Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros48-1Introduction

Introduction

Johnny Samuele Baldi et Khaled Abu Jayyab
p. 5-8
Cet article est une traduction de :
Introduction [fr]

Texte intégral

1This thematic issue originates from the workshop Delineating the end of a world: chronological indicators and material-cultural changes at the end of the Ubaid period in Greater Mesopotamia, held on 7 April 2021 in the framework of the 12th ICAANE conference. This (unfortunately remote) meeting aimed at discussing the markers and dynamics of the transition between the Late Ubaid and the LC1/Ubaid 5. Nevertheless, questioning the end of the Ubaid inevitably implies an attempt to better understand the history and nature of this still question-ridden phase. The issues involved are so numerous that—while avoiding tackling the origins and spread of this cultural entity to focus on its final phase—the papers presented here all still have to contend with a terminological vagueness that reveals a still inadequate knowledge of the 6th and 5th millennia BCE Mesopotamia.

2Used to indicate a site, a period, a material-cultural package and a black-on-buff painted ceramic style, the label “Ubaid” often ends up containing more doubts than certainties among its meanings. In particular, recent fieldwork activities and radiocarbon dates from southern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan have radically challenged the knowledge accumulated during rescue excavations carried out before the construction of the large Iraqi dams in the 1980s, as well as the results of the research conducted in Syria in the 1990s. This volume constitutes an attempt to apply a broad comparative perspective to all this disparate information.

3In this sense, it represents a sort of later extension, update and reassessment of the debates underlying the volume After the Ubaid edited by C. Marro in 2012. The aim here, just as ten years ago, is to establish thin chronological and cultural demarcation lines between Middle and Late Chalcolithic, between what is Ubaid and what already heralds proto-urban developments. These topics were in the background of many of the papers in the volumes Upon this Foundation (published in 1989 on the basis of the Elsinore symposium of the previous year), Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors (published in 2001 on the basis of the Seminar held in Santa Fe), and Beyond the Ubaid (gathering in 2010 the proceedings of the workshop of Durham). Obviously, it is no coincidence that these books constitute the backbone of the bibliographies in all the contributions collected in this thematic issue.

4Compared to this tradition of more than thirty years of debates, the present volume does not introduce any disruptive revolution, but rather takes a perspective focused as much as possible on ceramics, detailed stratigraphies, and both relative and absolute chronologies. On the other hand, among the various cultural traits that characterise the Ubaid entity, pottery has always played a predominant role as the only attribute representing a supra-regional basis of homogeneity within the Ubaid world. At the same time, however, the papers in this volume demonstrate that a perspective firmly anchored in the Ubaid ceramic evidence requires a specific analytical posture. The epistemological potential of the ceramic document is here exploited by using analytical tools that enhance its documentary value, whether by applying highly contextual approaches within the framework of household settings, or by studying the techniques underlying the ceramic chaîne opératoire, or by adopting cross-occurrence seriation charts, or even by resorting to the criteria of Principal Component Analysis and Formal Network Analysis. Whatever analytical instrument is implemented, this is about fully adopting a comparative attitude finding new balances between local contexts, micro-regional horizons and a supra-regional perspective, so as to entirely integrate in the ceramic analysis both the homogeneity of the Ubaid horizon and the local variability of the Ubaid “interaction spheres”. By combining these different approaches with recent and stratigraphically reliable sets of radiocarbon dates, a somewhat new and more complex picture emerges of the Late Ubaid and post-Ubaid times. Once again, it is not a matter of offering a revolutionised view of this transition, but rather of clarifying certain formal aspects (such as characteristic ceramic features) and substantial issues (such as distinctive socio-cultural dynamics).

