Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10: Chapter III: The Background – Early Agricultural Communities in Western Asia

Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10

Language
English

Contents

Chapter III: The Background – Early Agricultural Communities in Western Asia

c10.2

The Earth has her hill-sides and her uplands, hers is the wide plain, she is the bearer of plants of many uses: may she stretch out her hand and be bountiful to us!
*Atharvaveda*, XII, i.

c10.3

WITH an economy based on hunting and some gathering of fruits or other edible vegetable products, little development of the arts of living was possible, in either Western Asia or Northern Europe; and with the final withdrawal of the ice sheet large tracts of the Old World were sparsely populated by small hunting groups, on whom the changing climatic conditions imposed successive problems, generation after generation, as the herds of animals migrated or died out. It was a decisive moment in the history of mankind – a ‘moment’ spread over several thousand years – when man, instead of following the animals in search of climates and regions where he could continue his ancient way of life unchanged, elected to adapt himself to his changed environment and find new methods of obtaining food.

c10.4

This process of adaptation to environment can be seen taking place over much of Europe and in North Africa from about 10,000 B.C. onwards, in the so-called Mesolithic stage. The axe seems to be invented to attack the trees of the encroaching forests in the north, and with the smaller game now available for the chase, the dog is domesticated to help in hunting. But this Mesolithic stage was only an ingenious prolongation of the Palaeolithic way of life with but little modification, and the insecurity of the food supply was still there to render the formation of large or permanent settlements impossible. The essential still lacking was the discovery of a technique of food production over which a large degree of human control could be exercised, and it is this revolutionary concept - the change-over from hunter to farmer and stockbreeder - that lay behind the ancient civilizations of the Old World. With the formation of agricultural communities, it was possible for man to live within a framework of comparative economic security, to accumulate some surplus material resources, and thereby to increase his leisure and stimulate the activities of other craftsmen on his behalf.

c10.5

We cannot trace this process in India itself, and on the whole it seems improbable that this essential transition from food gathering to food production was made independently in India as early as it was farther west. Agriculture begins in the archaeological record, as we shall see, with the growing of grains of the wheat and barley types. The prehistory of the cultivation of rice, the other staple Asiatic crop, is at present very obscure. It seems probable that rice cultivation began earlier in India than it did in China, and that the knowledge reached the latter country by way of the Yangtze, to make its appearance in the Chinese Bronze Age about 2000 B.C., the Neolithic crop in North China having been millet. But by 2000 B.C. agriculture had been established for at least three thousand years in Persia and Mesopotamia, and for a thousand in Western India, and it is to the region stretching between Persia and Egypt that we must look for evidence of the transition from hunting to farming.

c10.6

It is not only archaeology that points the way to this area, but the evidence of botany and zoology. The wild grasses ancestral to the present cultivated types of wheat and barley have their natural habitat over just this area, where post-glacial climatic conditions were suitable for their growth. Wild barley is distributed from Asia Minor through Transcaucasia to Persia, Turkestan, and Afghanistan, and probably also in Arabia and Abyssinia. The primitive variety of wheat known as Emmer (*Triticum dicoccum*) extends from Syria and Palestine through Mesopotamia to West Persia, and probably again also in Abyssinia (though the acceptance of this region as an ancient centre of wild cereals depends on certain botanical assumptions not universally accepted); another primitive form, *Triticum monococcum*, is known wild from the Balkans through Asia Minor to North Syria and the borders of Kurdistan and Persia. It is clear that the appreciation of the possibilities of grass seeds as a foodstuff which might be gathered, even if not cultivated at first, would be likely to be gained by the ancient hunting groups who inhabited these areas, and that communities, assured of a grain crop at least, could be formed once the potentialities of deliberate sowing and harvesting were grasped. Grain crops can have more than one use: man cannot live by bread alone, and fermented beer can be made from most cereals, and is likely to be as old as agriculture. To the mind of primitive man, it may be as important as the food crop - tribes in Northern Rhodesia were found, when Europeans first visited them, to endure an annual food shortage rather than encroach upon the grain set aside for beer!

c10.7

We do not know whether the most ancient agriculture went side by side with domestication of animals: the two elements in mixed farming may have two different origins, grain-growing from the food gatherers (perhaps mainly the women of the tribe), and domestication from the hunters, who had already tamed the dog - and indeed grain might have been grown first of all to provide food to induce wild animals to come under subjection. But in just the same regions as those in which the ‘noble’ grasses grow wild, can the wild ancestors of sheep, goats, and cattle be identified. With the wild sheep this is particularly clear, with the Mouflon distributed from the Mediterranean through Asia Minor to Persia, the Urial from Persia, Turkestan and Afghanistan to the Punjab and Baluchistan, and the Argal eastwards of this again. It cannot have been long before grain-growing and stock-breeding, even if differing in origins, became combined in one distinctive economy; and man had become a mixed farmer.

