Ancient Near East, Asia Minor, Syria: Prehistory

The deep deposit at Tabun Cave at Mount Carmel, Israel, has yielded a stratigraphic sequence that is an archaeological yardstick for the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (500-48 kya) of the Levant. Layer G contains a flake industry that is too poor to specify; Layer F is Upper Acheulean; Layer E is Acheulo-Yabrudian; layers D, C, B and the chimney are Levalloiso-Mousterian. An adult female skeleton was recovered, dated to 120 kya. [Yabrud: rockshelter site in Syria].

The Kebara Cave is located at the southern end of Mount Carmel. Layer A is Early Bronze Age to recent; layer B is Lower Natufian; Layer C is Kebaran, a previously unknown microlithic industry; Layer D is Aurignacian; Layer E is early Upper Palaeolithic; and Layer F is Mousterian. Mousterian hominan remains include a deliberately buried adult male Neanderthal (=Kebara 2) dated to c.60 kya.

Ohalo II is an epipalaeolithic site on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel, exposed during periods of exceptionally low water-levels. Excavations have revealed a Kebaran campsite (dated to 19.4 kya) with many microlithic and stone tools, numerous animal and fish bones and a human adult male burial. Anaerobic conditions have preserved in situ burnt animal remains of brushwood huts (the earliest known), and enabled the identification of about a hundred species of seeds and fruits, suggesting year-round occupation.

Tell Abu Hureyra is an Epipalaeolithic (20-10 kya) to pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) site on the middle Euphrates. The Epipalaeolithic levels provided an abundance of wild einkorn and of other wild cereals, legumes, nuts and seeds. The PPNB (9.6-8.0 kya) levels contain rectilinear mud-brick structures with plastered and painted walls and floors.

Mureybet is a Late Epipalaeolithic to pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) settlement on the middle Euphrates. The architectural sequence shows the transition from circular to rectilinear structures during the PPNA (10.5-9.6 kya). Together with Mureybet, Abu Hureyra provides a detailed picture of the origins of food production and village life on the middle Euphrates between 10.5 and 6.8 kya.

The Natufian (14.5-12 kya) is the terminal Epipalaeolithic culture complex of the Levant, and named after the site of Wadi en-Natuf in Palestine. Natufian assemblages contain geometric microliths, bone artefacts such as spearheads and fishhooks, and tools such as flint sickle-blades, pestles and mortars, which indicate the harvesting of cereals. As yet there is no clear evidence of the deliberate sowing of crops and faunal remains suggest the Natufian people were primarily settled or semi-settled hunters. Initially confined to the central Levantine core area, Natufian groups later appear in the middle Euphrates Valley, southern Jordan and the Negev. 

Tell Sabi Abyad in the Balikh River basin of northern Syria shows the development from the Neolithic to the Halaf culture. Levels XI-VII are pre-Halafian, levels VI-IV are transitional, and levels III-I are Early Halafian. Level VI contains the well-preserved ‘burnt village’ of large multi-room buildings. Concentrations of sealings, tokens and containers in several rooms show that people were controlling, recording, and storing goods of high value.

Excavations at Ugarit (=Ras Shamra) on the Syrian coast (northwest) indicate that it was occupied from the Early Neolithic (c.6500 BC). Pottery finds covering the Chalcolithic period (c.5250-c.3000 BC) show similarities with discoveries at Jericho, while remnants of al-Ubaid pottery suggest participation in a system of exchange stretching to Palestine and the cities of the lower Euphrates.

Habuba Kabira was a fortified site on the great bent of the middle Euphrates in Syria. Habuba Kabira South seems to have been built as a planned community that existed for about fifty years. It was part of a series of closely connected settlements, including the nearby Jebel Aruda, related to the Uruk expansion (c.3400-c.3200 BC). Virtually everything about it is southern Mesopotamian in character. At the end of the fourth millennium BC Uruk influence in Syria disintegrated.