5Basically, the end of the Ubaid seems to be more of a shift than a transition. It occurs simultaneously throughout Greater Mesopotamia and takes place somewhat earlier than previously believed, namely around 4700-4600 BCE. Consequently, the LC1-Ubaid 5 appears to be a long period with formal and qualitative specificities that are difficult to grasp, both in terms of ceramics and material culture in general, but also with significant quantitative discontinuities, such as the near disappearance of painted decorations and the appearance of the first serial productions. While these features in themselves are not new, what is new is the pattern of a transformation taking place almost simultaneously throughout the Ubaid world, with phenomena that are essentially the same everywhere, but everywhere expressed in locally and formally different ways. At the end of the Ubaid, the local “interaction spheres” variability becomes more pronounced and extreme to the point of a dramatic fragmentation of the common language; this, however, does not imply a process of cultural decay.Paradoxically, the various “interaction spheres” remain extremely vivid, and the end of the Ubaid coincides with a significant geographical expansion of its supra-regional horizon, so that some ceramic shapes and painted decorations, as well as some funerary and architectural traditions end up being documented as high up as the Caucasus, the Fars, or the Central Levant. The means to this posthumous expansion of the Ubaid is a pattern that emerges in all peripheral areas and which now appears as absolutely crucial in many passages in this volume, namely an unprecedented intensification of interactions with highland groups whether in southern Anatolia, the Urmia area or the Zagros.

6In other words, the LC1-Ubaid 5 is a long period characterised by an exacerbated fragmentation of the Ubaid horizon, by the expression of shared phenomena according to local patterns and formal solutions, as well as by the indirect diffusion over long distances of some Ubaid features thanks to intense relations with highlands peoples. Then, starting from the LC2-Early Uruk throughout the Mesopotamian Alluvium, the common roots take over and a generalised reverse trend towards a new formal homogenisation begins. However, this does not entirely reabsorb the Late Ubaid and LC1 regionalisation, ending up by expressing the characters of the proto-urban phase in local macro-regional ways in the North and the South. At this point and on the basis of these distinctive dynamics, it is tempting to read the progressive disintegration appearing (and presumably leading) towards the end of the Ubaid world as the emergence of increasingly powerful local elites engaged in reciprocal relations of cooperation and competition, and able to develop their networks onto areas that were first very fragmented and progressively became larger and more interconnected. This is the picture that seems to appear in the background of many of the contributions in this volume.

7At a time when new excavations are being carried out all over Mesopotamia despite the pandemic, we hope that future research will focus on this oscillation between regionalisation and homogenisation. In short, was there really—as has often been thought so far—a substantial difference between the first proto-urban institutions in the North and the South of the Alluvium? Or were their similarities and divergences (and consequently their privileged modes of territorial interaction) the result of a common Ubaid evolutionary root, discontinuously oscillating between regionalisation and homogenisation?

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Carter R. and Philip G. (eds.) 2010 –Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 63).

Henrickson E. and Thuesen I. (eds.) 1989 – Upon this Foundation. The ‘Ubaid Reconsidered. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press (Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publication 10).

Marro C. (ed.) 2012 – After the Ubaid: Interpreting change from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia at the dawn of Urban civilisation (4500-3500 BC) Papers from The Post-Ubaid Horizon in the Fertile Crescent and Beyond; International Workshop held at Fosseuse, 29th June-1st July 2009. Paris-Istanbul: De Boccard-Institut français d’études anatoliennes Georges Dumézil (Varia Anatolica 27).

Rothman. M. (ed.) 2001 – Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors: Cross-cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation. Santa Fe-Oxford: School of American research Press (School of American research advanced seminar series)-James Currey.

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Johnny Samuele Baldi et Khaled Abu Jayyab, « Introduction »Paléorient, 48-1 | -1, 5-8.

Référence électronique

Johnny Samuele Baldi et Khaled Abu Jayyab, « Introduction »Paléorient [En ligne], 48-1 | 2022, mis en ligne le 29 juillet 2022, consulté le 12 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/paleorient/1500 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/paleorient.1500

Haut de page

Auteurs

Johnny Samuele Baldi

CNRS UMR 5133, Archéorient, Lyon – France

Articles du même auteur

Khaled Abu Jayyab

Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto – Canada

Articles du même auteur

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search