and the early Chalcolithic .

The time limits, which were mostly determined by ceramic sequences, a technique that was used in the southern Levant at the beginning of the 7th millennium BC, are controversial. Appears - a few centuries before the onset of Yarmukia. Three approaches were pursued, namely that the culture existed continuously until the middle of the 5th millennium, or that the subsequent ghassulia culture , in contrast, extended from the beginning of the 5th millennium, if not even into the 6th millennium passed back. Or another culture, which cannot be assigned to either the Wadi Rabah or the Ghassulia culture, lay between the two. As a result of this uncertainty, the end of the Neolithic and with it the beginning of the Copper Age in Syria were often around 5300 or 4500 BC. Is seen.

The discussions were intensified by the fact that there appeared to be temporal overlaps between the three cultures mentioned, while one or the other of the three cultures could not be detected in certain regions. Remnants of the Lodien and Wadi-Rabah cultures were found in the upper Jordan Valley north of the Sea of ​​Galilee at the Tel Dan excavation site , Hagoshrim to the southwest, in Tel Te'o, south-southwest of it, and further south in Beisamoun. The Yarmukia is documented there from surface finds near Eynan, near Beisamoun, where it is also detectable.

Many of the dead from the epoch between the Wadi Rabah culture and the Iron Age show trauma to the bones that can be traced, but most of the victims survived. While these occurred comparatively rarely in the Neolithic (2.9%), this proportion was 26.67% in the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages. No archaeological region shows so many combat injuries, which affected men much more often than women and adults than children. Apparently, as indicated by the blunt weapons that were used, ritual fighting was widespread.

The Tel Ro'im site, prepared in an emergency excavation in 2004, covers an area of ​​about one hectare . It has similarities with Beisamoun and Kefar Gil'adi. Tel Ro'im is located 175 m above sea level on the southeast slope of the Naphtali chain, where it drops towards the Chula Depression. The artifacts span the phases from the Pre-Ceramic Neolithic B to the Ceramic Neolithic. Thick-walled vessels could often be identified from the almost 1500 pieces, whereby only 126 fragments could be assigned to a certain type of vessel. These were mostly bowls (almost two thirds), but heavy, jar-like vessels and craters were also found . The surface is often red or red-brown, less than 4% are black or gray. Pigment was used in only two cases, otherwise the color of the starting material was retained. The vessels were often polished, only twelve vessels had incisions. Overall, the vessels became thicker-walled, the treatments of the surfaces declined.

As in other sites such as Seker al-Aheimar or Sabi Abyad, pottery was so rare in the lower strata that the site was initially thought to be aceramic. Because relatively little is known about the Ceramic Neolithic in Lebanon and southwest Syria, there is a serious gap between the finds in the southern and northern Levant. Tel Ro'im may be a kind of substitute for the Yarmukia, which cannot be proven in the Chula plain. This could speak for an early influence on the ceramic tradition from the north and only a later one from the south, at the same time perhaps for a kind of barrier of the mountain range between the coastline and the hinterland.

literature

  • Danny Rosenberg, Edwin CM van den Brink: Qidron: A Wadi Rabah Culture site , in: Salvage Excavation Reports 2, 2005, pp. 93-103 ( online ).
  • Edward B. Banning: Wadi Rabah and related assemblages in the Southern Levant: interpreting the radiocarbon evidence , in: Paléorient 33, 2007, pp. 77-101.
  • Danny Rosenberg: Flying stones in pottery era: the slingstones of the Wadi Rabah culture , in: Paléorient 35, 2, 2009, 97-110.
  • Hamoudi Khalaily, Alla Nagorsky: Tel Hanan: a site of the Wadi Rabah culture east of Haifa , in: Atiqot 73, 2013, pp. 1–17.
  • Dvory Namdar, Alon Amrani, Nimrod Getzov, Ianir Milevski: Olive oil storage during the fifth and sixth millennia BC at Ein Zippori, Northern Israel , in: Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 62, 1–2, 2015, pp. 65–74.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ in the Levant
  2. ↑ a b c d in southern Mesopotamia
  3. ↑ a b c in northern Mesopotamia
  4. ^ First named by Jacob Kaplan : Excavations at Wadi Rabah , in: Israel Exploration Journal 8, 1958, pp. 149-160.
  5. ^ S. Bar, D. Rosenberg: Newly Discovered Yarmukian and Wadi Rabah Sites in the Southern Jordan Valley and The Desert Fringes of Samaria During the 7th and 6th Millennia BC: Preliminary Report , in: Archeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia 39, 3 , 2011, pp. 32-39.
  6. ^ Yosef Garfinkel: Neolithic and Chalcolithic Pottery of the Southern Levant , Jerusalem 1999.
  7. ^ Margreet L. Steiner, Ann E. Killebrew: The Oxford Handbook of the Archeology of the Levant c. 8000-332 BCE , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, p. 49.
  8. ^ Margreet L. Steiner, Ann E. Killebrew: The Oxford Handbook of the Archeology of the Levant c. 8000-332 BCE , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, p. 50.
  9. ↑ Viviane Slon, Rachel Sarig, Israel Hershkovitz, Hamoudi Khalaily, Ianir Milevski: The Plastered Skulls from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Site of Yiftahel (Israel) - A Computed Tomography-Based Analysis , in: PLOS one 9, 2, 19. February 2014 ( [1] ).
  10. ↑ Ron Shimelmitza1, Danny Rosenberg: Dull-edged Weapons and low-level fighting in the Late Prehistoric Southern Levant , in: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23, 2013, pp 433-452.
  11. ↑ This and the following from Assaf Nativ, Danny Rosenberg, Dani Nadel: The southern tip of the northern Levant? The Early Pottery Neolithic Assemblage of Tel Ro'im West, Israel , in: Paléorient 40, 1, July 2014, pp. 99–115 ( online, PDF ).