Mesopotamia - Neolithic Ubaid

Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf and Ubaud

Mesopotamia - Neolithic Ubaid

c. 6500-3800 BC

Imagine you arrived at Tepe Gawra (Ubaid) at dawn, five thousand six hundred years ago. The settlement is small —One hundred and fifty people, maybe less— But there's something in the air that makes it different than any village you've ever met. Juniper. Pino. A resinous, warm, slightly sweet note that comes from somewhere between the houses surrounding the central temple. Someone's been working all night.

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Between 6500 and 3800 BC, four archaeological cultures took place and superimposed in Mesopotamia. Their names —Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf, Ubaud— They are not the names they used themselves: they were put up by the archaeologists who excavated the deposits. Behind those names is something extraordinary: almost three millennia of continuous experimentation that laid the foundation for the world's first urban civilization.

Hassuna (c. 6500-5800 BC) was the first sedentary agricultural tradition in the north, anchored in the rainbow where rain was sufficient to grow cereals. Its villages had between one and three hectares: adobe, courtyards, silos, ovens. People who had decided to stay and had started saving things for the winter.

Samarra (c. 5500-4800 BC) crossed into the semi-arid plain and found itself with a radical problem: the rain no longer reached. His response was one of the most important innovations in human prehistory: artificial irrigation planned. The Choga Mami and Tell channels are -Sawwan, dated around 5600-5400 BC, are the oldest documented in Mesopotamia. Humanity stopped waiting for the rain from the sky and began to redirect the rivers.

Halaf (c. 6100-5100 BC) produced the most refined ceramic technique and aesthetically of the Neolithic of the Near East: polychrome, of almost porcelanea pasta, with geometric and figurative motifs of extraordinary complexity. Its separate chamber furnaces reached a thousand degrees Celsius with a uniform temperature. That same fire technology, that exact combustion domain, is the thread that connects the potter Halaf to the priest who, centuries later, would burn resins in Eridu.

The Ubaid (c. 6500-3800 BC) extended the irrigation model to the entire alluvial plain and created something that had not existed until then: the monumental public temple. In Eridu, the sequence of eighteen superimposed sacred structures —each generation building above the previous one for more than two millennia— is the most eloquent evidence that something radically new was happening. The place was too important to leave. It was always built on top.

These were resilient cultures. When the 8.2 ka climate event (c. 6200 BC) cooled and abrupt the Middle East, the communities of Tell Sabi Abyei could collapse, but instead multiplied their ceramic storage containers to manage crop uncertainty. Where the wood was scarce —as in Surezha— They optimized dry manure as fuel. Environmental stress that, far from ending these cultures, accelerated innovation trends already under way (Akkermans 2015). What archaeology finds here is resilience in the form of ceramics.

Basic sources

Akkermans, Peter M. M. G. 2015.'Cultural Transformation and the 8.2 ka Event in Upper Mesopotamia. 'In Climate and Ancient Societies. Museum Tusculanum Press. · Belgiorno, Maria Rosaria, and Perra, Marcello and Sanna, Pepe. 2020.'Ancient Distillation and Experimental Archaeology about the Prehistoric Apparatuses of Tepe Gawra. 'EXARC Journal. · Campbell, Stuart. 2000.'The Burnt House at Arpachiyah: A Reexamination. 'Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 318. · Connan, Jacques. 1999.'Use and Trade of Bitumen in Antiquity and Prehistory. 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 354. · Groat, Nicholas P. 2023. An Integrated Material and Experimental Analysis of Early Ubaid Tepe Gawra. PhD dis., University of Leeds. · Levey, Martin. 1950.'Chemistry and Chemical Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia. 'Osiris 12. · Pittman, Holly. 2016. 'Temples as Sacred Houses: A Case Study from Tepe Gawra.' Journal of Near Eastern Studies. · Rothman, Mitchell S. 2002. Tepe Gawra: The Evolution of a Small, Prehistoric Center in Northern Iraq. University of Pennsylvania Museum. · Soares da Costa et al. 2020.'Exploring the Aromatic Diversity of Incense Materials at Ancient Sites. 'Journal of Archaeological Science 121. · Verhoeven, Marc. 1999.'Death, Fire and Abandonment. 'Archaeological Dialogues 6 (2). · Wright, Katherine I. 2024. In Continuing Bonds at Late Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyei. Sidestone Press.

