Domesticating Space Construction, Community, and Cosmology in the Late Prehistoric Near East edited by E. B. Banning and Michael Chazan Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Environment 6, 2006 Berlin, ex oriente (2006) Gedruckt mit finanzieller Unterstützung von / Printed with the financial support of ex oriente e.V., Berlin SENEPSE wird von Hans Georg K. Gebel und Reinder Neef herausgegeben für SENEPSE is edited by Hans Georg K. Gebel and Reinder Neef for ex oriente e.V., Produktion, Subsistenz und Umwelt im frühen Vorderasien, Berlin Buchbestellungen bitte direkt an / Please, send book orders directly to : ex oriente e.V. Freie Universität Berlin c/o Institut für Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde Hüttenweg 7, D - 14195 Berlin Fax 0049 30 83852106 or 98311246 Eine Liste der Publikationen von ex oriente ist am Ende dieses Bandes zu finden. A list of publications by ex oriente can be found at the end of this volume. © 2006 ex oriente e.V. Produktion, Subsistenz und Umwelt im frühen Vorderasien, Berlin. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. All rights reserved. Gedruckt in Deutschland von dbusiness, Berlin. Printed in Germany by dbusiness, Berlin. ISSN 0947-0549 ISBN 3-9807578-3-8 Contents Acknowledgements ………………………….............................................…….. 4 E.B. Banning and Michael Chazan: Structuring interactions, structuring ideas: Domestication of space in the prehistoric Near East ………………………… 5 Trevor Watkins: Architecture and the symbolic construction of new worlds ….. 15 Dani Nadel: Residence ownership and continuity: From the Early Epipalaeolithic unto the Neolithic ………………………………………………. 25 Nicolas Samuelian, Hamudi Khalaily, and François R. Valla: Final Natufian architecture at ‘Eynan (‘Ain Mallaha): Approaching the diversity behind uniformity ……………………………………………………...……………….. 35 Stefan Karol Kozlowski: The hunter-gatherer “villages” of the PPNA/EPPNB 43 Seiji Kadowaki: Ground-stone tools and implications for the use of space and social relations at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla, a PPNB settlement in southern Jordan 53 Hans Georg K. Gebel: The domestication of vertical space: The case of steep- slope LPPNB architecture in southern Jordan ………………………………….. 65 Marc Verhoeven: Megasites in the Jordanian Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: Evidence for ‘Proto-Urbanism’? ……………………………………………..…. 75 Zeidan A. Kafafi: Domestic activities at the Neolithic site, ‘Ain Ghazal ………. 81 Marion Cutting: Traditional architecture and social organisation: The agglome- rated buildings of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in Neolithic Central Anatolia 91 Yosef Garfinkel: The social organization at Neolithic Sha‘ar Hagolan: The nuclear family, the extended family, and the community …………………. 103 3 Acknowledgements We are extremely grateful to the Connaught Fund and Halbert Exchange Program, both at the University of Toronto, and thank Ralph and Roslyn Halbert, and the Halbert Exchange Program’s director and administrator, Janice Stein and Joshua Goldstein. Publication of this volume would not have been possible without their support, as well as the efforts of Michael Gregg, who helped with page layout and editing, and Carla Parslow, who took care of all the organizational details surround- ing the Domesticating Space conference on which the book is based. Michele de Gruchy assisted with checking and correcting bibliographies, and Raina Stebelsky illustrated the Gobekli Tepe monuments for Trevor Watkins’s paper. We also thank all those who presented papers at the conference in November 2002 and those who submitted papers for this volume. 4 PB 4 Structuring interactions, structuring ideas: Domestication of space in the prehistoric Near East E. B. Banning and Michael Chazan University of Toronto The Neolithic was not only the era of reaching a new consensus on the social the domestication of plants and animals. context of architecture, the conference During and even before the Neolithic, and this volume raise pressing and inhabitants of the Near East increas- unexpected questions. ingly took control over their space, Two main orientations for research The new empirical data building for the first time substantial on early architecture emerge in these structures clustered in what appear to papers. The first is to consider architec- are impressive and have been base camps, if not villages. If, ture as a constructed landscape within as archaeologists typically assume, most both functional and symbolic realms. force a fundamental of these structures were houses, this was This orientation has been pursued vig- a domestication in a quite literal sense. orously by archaeologists working on reexamination of ideas As Wilson (1988) points out, it also fun- the Neolithic of Europe (e.g., Bailey damentally altered human relationships 