c10.8

This need not in itself have entailed wholly settled communities – pastoralism may involve complete mobility, and even primitive hoe-cultivation soon exhausts the land. If there is no river-inundation to provide fresh mud each year, the settlement must seek new fields every few seasons. But camping sites may be re-visited regularly, and some of the tribe may remain more or less permanently to guard the crops. The increased and more assured food supply of a farming community allows for larger families, and children can be put to more uses in herding, weeding or hoeing than the limited specialized skills of a hunting tribe admit.

c10.9

In Palestine we have most interesting archaeological evidence of a tribe whose economy is changing from the hunting and food-collecting stage to that of food-production. These folk were still largely hunters, in the Mesolithic tradition, and they had (probably seasonal) camps at the mouths of caves, where they also buried their dead. Their flint blades, knives, and skin-scrapers of the ancient hunting manner were found; and bone spear-tips, barbed points, and gorges for fish-catching. But in addition there were found small flint blades set with gum into grooved shafts of bone, the blades finely notched and set in a line to make a continuous saw-edge, and the bone carved at one end into a convenient handle shaped as an animal's head. These composite tools are in fact sickles, or corn-cutting knives, and the silica in the grass or corn stalks has polished the edges of the flints into a bright lustre from constant use, a feature we know to be distinctive of any flint tools used for straw-cutting. And on the flat rock floor at the cave mouth were hollows made by pounding out the grain into flour, and other stone mortars were found for the same purpose. Whether these Natufians (named from one of their camp-sites in the Wadi-el-Natuf) grew grain themselves or were reaping wild seed is unknown, but the well-made sickles look as if agriculture was already developed.

c10.10

WESTERN ASIA MAIN SITES MENTIONED IN TEXT

c10.11

FIG. 1

c10.12

These Natufian sites cannot be dated accurately, but all probabilities together imply a date well before 5000 B.C. Our earliest historical dates in Western Asia are round about 3000 B.C., and all we can say of the prehistoric cultures is that they are earlier than this date, and that one thousand years seems the very least space of time into which we can compress the long series of successive prehistoric phases in Mesopotamia or Persia. The relationship of these phases, marked by innovations in pottery styles, tool types, architectural or burial customs, can be established from the stratification in the ancient settlement sites, where village after village or town after town was built and rebuilt on the rubbish of its ruined predecessor, until a mound or ‘tell’ is formed which may be as much as a hundred feet high. Excavation of such a ‘tell’ may give a sequence A, B, C, D, E from the first to the last settlement on the site: another mound may begin at D and continue on not only through E but to F, G, and H. And recently it has been found that the ‘A’ level (i.e. the earliest human occupation recognized) in one area, such as Southern Mesopotamia, may be preceded by earlier occupations, I, II, III, in country to the north that was habitable at a time when Southern Mesopotamia was still under the ancient Persian Gulf. To continue this diagrammatic way of describing stratification, if in phase ‘E’ we find evidence of an actual concrete date, known from recorded history and represented by an inscription or some object whose style can be fitted into a historical phase, we can at once say that A, B, C, and D phases are earlier than this, and that F, G, and H are later. The more sites on which we find the same relative sequence, the more sure can we be that the scheme is valid for a large area, and not just for a single site or a few close together. (Table I, p. 65).

c10.13

In Mesopotamia such a sequence has been pretty well established to cover at least five prehistoric periods before the Early Dynastic period, about 2800 B.C., and this can be fairly closely correlated with a similar sequence in Persia and Syria. For the moment it will be instructive to look at the earliest of these farming communities in each area.

c10.14

Not far from Mosul a site has recently been excavated which has revealed the most ancient agricultural community yet known in Mesopotamia. In the earliest level, on the original ground surface below the mound known as Tell Hassuna, were found what seem to be camping sites of a not wholly settled people, with hearths and indications that any habitations are likely to have been tents. But these people were already mixed farmers, for not only were abundant bones of cattle and sheep found, but stone hoes, still retaining traces of the bitumen that fastened them in their handles, and stone rubbers and pestles and mortars for grinding or pounding corn into flour. The people were using stone tools and making a rough but quite good pottery ornamented with incised lines.