COMPLETA bibliography and additional research, explanation, teaching and study materials are provided only to Myrodia Khartes subscribers.

Eridu: the sensory temple

The Ubaidian temple was many things at the same time. Worship space. Community barn. Handmade workshop. Resource redistribution centre. The elites who administered it legitimized their authority by something more difficult to account for than gold or weapons: they controlled the atmosphere.

At the levels of the late Ubaid of Eridu (c. 4000-3800 BC), archaeologists recovered two objects that change the reading of everything else: a burning support of incense and a ceramic cover of incensary —the item IM 55017 of the Museum of Iraq, of 29.5 × 28 cm— directly associated with the sanctuary space. The museum's catalogue explicitly indicates that 'such supports are found in late temples'. Its design is revealing: the cover restricts the flow of oxygen just enough to keep the flutes on for hours, prolonging the emission of smoke and aroma inside the sanctuary. It was not an object to light fire: it was an object to hold it in time.

The resins and wood that were burning in those incensaries formed a carefully selected repertoire. The cedar of Lebanon was the most precious: its oleobalsamic resin traveled weeks from the northern mountains, and the subsequent acadiums recorded that link when the term lubbunu —incense— is ethymologically related to the name Lebanon. The juniper provided resinous and balsamic notes. The look, herbal freshness. The pistachio resin —the atlantic pistacia mastix— He added warmth and spice. The archeometric analysis of Soares da Costa et al. (2020) on mesopotamic burners of the third millennium confirms the presence of these mixtures; Eridu is the oldest evidence of this system.

The effect was calculated. The interior of the temple was to smell different from any other place. The sacrality of space had an olfactory dimension as constitutive as the architectural one: without that specific aroma —imported resins from distant mountains, slow and controlled combustion— The rite lost one of its layers of meaning. The IM 55017 item of the Museum of Iraq is one of the best documented copies of these slow-combustion ceramic covers. Its direct association with the space of the Ubaidian shrine of Eridu makes it the oldest material evidence of ritual fumigation institutionalized in Mesopotamia. (apparently the piece is lost and only documented The museum was looted during the

Drag from the Iraq Museum of 2003)

There is a smell in prehistoric Mesopotamia that books of archaeology rarely mention. Penetrant, terrous, with sulphide notes that intensify to heat. Natural bitumen —asphaltum— It was emerging in outflows in northern Iraq and the Zagros, and the communities of the period had known it since at least the seventh millennium BC (Connan 1999). They used it to waterproof baskets and tins. To seal silos. To set obsidian handles. To repair ceramics they then deposited as offerings. And, above all, to close the dead.

The hot bitumen to seal sarcophagos, funerary jars and osary vessels was a constituent part of the funeral ritual of the period. Its technical function was clear: to ensure the integrity of the container, to protect the remains of moisture and time. But its hot application generated a dense, tar, steam aroma that expanded in the cemetery space during the closing process. That smell was repeated every time there was a burial. Every time a family sealed one of their own.

Over time, that specific smell —tar, heat, black smoke— could become what neuroscience today would call a sensory anchor: the aroma that points to duel, separation, passage. The association between betun and death, built act by act, burial by burial, would have created a collective olfactory memory. A sensory code that the community recognized without words.

Beyond the cemetery, the bitumen impregnated daily life: the smell of palm roof maintenance, of silo sealing at the beginning of winter, of each tool repair. It was the omnipresent technological aroma of these villages. —as inevitable as the smell of wet adobe or the smell of roasted grain— but with an additional dimension: the ritual of death had filled it with meaning.

