Tell Halaf
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Discovery and excavation
The site is located near the village of R'as al 'Ayn in the fertile Khabur valley (Nahr al Khabur) through which the Khabur river flows, close to the modern border with Turkey. It was discovered in 1899 by Baron Max von Oppenheim, a German engineer, while he was surveying the area to build the now-defunct Berlin-Baghdad railway. (At the time, Syria was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.) He returned to excavate the site from 1911 to 1913, and took many of the artifacts found back to Berlin. The site was also excavated in 1927 and 1929 under French stewardship following the creation of modern Syria. The name Tell Halaf is a local Arabic placename, tell meaning "hill" in Arabic; what its original inhabitants called their settlement is not known.
Von Oppenheim founded the Tell Halaf museum in Berlin to house his discoveries from the site. The museum was wrecked in a massive aerial bombardment in World War II and many of the rare artifacts were damaged or destroyed, in what is considered one of the worst losses to have occurred in Near Eastern archaeology. However, 80 cubic meters of basalt fragments were later rescued and stored away in the Pergamon Museum. In 2001, a restoration project commenced in Germany which has made some headway in reconstructing some of the damaged artifacts.
History
The site flourished from about 5050 to 4300 BCE. This period of time is sometimes referred to as the Halafian period. The Halafian culture was succeeded in northern Mesopotamia by the Ubaid culture.
In 894 BCE, the Assyrian king Adad-nirari II recorded it in his archives as a tributary Aramaean city-state. After a short period of independence, Semiramis sacked the city in 808 BCE and reduced the surrounding area to a province of the Assyrian Empire.
Economy
Dry farming was practiced by the population. This type of farming was based on exploiting natural rainfall without the help of irrigation, in a similar practice to that still practiced today by the Hopi people of Arizona. Emmer wheat, two rowed barley and flax were grown. They kept cattle, sheep and goats.
The Halafians' pottery has been found in other parts of the ancient Near East, such as at Nineveh and Tepe Gawra, suggesting that it was widely exported in the region. In addition, the Halaf communities made baked clay female figurines and stamp seals of stone. The seals are thought to mark the development of concepts of personal property, as similar seals were used for this purpose in later times. [1] (http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Halaf_Culture.html) The Halafians used tools made of stone but also increasingly used copper and bronze.
Culture
Architecture
Although no Halaf settlement has been extensively excavated some buildings have been excavated: the tholoi of Arpachiyah, circular domed structures approached through long rectangular anterooms [2] (http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Halaf_Culture.html). Only a few of these structures were ever excavated. They were constructed of mud-brick sometimes on stone foundations and may have been for ritual use (one contained a large number of female figurines). Other circular buildings were probably just houses.
Pottery
The pottery of Tell Halaf, called Halafian ware, is glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs. There are many theories about why the distinctive pottery style developed. The most accepted theory is that the pottery came about due to regional copying and that it was exchanged as a prestige item between local elites.
References
- "The History of the Ancient Near East Electronic Compendium" (http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Halaf_Culture.html). Retrieved May 27, 2005.