c10.15

But very soon there was permanent habitation on the top of the old camp-fires, with little houses of rooms set round a courtyard, one clearly recognizable as a kitchen, with its bread oven and storage jars still remaining, another the living-room, another a detached bake-house with two sunk storage bins for grain in the courtyard nearby. More than thirty such grain-storage bins were found in the area excavated, and they recall similar structures, probably of about the same age (or rather later), in Egypt. In this village too were found sickle-flints, like the Natufian ones already mentioned, which had been set in slightly curved wooden hafts. The houses had been built of the tempered mud which makes such an excellent building material all over the Orient.

c10.16

In Northern Persia a very similar settlement was found to have existed at the base of the Tepe Sialk mound near Kashan. Here again there were no recognizable traces of permanent dwellings, but layers of charcoal and ash were thought to represent the carbonized wood and branches of rough shelters. The people were still in the Stone Age - a burial was found with a man holding a polished stone axe in his hands - and there were slotted bones for flint blades which may be part of sickles of the Natufian type, as well as stone hoe-blades. Some of the pottery found was painted with black designs, and was hand-made (as was that of Hassuna). Immediately above the layers containing these remains began settlements with mud-built houses, and here too were found the first tiny objects made of copper.

c10.17

These sites, and that at Mersin in Cilicia (known in less detail) do show in a very interesting manner just that transition from a hunting, semi-nomadic way of life to that of the settled agriculturalist that one might expect, and in Baluchistan a settlement of precisely this type, though not necessarily of such great antiquity, has been found as the lowest occupation in the Rana Ghundai tell in the Zhob Valley. We shall see that in India we have constantly to be on our guard against making comparisons between the local cultures there, and those which seem comparable in Mesopotamia and Persia, and then considering that this implies contemporaneity in the two widely separated areas.

c10.18

The concept of the 'zoning' of cultures outside the areas of higher and more ancient civilization is one with which European archaeologists are familiar when working in their own continent, but it applies just as much to the countries lying eastwards of the most ancient centres of agriculture (such as the sites described in Mesopotamia and Persia, and others of about the same date in Syria and Asia Minor) as it does to the lands to the west. It seems unlikely, on the whole, that the elaborate techniques of agriculture and, slightly later, of the invention of metallurgy were evolved independently in several areas of the Old World, and in the present state of our archaeological knowledge the origins of these basic contributions to human civilization must be assumed to lie in the area between Asia Minor and Turkestan.

c10.19

So far as India is concerned, therefore, we must look westwards for the introduction of the arts of agriculture, and it will be seen throughout this book how the Indian material can be properly understood only in terms of its general Western Asiatic setting. And as the relative chronology of the Indian prehistoric cultures is still in a provisional stage, we must continually make reference to the Mesopotamian and to a less extent the Persian sequence, using the generally agreed names of the successive phases to indicate the approximate chronological position in the absence of actual dates. Only in North Baluchistan, where the stratified sequence in the Rana Ghundai tell has been worked out, can we attempt anything of a local Indian time-scale.

c10.20

But, before turning to the prehistoric and early historic sequence after the time of the first occupations of Hassuna and Sialk, there is an important point to be touched upon. We have said that these earliest agricultural settlements were in a ‘stone age’, implying by this that the people who lived in these settlements, and tilled the adjacent fields, knew nothing of any metal for making tools or other objects. The sequence Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, originally worked out for Northern Europe, is, as it happens, relatively valid in many other regions, especially in so far as the use of chipped or ground stone invariably seems to have come before the use of any metal. But people may move straight out of a ‘stone age’ into an ‘iron age’ when this new substance is suddenly introduced to them from outside, or the addition of the knowledge of metal may have no effect on their general economy. The Chenchu tribes of Hyderabad at the present day live a food-gathering, nomadic existence to which iron has contributed nothing but a spike to go on the end of the digging stick with which they dig up the edible roots on which they mainly live.

c10.21

Nevertheless, in the ancient prehistoric communities of Western Asia we do find that, fairly soon after the agricultural way of life is flourishing, a secondary revolutionary discovery is made – the discovery that certain stones can, under special conditions of firing, be made by heat to turn into a tough substance which can be hammered or cast into any desired form, and take on a keen cutting edge. This recognition of the relationship between copper ore and the metal is one with far-reaching consequences: it is the basis of chemistry and of all metallurgy.

c10.22

Copper may occur in the form of ores (such as malachite) or it may appear as the native metal on top of the veins or lodes, and by weathering be exposed on the surface. It must soon have been discovered that this native metal could be hammered into shape, and as it is widely distributed in the upland areas of Northern Mesopotamia and Persia, it is not surprising that the earliest copper objects found at, for instance, Sialk, are little pins, awls and bits of wire hammered from the unmelted metal which had been picked up from the surface.

