Tell Sabi Abyad is a major Late Neolithic settlement mound in Northern Syria, belonging to the seventh and early sixth millennium BC. This book presents the results of large-scale fieldwork conducted at the site between 1994 and 1999, under the auspices of the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities and Leiden University. For six successive field campaigns, the relatively low and gently sloping southeastern part of Tell Sabi Abyad - termed Operation I - was the focus of broad horizontal excavation and a diverse, interdis- ciplinary series of investigations, aimed at the exploration of the sequence of local Late Neolithic (or Pottery Neolithic) villages dating from around 6200-5850 BC. Because of the large-scale investigation at Tell Sabi Abyad, we are much better informed on the local development of culture and society in the Late Neolithic - an era which received little scholarly attention, if not sheer neglect, for a very long time but which has rapidly gained recognition in the past two decades. This monograph takes the reader through an account of the excavation and an analysis of the material remains from the 1994 to 1999 field campaigns at Tell Sabi Abyad. The book provides reports on the stratigraphy, architecture, material culture, plant remains, human skeletal remains, and other finds from the various phases of Neolithic settlement at the site.

This was the first book to present a comprehensive review of the archaeology of Syria from the end of the Paleolithic period to 300 BC. Syria has become a prime focus of field archaeology in the Middle East in the past thirty years, and Peter Akkermans and Glenn Schwartz discuss the results of this intensive fieldwork, integrating them with earlier research. Alongside the major material culture types of each period, they examine important contributions of Syrian archaeology to issues like the onset of agriculture, the emergence of private property and social inequality, the rise and collapse of urban life, and the archaeology of early empires. All competing interpretations are set out and considered, alongside the authors' own perspectives and conclusions.

The times between the Neolithic and Urban revolutions in Mesopotamia have for a long time been interpreted as a period of stagnation. This volume is part of an emerging discourse that challenges such assumptions. Focussing upon the northern parts of ancient Western Asia, where most recent research has concentrated, an international group of researchers demonstrates that Upper Mesopotamia underwent complex historical changes that we just begin to grasp fully. The Late Neolithic was a critical phase of the history of the ancient Middle East. Authors investigate settlement patterns, practices of painting pottery, distributions of various raw materials, the role of craft industries, the emergence of seals and other issues from a variety of theoretical and practical questions. The book is a must-have for prehistorians working in the Near East, and a rich source of information for archaeologists working in other parts of the world. Olivier Nieuwenhuyse is a Research Fellow at Leiden University and at the DAI-Berlin. His research focuses on reconstructions of landscape and prehistoric settlement and the meanings of material culture. Reinhard Bernbeck is professor at the Freie Universitat Berlin and Binghamton University, New York. His research focuses on critical assessments of ancient Western Asian prehistory and historical periods. Peter Akkermans is professor at Leiden University. He is the director of the excavatons at Tell Sabi Abyad and had published widely on the prehistory of the ancient Near East.

This study focuses on a major issue in Near Eastern prehistoric archaeology: the rise of the Halaf culture, ca. 5900 - 5400 cal. BC. The book presents in a detailed, quantified and lavishly illustrated manner the ceramics excavated by the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden at Tell Sabi Abyad, northern Syria. Concentrating on the 1996 - 2000 campaigns, the book also synthesizes much earlier work in order to come to a comprehensive overview. Tell Sabi Abyad thus far remains the only archaeological site in the Near East where the shift from a Pre-Halaf to an Early Halaf cultural assemblage can be followed within a continuous, meticulously stratified sequence. This shift occured during a short-lived transitional stage, radiocarbon dated at 6100-5900 cal. BC, In terms of the ceramics, this transition is characterized by the gradual replacement of plain Coarse Ware by intricately painted Fine Wares, and by numerous innovations in ceramic technology, morphology and decorative style. More than merely a pottery report, the book offers a lively discussion of past and present views on the origins of the Halaf culture. It also places the excavated ceramics in the broader socio-economic and symbolic context of Late Neolithic societies in northern Syria. Using the concepts of feasting and emulation, the study aims to gain insight in patterns of rapid ceramic innovation and change. The book is of interest not only to specialists of prehistoric pottery but to a wider archaeological audience as well.

Over the past fifty years or so early pottery complexes in the wider region of West Asia have hardly ever been investigated in their own right. Early ceramics have often been unexpected by-products of projects focussing upon much earlier aceramic or later prehistoric periods. In recent years, however, there has been a tremendous increase in research in various parts of West Asia focusing explicitly on this theme. It had generally become accepted that the adoption of pottery in West Asia happened relatively late in the history of ceramics. Several regions are now believed to have developed pottery significantly earlier. Thus, pottery occurs in Eastern Russia, in China and Japan by 16,500 cal. BC and in north Africa it is known in the 10th millennium. However, while the East Asian examples in particular do mark chronologically earlier instances, the picture in West Asia is actually rather more complex, in part because of the tyranny of the Aceramic/Ceramic Neolithic chronology. For the first time, The Emergence of Pottery in West Asia examines in detail the when, where, how and why pottery first arrived in the region? A key insight that emerges is that we must not confuse the reasons for pottery adoption with the long-term consequences. Neolithic peoples in West Asia did not adopt pottery because of the many uses and functions it would gain many centuries later and the development of ceramic technology needs to be examined in the context of its original cultural and social milieu.

This book examines the poorly understood transformations in rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires.

Excavations in North Uist dating from 1974-1984 identified two cists with human remains in kerbed cairns, many bowl pits dug into the blown sand, two late Neolithic structures and a ritual complex.

This is the first monograph that deals with the Middle Assyrian remains at Tell Sabi Abyad, northern Syria. It offers a detailed description of the ceramics excavated between 1991 and 1998 in the project of Leiden National Museum of Antiquities. The study integrates technological, morphological, stylistic, and archaeological data to come to an understanding of pottery production and use. The book contains seven lavishly illustrated chapters and six appendices presenting the raw data on typology, pottery kilns, archaeometric analyses and functional analyses. The large-scale excavation and the excellent preservation of pottery workshops, tools and kilns as well as the meticulous study of technology and standardization provide a unique insight into the organization of pottery production. The chapter on function and use combines information on performance characteristics, shape and capacity, traces of use, depictions of vessels in iconography and information from texts, in an attempt to reconstruct how vessels were used. In a contribution by Dr. Frans Wiggermann two cuneiform texts from Sabi Abyad dealing with pottery have been published, and a first step has been taken to connect the ceramic repertoire with Middle Assyrian vocabulary. This study will be interesting to Near Eastern archaeologists, ceramicists and Assyriologists as well as to students of craft production in archaeology or ethno-archaeology. Dr. Kim Duistermaat is director of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. She has participated in archaeological research projects in the Netherlands, Egypt and Syria, where she directed the Netherlands Institute for Academic Studies in Damascus between 1997 and 2005.

"This book presents the long history of Syria by means of a journey through its most important and most recently-excavated archaeological sites.(...)". Quatrième de couverture

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.