Tepe Gawra: the village that made the sacred

If Eridu was the spiritual heart of the Ubaid, Tepe Gawra was his laboratory. At the IX-XII levels of the field (c. 4200-3500 BC), archaeologists found something that had no parallel in any other calcolytic site in the region: a set of ceramic vessels of unusual morphology —Channel jars with double edge, collars, funnel, bell-shaped containers— grouped in specific areas of the settlement, in direct proximity to the central tripartite temple.

Martin Levey (1950) was the first to recognize one of these vessels as the bottom of a distillation device, connecting it with acadial cuneiform texts and medieval Arab manuscripts on perfumes. Seven decades later, Belgiorno et al. they published in the EXARC Journal (2020) the results of an experimental archaeology program: two complete appliances reconstructed from the excavation records of Speiser (1935) and Tobler (1950), made with exact replicas of the original vessels. The result was conclusive: the system works. By processing local aromatic plants, the appliances produce perfumed water and small amounts of essential oil in a few hours of operation.

What makes finding particularly significant is its location. According to Belgiorno's analysis, the vessels were inside and outside the houses surrounding the tripartite temple, which led to the proposal that the inhabitants of those houses were perfumers artisans that produced fragrances for pilgrims who came to worship. Levey had already pointed out this connection in 1955, linking the jars to 'rituals performed in the tripartite temple of the small village'. The research of Groat (2023, University of Leeds) reinforces this reading: the aromatic oils of Tepe Gawra were not exclusively products of liturgical use, but daily social markers that permeated the village space.

The botanical species processed in these appliances would include: juniperus spp., experimentally confirmed in replicas; pine and fir (Pinaceae), whose distillation produces fresh fragrances and terpenoids; pistacho (Atlantic Pistacia), source of the resinous and spicy mastix; and cedar of Lebanon, the most prestigious aroma of the Old East, documented in imports to the region.

And there is also a detail that the excavation records keep with discretion: some of the Tepe Gawra's vessels were decorated with painted pine branches. Someone considered it necessary to mark those containers with the plant they were processing. That's ex officio identity.

The economic analysis of Rothman (2002) adds a dimension that transforms the reading of the whole. The figures, the affidavits and the gold and silver jewels concentrated in the tombs of Tepe Gawra are not proportional to the scarce natural resources of the site. This small community of one hundred and fifty people possessed wealth that could not have been generated by agriculture or livestock. The most coherent response, given all the above, is that they produced something special to exchange with other populations. The ritual perfumery as the basis of a local economy: a conclusion that experimental archaeology makes today more plausible than ever.

One hundred and fifty people. A village without natural resources. And gold jewels in their graves. The answer was in the air.

The figures found in Tepe Gawra belong to the same universe. The XI-XVII strata of the field —Halaf-Ubaid, c. 5500-4200 BC— produced anthropomorphic female figures and terracotta zoomorphic figures that circulated between the domestic space and the temperary. Holly Pittman (2016) specifically argued that the architecture of the Tepe Gawra temple reproduced and sacralized the symbolic structure of the home, and that the ritual objects —including— They were moving between the two spaces. The temple was not a separate space from daily life: it was its amplified microcosms.

The most characteristic figures of the Ubaid period present a morphology that deliberately deviates from human naturalism: elongated heads, oblique eyes in almond, bodies with traits that researchers describe as reptilians. The assumptions about their meaning remain open —representations of deities linked to water symbolism and wisdom, figures in the process of shamanic transformation, fertility and life emblems— but there is a formal fact that the iconographic debate tends to overlook: those same features —the elongated face, the almond eyes— already appear in the figures of Tell es- Sawwan of the Samarra culture (level I). The aesthetic continuity extends several centuries. It's a persistent way to represent the sacred.

Berra y Sanna, EXARC Journal (2020): 12 double-edged channel vessels, colators, fungi and bell-shaped containers of the IX-XII levels of Tepe Gawra constitute two complete functional distillation devices, verified by experimental archaeology. Similar vessels were identified in Tell Brak (CH XIII level) and Khirbat al-Fakhar Hamoukar, indicating an extended regional practice.