c10.23

To smelt copper from the ore a relatively low temperature, 700° to 800° C., is needed, in a reducing atmosphere – i.e. one in which access of free air (oxygen) is prevented. Now it has been pointed out that primitive pottery kilns would provide just these conditions, and although simple rough pots can be baked quite satisfactorily in an open fire, as soon as any attempt is made to control the colour of the exterior, and above all to paint it with patterns, a closed kiln is absolutely necessary. The transition from a closed kiln to a smelting furnace involves no great mental labour to conceive and it is not surprising, therefore, that we should find evidence of the earliest copper smelting among the makers of painted pottery in the Ancient Orient.

c10.24

But there is another process involved if full use is to be made of copper, and that is melting it when in metallic form so that it can be cast. Now this requires a much higher temperature, 1,085° C., and one which could be reached only in a more advanced type of kiln than would produce the heat necessary for smelting from the ore. So for a long time copper must have been worked by hammering and cutting only, whether from the natural metal or from metal smelted from ore, and the further development of furnace types seems to have taken place in Mesopotamia. Certain metallurgists think that smelting may have been invented as a technique only after native copper supplies were worked out, but the evidence for this rather contradictory sequence is not conclusive.

c10.25

By the time the earliest agricultural communities were being founded in Western India it is unlikely that the lack of copper tools in them means anything more than poverty, and that their ‘stone age’ was forced on them by sheer lack of purchasing power. At all events it is not long before Indian metallurgy gets under way, using local copper and also tin ores, and in general terms all the prehistoric Indian cultures we shall have to deal with are formally in a Bronze Age.

c10.26

The classification of the prehistoric cultures of Mesopotamia, with which we must begin, is made by using convenient *type-site* names for the various phases, so that, for instance, Uruk is not only a place (the Biblical Erech and the modern Arab Warka) but it can be used when talking of the ‘Uruk Culture’ - that is, the various types of architecture, pottery, tools, sculpture, and so on made by a certain group of people at a certain time - and we can also say that another culture is of ‘Uruk date’: that is, contemporary with the place the Uruk Culture holds in the whole Mesopotamian sequence. This is a fundamental method of archaeological terminology, and we shall use it similarly in describing the Indian cultures; with it there goes the system of numbering successive strata in a site or tell of many periods of occupation. Here the normal and most rational practice is to reverse the actual sequence of excavation, in which of course the topmost (and latest) occupation is dug into first, and number from the earliest settlement to the latest.

c10.27

This, then, gives a handy method of reference to the sequence, Roman numerals being used after the type-site name, so that one has Sialk I, Sialk II, and so on as names for successive occupations. A form of subdivision is necessary when we find that there are successive levels of rebuilding by the same group of people on the site, but where there is no sign that the continuity has been broken, and this can be done by using IIa, IIb, and so on. A new Roman numeral should indicate a new group of people living on the site, a letter after a numeral that there has been no change of population, but that the existing folk have rebuilt their town. Unfortunately this method of numbering has not been uniformly adopted by excavators in the Orient, so that certain sites are numbered ‘backwards’ - their latest occupation is I and their earliest may be XX or so. It is impossible to renumber these sites without causing untold confusion, so the reader must be on his guard, and remember for instance that Giyan V is early but Sialk IV is late in the general sequence.∗

c10.28

∗ The following are the main sites numbered ‘backwards’: in Mesopotamia, Arpachiyah (I-X), Gawra (I-XX, a-f), Uruk (I-XVIII), Uqair (I-VIII); in Persia, Giyan (I-V). Susa has been reclassified recently as A-D, but A is the earliest settlement. In India, Mohenjo-daro and Harappā have extraordinary systems of reference, which are described in Chapter V.

c10.29

The earliest phase in Mesopotamia we have already described, and it is best known from its type-site as Hassuna.

c10.30

Although the economic structure of Sialk I in Persia is so similar, distinctions in pottery types, etc., make a complete equation with Hassuna I inadvisable, and the same applies to sites such as Mersin in Asia Minor and Ras Shamra in Syria. But the earliest level at Nineveh (Nineveh I) and perhaps that at Tepe Gawra (Gawra Archaic *f*) seem likely to be more strictly comparable. Of these sites, Sialk I alone has painted pottery, and on this point we must make a necessary digression.

c10.31

After the very early and primitive ‘Stone Age’ phases, such as Hassuna I, the most distinctive feature of the prehistoric cultures of Mesopotamia, and even more of Persia, is the frequent and sometimes exclusive occurrence of pottery painted with designs in one or, less frequently, two or more colours. Such painted pottery, with its enormous repertoire of designs and styles, forms the basis of much of our classification of prehistoric Western Asian cultures, and in Baluchistan, where so little scientific excavation has been carried out, comparison of painted pottery styles is the only method of disentangling the various regional groups of people and their trade and movements.

