Prehistoric Settlement Patterns around Tepe Yahya

Since its discovery in 1967, the ancient site of Tepe Yahya in modern day Iran has been of great interest to archaeologists. Symmetrical in shape, rising to a height of 30 meters, it measures 180 meters at the base and 40 meters at the top. It lies around 225 kilometres from the modern city of Kerman. The mound is located in a mountainous valley where it is the dominating feature of the surrounding landscape.

Excavations have found that Tepe Yahya was inhabited during a timeframe of five millennia, roughly from the middle of the fifth millennium BCE to the second half of the first millennium CE. Although there is a noticeable gap between occupations timeframes in the second millennium, Tepe Yahya seems to have been occupied continuously. The following periods have been distinguished as:

Period IV: 4500 – 3800 BCE

Period V A-C: 3800 – 3400 BCE

Period IV C: 3400-3000 BCE

Period IV B: 3000-2500 BCE

Gap

Period IV A: 2100-1800 BCE

Gap

Period III: 750-500 BCE

Period II A & B: 500 BCE -200 CE

A Period I A & B: 200 -700 CE

When looking at the archaeological record, nearly nine tenths of the mound was attributed to pre-Achaemenean times, more precisely, from the middle of the fifth century to the early second millennium BCE. After a few gaps, the site was re-inhabited but produced less than one tenth of the present volume of the mound. However, when looking at the surface data available, it indicates a third, fourth and fifth millennium site.

The shards found on the surface were heavier and larger than the ones buried in the soil, almost doubling the average weight of the latter. “In the open fields around Tepe Yahya, most of which show signs of past or recent cultivation, sherds are found in considerable numbers down to a depth of about 50 cm., which probably represents the level reached by animal-drawn plows”.

Archaeologists, after performing careful surface survey of the surrounding area, believe that the “successive inhabitants of Tepe Yahya had an increasingly smaller surface area at their disposal. Given the steepness of the mound, it is unlikely that its slopes provided additional building space or Lebensraum … As the superimposed settlements at Tepe Yahya diminished in size, condemned by the inexorable laws of mound construction, did their populations decline correspondingly, or did they spill over onto the surrounding plain?”

Bibliography:

Vidali, Eda & Lamberg-Karlovsky, C.C. (1976) Prehistoric Settlement Patterns around Tepe Yahya: A Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Chicago Press.

Prehistoric Cultural Ecology in Southern Jordan

In the southern regions of Jordan, a country in the Middle East, surveys have shown an abundance of archaeological sites which date from the Palaeolithic to the Chalcolithic periods. These have been crucial in our understanding of cultural evolution; such was the emergence of horticulture, pastoralism and other modern behaviours. These sites have been able to give us a history of Jordan that spanned 700,000 years.

For areas was studied in by scholars between 1979 1988, spanning a total area of around 32 square kilometres. Apart from fall, each of the 109 sites was limited to a particular period. Numerous sites contained stratified occupations and controlled surface collections were performed at 35 sites. 32 sites were used as test sites and excavations were performed at six, from the Middle Palaeolithic, the Upper Palaeolithic, the Epipaleolithic and Chalcolithic occupations.

Archaeologists found over 167,430 chipped stone artefacts belonging to eight industries and 11 complexes. “Classification of assemblages into larger unit constructs was viewed as fundamental to (i) identifying pre-historical behavioural systems (that is, cultures) at some scale; (ii) linking such systems to environmental, economic and demographic data; (iii) establishing the variability within such systems (for example, site types); and (iv) examining diachronic changes within such systems in attempt to trace cultural evolution”.

When looking at the information yielded, there is much we can learn about the cultural ecologies in Southern Jordan. For example, in the Epipaleolithic, the Hamran-Natufian sequences occur over 6000 years. Site distributions and synchronous radiometric dates suggest that there was contact and socialisation between the neighbouring populations, but it is artefacts found that actually confirm this.

For example, in the Early Natufian period, the people used a specific geometric microlith that was later adopted by later Madamaghan groups. Again, the people from the Madamaghan period also adopted a distinct technological innovation, known as the microburin technique, from the Late and Final Hamran groups.

Climate change also contributed to the cultural evolution in prehistoric Jordan. The prehistoric people, in the harsh winters, would make their bases at elevations that would protect them from the freezing conditions during the night. In addition to this, the transition from hunter gathering to agriculture “incorporated into their annual ranges resource zones that were seasonally marginal. Although the resources in these zones were less abundant and predictable than those in the zones selected for intensive exploitation in the winter, wet season, their seasonal use would have relieved pressure on the optimum resource zones”.

The prehistoric cultural ecology of Southern Jordan allows us to understand the transition from time to time, from period to period, from people to people more fully and to gain a deeper insight into their lives.

Bibliography:

Henry, Donald O. (1994) Prehistoric Cultural Ecology in Southern Jordan, Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science.