The impregnated body: ointment, identity and registration

The aroma was not locked in the temple or the cemetery. He was traveling with the bodies of those who lived in these villages.

The body ointment of the period combined vegetable oils —sesame as a main vehicle, extensively documented in later mesopotamic sources, with flax and possibly wild olive as alternatives— with resins and aromatic extracts: juniper, pistachio, myrtle, cedar in preparations with the highest symbolic budget. Applied to the skin in the semi-arid climate of the plain, these oils performed an immediate practical function: hydration, protection against the sun and wind. Grat's research (2023) points out that Tepe Gawra's oils impregnated the village's domestic and community space, making personal fragrance a daily social marker. A body that smelled of cedar or pistachio was the body of someone with access to the temple, access to raw materials, with a place in the ritual order of the community.

But identity was also registered in more permanent ways. In Arpachiyah, Campbell's analysis of the skulls from the Halaf and Ubaud periods identified multiple cases of artificial cranial deformation: cefalic bandages applied in childhood that shaped the shape of the skull in an irreversible way. What you see in an adult with that morphology is a decision made on his body when he was a newborn. —a decision of others, of their family, of their community. A sign of group belonging printed on the bone, which was traveling with that person to the grave.

The genetic continuity between the Halaf and Ubaud populations of Arpachiyah, confirmed by the same analysis, excludes a massive population replacement between the two cultures. Cranial deformation passes through cultural change: what changes is ceramics and architecture, but the practice of inscribing belonging to the skull of newborns persists. That says something about the continuity of the social ties that that practice expressed.

The translucent alabaster figures of Tell is -Sawwan —found in level I child burial, some with elongated features that anticipate the ubaidian style— They close this circle: the smaller dead, those who had just begun to be marked by the community, were accompanied by figures that reproduced the aesthetic canon of the sacred. The beauty of the material —imported alabaster, translucent, soft to touch, slightly warm— It was part of the meaning. No one buried a child with anything ordinary.

Aromatic mapping

Fresh manure of sheep / goats / bovine
Chemical sign: Scatol, indol, isovaleric acid, hydrogen sulfide.
Common scenarios: Corrals, stables.

Dirty wool (with lanolin and sweat)
Chemical sign: Isovaleric acid, lanolin, eschatol trace.
Common scenarios: Sheep in the settlement.

Almizcle (animal secretion)
Chemical sign: Muscona, civetone, androstenone.
Common scenarios: Animal glands (probably not directly documented in Ubaud, but mentioned in the table as a generic example).

Betun / natural asphalt
Chemical sign: Naphthalene, phenantrene, aliphatic hydrocarbons, tyophenes.
Common scenarios: Funeral sealing, waterproofing.

Moist earth / wet mud (geosmine)
Chemical sign: Geosmine, 2-methyl-isoborneol.
Common scenarios: Rain on adobe, construction with wet clay.

Linseed retting (anaerobic fermentation of stems)
Chemical sign: Geosmine, butyric acid, valeric acid, dimethyl sulfide, cadaverine.
Common Scenarios: Lining in stagnant water.

Baked bread (roasted cereal)
Chemical sign: 2-acetyl-1-pyrrolin, furaneol, metional, (E) -2-nonrenal.
Common scenarios: Cooking in communal ovens.

Fermented beer (must and alcoholic drink)
Chemical sign: Ethanol, isoamyl acetate, 4-vinylguayacol, acetic acid, diacetyl.
Common scenarios: barley fermentation in festivals.

Tired leather
Chemical sign: Hydrolysed tannins (galic acid), ammonia, trimethylamine, isovaleric acid.
Common scenarios: Turing workshops.

Lana processed with fermented urines (alkaline lavage)
Chemical sign: Amonia, trimethylamine, degraded lanolin.
Common scenarios: Wool washing prior to yarn.

Burned dry manure (fuel)
Chemical sign: Phenol, guayacol, siringol, cresoles, indol, eschatol.
Common scenarios: Households without wood.

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