c10.32

The invention of the technique of pot-painting, with the attendant necessities of more elaborate kilns for baking the vessels, seems to have taken place in the highlands of North Persia, Northern Mesopotamia, or Syria, and we shall see that its appearance in the south of Mesopotamia, when that region became habitable, owing to the shrinking of the Persian Gulf in prehistoric times, is due to immigration from the mountain regions into the plains. Cultures using painted wares have been traced northwards into Turkestan and south-eastwards through Persia into South Baluchistan; Afghanistan is an archaeological blank at present, but in North Baluchistan again the painted pottery reappears. On the basis of a comparative examination of the great mass of material from sites spread over such a wide area, the American archaeologist Donald McCown has been able to show that it falls into two basic groups, distinguished by a predominantly buff or red background to the painted design. These Buff Wares and Red Wares have, on the whole, a contrasted distribution, with the Buff Ware in the south and Red Ware in the north - a distribution which is repeated in Baluchistan, as we shall see.

c10.33

To return to the Mesopotamian sequence the *Halaf Culture*, known from Syria and from North Mesopotamia, shows already an early use of copper, stone, and mud-brick buildings (including some remarkable structures that may be a form of temple), and a very fine painted pottery which often uses red and black painted designs on a buff base. The origins of this pottery, and probably the culture, may be in Syria or Kurdistan, but there is an allied type of ware, *Samarra Ware*, which is black-on-buff only, and which has strong affinities with certain wares in Persia. At Hassuna, Samarra Ware is stratified below true *Halaf* pottery, but elsewhere it seems to be in the main contemporary, and the two styles may represent two groups of people, the Halaf folk being indigenous to their northern region (with possible contacts with North Persia), and the Samarra Ware indicating the arrival of allied, but distinct, drafts of population from farther south. The best-known sites are Tell Halaf in Syria (strata below the historic city), Arpachiyah (levels VI to X), and Samarra, where there was a prehistoric cemetery beneath the Abbasid town of the ninth century A.D.

c10.34

The pottery of the *Al Ubaid Culture* shows clearly that it is derived from the Persian highlands, and its appearance marks the first colonization of the southern parts of Mesopotamia. The stratification of sites in the north shows that its spread to this region followed the Halaf phase, and its establishment in the south is not likely to be much earlier. Settlements and cemeteries are known; there was some use of copper; fields were tilled with stone hoes like those of Hassuna I; and houses built of stone or mud bricks. Recently too it has been discovered that monumental temples were built by the Al Ubaid folk, the plans of which foreshadow those of later times. At Ur, a ‘Flood’ occurred during this time, covering the site with a thick layer of river mud, and other important sites are Eridu (Abu Sharain, where the temples were excavated in 1946), Tell Uqair (Area IV), Uruk IX–XVIII, and Tepe Gawra XIII–XIX.

c10.35

The next phase is one of peculiar interest in the prehistory of Mesopotamia, though we cannot dwell on it here. One of its outstanding characteristics is the sudden change over from painted pottery to wares which are plain, and either red or grey, frequently with a polished surface. This *Uruk Culture* (occupying levels V to X on the type site) clearly marks the appearance of new people with new elements of civilization in the region; engraved cylinder-seals, writing on clay, sculpture in the round and stone-built temples are among the innovations, and these in many ways foreshadow the achievements of the civilization which we can call Sumerian. Settlements of the Uruk Culture appear stratified above those of Al Ubaid, not only on the type site but at Gawra (VIII*b*–XI), Nineveh (IV–III), Uqair (V–VIII), and elsewhere.

c10.36

What blending of cultural traditions took place between the ancient peoples whose individuality is shown by their painted pottery and the newcomers, whose style of pot-making must indicate a sharply contrasted cultural heritage, we do not know, but from the amalgam painted styles of pottery certainly re-emerged, and in the probably rather short *Jemdet Nasr* period we find a characteristic ware with designs in black and plum red. This phase is recognizable at Ur, at Uruk (II–III), Gawra (VII–VIII), Uqair (II–IV), and other sites, and the Uruk innovations of writing and seal-making were developed. We are now approaching so near to the recorded history and king-lists of Mesopotamia.