1990; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1999; about the earliest and perceptions in ways that we could Tilley 2003), in part because the sheer consider “domestication of the human strangeness of many of the architec- architecture in species.” tural remains there, such as tumuli and The papers gathered here are rel- henges, demands such an approach. the Near East. evant to the novel spatial, ideological, The detailed archaeological evidence and social relationships that this kind presented here, especially in Nadel’s However, the social of domestication not only allowed but paper, draws out aspects of the early encouraged. Some of them were origi- architecture of the Near East that we and ideological aspects nally presented at a conference on the cannot easily reconcile with a strictly theme, Domesticating Space, that took functional interpretation. Yet, in gen- of built spaces remain, place in Toronto from 19-20 November eral, work on the symbolic or cosmo- 2002. The goal of this meeting was to logical aspects of early Near Eastern for the most part, bring together archaeologists actively architecture is underdeveloped, and has engaged in excavating Near Eastern concentrated on structures that excava- elusive. sites with early architectural remains tors have interpreted as “shrines” or to explore the social and conceptual “temples,” arguably through the lens of contexts that underlay these construc- later biblical or Mesopotamian sources. tions. Our sense at the time was that the Perhaps the spectacular new discoveries architectural and spatial component of at sites such as Göbekli Tepe (Schmidt the origins of agricultural societies in the 1998; 2000; 2002) will begin to attract Near East was due for reexamination. the kind of research already seen for While empirical data from excavations Neolithic Europe. Already the monu- has piled up, interpretation of these dis- mental wall and tower at Jericho are coveries in terms of Neolithic people’s beginning to find appreciation for their lived experiences has lagged behind. symbolic qualities (Naveh 2003; Ronen In a way, the results of the confer- and Adler 2001). In addition, perhaps ence and the current publication have sites other than Çatal Höyük (Hodder frustrated our expectations. The new 1990: 3-19; 1996; 2000; Matthews 2005) empirical data are impressive and force will provide rich sources for symbolic a fundamental reexamination of ideas interpretation, particularly with detailed about the earliest architecture in the attention to periodic renewal and Near East. However, the social and ide- replacement of artistic elaboration of ological aspects of built spaces remain, architecture. Mindful of Wilson’s (1988) for the most part, elusive. Rather than emphasis on the fundamental rethink- 5 PB 5 5 ing of space that the earliest settlements writing would later be. In this and other involved, we should expect symbolic papers (Watkins 1990; 2004), he tries to Beginning with delineation of spaces, along the lines identify early signs of ‘us’, in contradis- that Nadel suggests, to have been com- tinction to preceding hunter-gatherers, a Kenyon’s discovery of mon in Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic prehistoric ‘other’. sites. Neolithic houses and settlements the tower of Jericho, were probably steeped in symbolism. The ‘Otherness’ of Early Architecture The second orientation involves Taken together, however, most of the there has been renewed effort to understand the nature contributions to this volume make a of authority and social organization in strong case that we also need to pay a strong tendency to these early settlements. If we thought close attention to the ‘otherness’ of that this was a simple problem, we have early architectural remains in the Near try to assimilate early been proven wrong. There remains a East. Beginning with Kenyon’s discov- need to figure out how to identify evi- ery of the tower of Jericho, there has architectural remains dence of authority in the archaeological been a strong tendency to try to assimi- record. It is striking that, after almost late early architectural remains into the into the longue durée a century of research, we can say little longue durée of the Near East, as early with certainty about the nature, or even representatives of the agricultural vil- of the Near East, existence, of conflict and authority dur- lage societies that have existed in the ing the fundamental shift from hunter- region over the last few millennia. The as early gatherer to agricultural societies in the romance of this vision is captured in this Near East. The lack of clear evidence volume by Garfinkel, when he writes representatives of the has led to the prevailing assumption about the women of Neolithic Sha‘ar that Neolithic villages were either fairly Hagolan going down to the river with agricultural