c10.37

that we can give an approximate date in years for Jemdet Nasr – about 3000 B.C. – for it was followed by the period of the Early Dynasties: the period of the Flood which figures so largely in Sumerian and Hebrew tradition, and the days after the Flood when ‘kingship again descended from on high’. But, before treating the early historical periods of Mesopotamia in more detail, it will be convenient to turn to six main stratified sites in Persia and Turkestan and compare their sequence with that we have already established, from Hassuna to Jemdet Nasr.

c10.38

Near Kashan, *Tepe Sialk* has already been mentioned for its earliest occupation, Sialk I, which may at least be chronologically, though not culturally, equivalent with Hassuna. Sialk II shows a development from the earliest culture and evidence of trade connexions with the Persian Gulf, and is contemporary with Halaf; and after this the site seems to have been temporarily abandoned, but reoccupied in early Ubaid times into the middle of the Uruk period, with a culture again developed out of the earlier phases seen on the site. But by the latter part of Sialk III a full Copper Age with cast tools is established, the architectural styles suggesting comparison (and perhaps contact) with Uruk and Uqair in the Uruk period. In Sialk IV there is actual Jemdet Nasr pottery (though not the well-known painted ware) and early inscribed tablets.

c10.39

*Tepe Giyan*, near Nihavend, begins its occupation in Va with painted buff ware which seems to be early Halaf in date, and continues through Ubaid times to mid-Uruk in Vd, when the site was temporarily abandoned. Giyan V is generally comparable with Sialk III and in its last phase with Hissar I, described below – Giyan IV belongs to Early Dynastic Sumerian times and will be mentioned later.

c10.40

The site of *Tepe Hissar*, just mentioned, is near Damghan, and Hissar I has black-on-red painted ware with patterns similar to the black-on-buff pottery of Giyan Vd, and the cast metal tools and other features fit in with Sialk III, so Hissar I cannot be much earlier than late Uruk times. In the next phase, Hissar II, the old painted pottery tradition is interrupted by the appearance of plain, burnished grey or black ware, not like the grey ware of Uruk, but indicating newcomers from outside the painted pottery territory, probably in Jemdet Nasr or even later times. With the Hissar III settlement, when this pottery becomes dominant, we will deal later.

c10.41

Susa is a famous site excavated many years ago, when its stratigraphy was not properly understood. McCown has shown that the old ‘Susa I’, which he re-names ‘Susa A’, is contemporary with Ubaid, Hissar I, Sialk III and Giyan Vc; above this Susa B has actual imported Uruk pottery and so is definitely dated to this phase, Susa C is equated with Jemdet Nasr, and Susa D (which used to be called ‘Susa II’) can be shown to be contemporary with Early Dynastic Sumer.

c10.42

In Southern Persia, in the Fars district, two prehistoric sites have been excavated near Persepolis, Tal-i-Bakun A and B. The B site proved the earlier, and BI may equate with Hassuna, BII with Halaf, while on the A site AI begins in early Ubaid times and the occupation goes on into Uruk times in A V.

c10.43

There is one important site which has been excavated in Russian Turkestan, at Anau near Askabad. Here the first settlement, Anau Ia, seems to be of Halaf date and has connexions with Sialk II and Giyan Va, and in Ib copper first appears and the painted pottery tradition already present in Ia continues, through Ubaid into Uruk times. As at Hissar, grey wares appear to mark an intrusion of new people into the area at the end of Ib, and the two types continue side by side in Anau II, when other innovations in pottery styles might point to trade or immigration from Baluchistan. By Anau III a culture is established which has many points of similarity to that of Hissar III, and they will be discussed together later on.

c10.44

It will be seen, therefore, that in Persia and Turkestan there is a series of cultures which show significant relationships between themselves, and which can be equated in date with the Mesopotamian sequence. It has not been possible, however, to group these under inclusive type-site names following the Mesopotamian practice, and we must still refer to them by their site and sequence-number in the stratification. It sounds complicated, but in assessing the position of the prehistoric Indian cultures in the general Western Asiatic picture, we shall have constantly to refer to them in terms of Persia or Mesopotamia. This chapter is an attempt to clarify this background to the Indian material, so that the reader will have some appreciation of what ‘trade relations in Early Dynastic times’ or ‘pottery of Giyan V types’ may mean when he encounters these phrases later in the book.

c10.45

But we must return to the Mesopotamian sequence after Jemdet Nasr times, at which point we enter the realms of recorded history. Lists of kings and of dynasties were beginning to be compiled at least by 2000 B.C., and, though much of the earliest part is fabulous, especially the estimated length of reigns (for example the pre-Flood dynasty of eight kings together reigning for 241,200 years!), nevertheless a fairly coherent chronological skeleton has been pieced together from about 2800 B.C. The *Early Dynastic Period* of the Kingdom of Sumer appears to begin at this date, and on the evidence of archaeology and stratigraphy has been divided into three (E.D.I to E.D.III). These subdivisions need not concern us very much in dealing with the Indian material, and there is no place here to describe in any detail the achievements of Early Dynastic Sumer, with its fully literate urban culture, advanced metallurgy, and monumental buildings and sculpture.

c10.46

In E.D.I has been found at several sites in the Baghdad region a type of painted pottery called ‘Scarlet Ware’, with some affinities to its predecessor, Jemdet Nasr pottery, but with a bright scarlet paint instead of the deep plum red used in the earlier period. This pottery turns up again in Susa D, and we shall see that very important comparisons can be made between Scarlet Ware and certain pottery in South Baluchistan. Another link between Mesopotamia and Baluchistan in Early Dynastic times we shall see to be certain stone vessels with carved surface ornament which turn up in E.D.III, once in one of the famous ‘Royal Tombs’ of Ur, which must rank as the best known sites of ancient Sumer and belong to the E.D.III phase.

c10.47

Ancient Mesopotamia was divided into a kingdom of Sumer in the south and of Akkad in the north. The next important point in its early history is the rise of the Kingdom of Akkad under Sargon, and his conquest of Sumer, thus forming an Akkadian dominion over all Mesopotamia. This event probably occurred shortly before 2300 B.C., and the period of a century or so under Sargon and his successors is usually known as the Akkadian Period, sometimes as the Sargonid. And afterwards came break-up and insecurity - ‘who was king, who was not king?’ asks a contemporary writer despairingly, as the unified autocratic rule of Sargon gave way to immediate civil wars and the rise and fall of city-states. By shortly before 2100 B.C. the so-called Third Dynasty of Ur was established with wide authority, and there followed the divided rule of the city-states of Isin and Larsa. Beyond this date (round about 2000 B.C.) we need not follow the fortunes of Mesopotamia under the rulers of Babylon and Assyria: we have little concern in India with the great civilizations before the time of Cyrus, and after the end of the Sumerian empire we are concerned more with barbarians than with the city-dwellers.

c10.48

Giyan seems the only site in Persia where a succession can be traced from cultures which can be equated with the prehistoric sequence of Mesopotamia to the Early Dynastic period and beyond. The beginning of Giyan IV seems contemporary with Susa D, and therefore with some phase or phases of the Early Dynastic period, and it probably ended in Akkadian or later times. Giyan III contains a cylinder-seal of a type known in the First Dynasty of Babylon (about 1800-1600 B.C.), and there may be a gap between its end and the beginning of Giyan II, which seems to go on to 1400. There may be another gap before Giyan I, which goes on to the introduction of iron, and includes the grey polished pottery already referred to in connexion with Hissar III and Anau III. The final occupation of Giyan (or rather its use as a cemetery) must be about 1300 B.C. or later.

c10.49

We are left with a problem which must be touched on before leaving the Mesopotamian and Persian material and turning our attention to that from India. In describing the stratification at Tepe Hissar and at Anau I have mentioned the intrusion of unpainted grey or black ware which cuts across and finally supplants the old painted pottery. Now this is more than a change in fashion among the makers or purchasers of pottery; such a radically different type of ware, associated with quite different traditions of kiln building and firing, can only mean the arrival of new people in North Persia and Turkestan at this time. And this is borne out by the other finds, which show all the innovations that might be expected from the arrival of fresh settlers - new types of copper and bronze tools and weapons and, at Hissar at least, a considerable access of wealth in the form of gold, silver and semi-precious stones. These newcomers are, as we have seen, attested at Hissar, Giyan, and Anau among the sites whose earlier prehistoric occupations we have studied, and they are also known to have settled at two other sites not very far from Hissar, at Shah Tepe, where they replaced makers of painted wares of the Hissar II type, and at Turang Tepe nearby, where no earlier occupation is attested. There is also evidence of makers of the same grey pots from Namazga Tepe and Askabad, both near Anau, and there is a cemetery containing similar ware (Cemetery B) at Sialk, overlying the earlier prehistoric deposits. Finally traces of the same folk have been found in Afghanistan, at Nad-i-Ali.

c10.50

We shall have to reconsider all these sites again when we come to deal with the events following the break-up of the Harappā Culture in India in Chapter VI, but for the present the problem is - what is the date of such settlements as that of Hissar III? It is clear that a great many of the objects found there have close parallels among Early Dynastic Sumerian metal-work, ornaments and other features, and this has led certain archaeologists to regard the date of Hissar III as approximating to that of Early Dynastic - not much after 2800 B.C., and with Hissar III one must take, for instance, Anau III. But this view seems to me very hard to substantiate, and further difficulties will be seen when we come to deal with the Harappā Culture and the succeeding events in India.

c10.51

The answer seems to depend largely on two things: the concept of cultures zoned outwards in date from the centres of higher civilization, and the relationship likely to exist between the barbarians of the steppes and the rich townsmen of the fertile river-plains. If we look to the north and west of Sumer in Early Dynastic times and the next eight or nine centuries, we can see that, round the edge of the civilized world, as it then existed, are a number of barbarian tribes in various forms of local ‘Bronze Ages’: These stretch from Asia Minor to South Russia and the Caucasus and, as I think, eastwards to the other side of the Caspian. From time to time these people buried their kings or chieftains with enormous pomp and with as much treasure as they could amass. Such tombs have been found, for instance, at Alaca Hüyük in Asia Minor, and at Maikop and Tsarskaya in South Russia; less ‘royal’ but similar are the graves in Hissar III, while at Turang Tepe there was found, a century ago, a great hoard of objects (known as the ‘Treasure of Asterabad’) which were quite likely the furnishings of such another princely tomb as that of Maikop. At Troy, the famous treasures from the second (or third) settlement are quite comparable in general terms. In all these finds were gold and silver vessels and other objects (many showing strong Sumerian affinities), and fine bronze or copper tools and weapons. The evidence, from these burials and treasures of warriors (from which one can exclude, as under dispute, Hissar III and Turang Tepe), is quite reasonably consistent as between about 2300 and 2000 B.C., but not earlier.

c10.52

But should we not therefore place somewhere within these dates the Hissar III and Anau III settlements and the cemeteries at Shah Tepe, Turang Tepe, and in the Hissar site itself? The grey-ware technique is very ancient in Asia Minor, and with the barbarian inroads into Mesopotamia, known from documentary evidence, actual objects could be looted or craftsmen induced to serve under barbarian potentates in a time of trouble. Apart from the normal course of peace-time trade, the sudden acquisition of wealth in Sumerian styles by the northern nomads may reflect raiding and land-piracy along the caravan routes or even across the frontiers into Mesopotamia at a time when its rich civilization was temporarily weakened by internal disruption. In this context the grey-ware settlements at Hissar and Anau are likely to be Akkadian at the earliest.∗ As we shall see, there is reason to connect these cultures with the dispersion of Indo-European speaking tribes in the early second millennium B.C. The probable chronological relationships discussed above are summarized in Table I (p. 65).

c10.53

∗ Since this was written Schaeffer has discussed the date of Hissar III and assigned it to the period 2300-2100 B.C. - a date with which I agree.

Notes to Chapter III

c10.s1.1

Professor V. G. Childe’s *New Light on the Most Ancient East* (1934), still remains the best general account of the prehistoric Orient, but can now be supplemented by A. L. Perkins, *Comparative Archaeology of Early Mesopotamia* (Oriental Institute of Chicago, 1949), and D. McCown, *The Comparative Stratigraphy of Early Iran* (ibid., 1942), with a full bibliography of excavations and sites discovered since 1934 except for Tell Hassuna, published by Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar in *Journ. Near Eastern Studies*, IV (1945) 255. In this connexion the Sialk report is of outstanding importance - R. Ghirshman, *Fouilles de Sialk* (two vols., 1938-1939).

c10.s1.2

The Natufian Mesolithic Culture is described by Professor D. Garrod in *The Stone Age of Mount Carmel*, Vol. I (1937). For the technology of early copper and bronze working, see papers by H. H. Coghlan in *Man*, 1939, 92; *Antiquaries Journal*, XXII (1942), 22-38; H. Maryon in *Amer. Journ. Arch.* LIII (1949), 93-124. I have discussed some of the problems of the Hissar dating in *Antiquity*, XVII (1943), 169-182; see also T. Burton-Brown, *Studies in Third Millennium History* (1946), Chap. VI, and D. H. Gordon, ‘Sialk, Giyan, Hissar and the Indo-Iranian Connection’, *Man in India*, XXVII (1947), 196-241. The finds from Namazga Tepe are published in *Eurasia Septentrionalis Antiqua*, V (1930), 9-21, and Nad-i-Ali in *Revue des Arts Asiatiques*, XIII (1939), 10-22.

c10.s1.3

Since this book was written Dr Claude Schaeffer’s monumental work, *Stratigraphie comparée et chronologie de l’Asie occidentale*, has appeared (Oxford, 1948).

c10.s1.4

Chronological Table I

Linked texts (5)