1

Ceramic technology at Tell Qarassa North (southern Syria): from “cultures” to “ways of doing”

Published as: “Ceramic technology at Tell Qarassa North (southern Syria): from “cultures” to “ways of doing”, in

Luca Bombardieri, Anacleto D’Agostino, Guido Guarducci, Valentina Orsi, and Stefano Valentini (eds.), SOMA

2012 Identity and Connectivity: Proceedings of the 16th Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology, Florence, Italy, 1–3

March 2012, in BAR – S2581, Vol. I “Near Eastern Identities”, Archaeopress, Oxford, 17-24.

Introduction: stratigraphy and chronology of a protohistoric tell

After a diagnostic campaign in 2007, archaeological investigations at Tell Qarassa North have been carried in 2009 and

2010 by a French Mission. Upon a PPNB occupation1, a Late Neolithic partially excavated curvilinear structure has

been found. The Early Chalcolithic phase is represented by a rounded wall and a structure with a paved entrance

flanked by two pillars. The function of the area changed in the Middle Chalcolithic, as indicated by seven ovens aligned

at the edge of the mound’s slope. The early chalcolithic house with pillars, still in use in the Middle Chalcolithic, is

close to the area occupied by a huge amount of ashes and devoted to some kind of collective cooking activity. Finally,

in the Late Chalcolithic all the ovens are covered by a clayish sediment, upon which two architectural sub-phases with

quadrangular rooms are recognizable.

The result of a few campaigns is a quite large excavated surface and an important amount of data for a region (the

Southern Syria) and a period scarcely documented until now. The “common” archaeological practice uses ceramics not

only as chronological indicator, but also as cultural marker. The aim of a typology based on shapes and decorations is to

organize the sherds according to an Aristotelian plan of “classes”, “categories” and, finally, “cultures”. Beyond the

useful classification produced by this method, some incongruities emerge from an essentialist notion of “culture”

considered as material expression of a specific human group because “pots are not people” (Kramer 1977).

Chronological attributions and regional comparisons: a “classical” approach.

Available ceramic materials (almost 12000 sherds) and data on phasing provide relevant information about Neolithic-

Chalcolithic transition. The Late Neolithic phase (Fig. 1) is characterized by straight and curved bowls, short necked

jars, holemouths, horizontal handles or knobs. Amongst bases, flattened samples are the majority, but chalices and some

disc types are also documented. The parallels with the Yarmoukian assemblages are evident, above all for the so-called

“Sha’ar Hagolan jars”, red slipped and burnished surfaces and herring-bone incisions. Both the flint assemblage

1 Excavated by a Spanish team under the direction of J. J. Ibanez.

2

(consistent with the repertoire of Munhata 2b – Gopher 1989) and the pottery typology display important similarities

with the Yarmoukian inventory2 and indicate that Tell Qarassa was integrated in the system of Yarmoukian sites in

coastal area, northern-central Jordan and Israel3. At the same time, some features seem peculiar. Yarmoukian figurines

and goblets are absent, as well as zigzag incisions. And painted cups with cross or lozenges motifs have no parallels in

the area. So it is possible to consider Tell Qarassa as a “variant” of the Yarmoukian culture, as argued by Gopher (1995)

and Garfinkel (1999a) for other assemblages including some peculiarities between Lebanon and southern Jordan.

The Early Chalcolithic phase (Fig. 2) presents around 16% of red slipped and burnished sherds. Chalices,

bowls with incurved rims, everted and flaring rim jars, punctuates, thumbnail impressions and carinated bowls complete

the picture of relations with the Wadi Rabah assemblage4. Tell Qarassa contacts were clearly oriented towards northern

Israel and Jordan5. And the same evidence emerges from the lithic assemblage

6. Nevertheless, as observed for the

previous phase, Qarassa represents a variant of the Wadi Rabah culture in its broader definition. Effectively, Wadi

Rabah territorial diffusion between Jordan, Lebanese Beqa’a and Israeli southern coastal plains allows the identification

of various local specificities7. At Tell Qarassa a noteworthy character as the diffusion of slipped and burnished potteries

is not necessarily a Wadi Rabah trait, but rather a long-standing tradition, attested in other phases, as demonstrated for

other sites in southern Levant. Moreover, the assemblage does not include some typical Wadi Rabah characters, as

pebble impressed wares and, above all, bow rim jars. So, it seems reasonable to ascribe this phase of Tell Qarassa to a

local version of the Wadi Rabah complex, on the same level of other variants as Jericho VIII8, Abu Hamid I

9 and

Byblos “Néolithique Moyen”10

.

The Middle, Late and Terminal Chalcolithic phases (Fig. 3) are characterized by a clear ceramic continuity.

Red slipped and burnished potteries decrease in number and disappear during the Terminal Chalcolithic. The tendency

to the morphological differentiation invests both bases and rims. Basins, holemouth jars and large bowls have often

plastic applied bands, rounded knobs or triangular pierced lugs. As for decorations, alongside rare samples of red

painted bands, “spatula indented” incisions are widely attested. A peculiar type of straight sided bowl, manufactured by

2 Garfinkel 1993; 1999a.

3 For instance, see the sites of Jebel Abu Thawwab, ‘Ain Ghazal, Megiddo, Wadi Shueib, Tell el-Farah North (Kafafi

1993, 2001; Rollefson 1993; Shipton 1939, 44-46, Simmons et alii 1989; de Vaux and Steve 1947). 4 See Gopher 1995, 213, fig. 3; Banning 2007, 81.

5 See some Wadi Rabah “normative sites” as Munhata 2a, Nahal Beset I, Tel Te’o, Abu Zureiq, Al-Basatîn, Tabaqat al-

Bûma (Garfinkel 1992; Gopher, Goren and Sadeh 1992; Sadeh and Eisenberg 2001; Garfinkel and Matskevich 2002;

Banning 2007). 6 See the parallels from Tel Kabri, Munhata 2a, Tel Qiri or Wadi Ziqlab (Kempinski 2002; Gopher 1989; Baruch 1987;

Kadowaki 2005). 7 See for instance Kaplan (1958, 1960) and Garfinkel (1999a, 105) for Wadi Rabah contacts with the Halaf. For the

definition of both “normative” and “variant” Wadi Rabah cultural units see Gopher and Gophna (1993). 8 See Gophna and Sadeh (1988-1989, 20) for the identification of a Wadi Rabah variant at Jericho VIII.

9 See Lovell, Kafafi and Dollfus (1997) and, about the chronology of Abu Hamid, in Banning (2007, 89-90).

10 According to the terminology of Dunand (1973).

3

a coiling technique, appears at Qarassa during the Middle Chalcolithic, but in the Late Chalcolithic layers (at the peak

of its spread) the same bowl is serially produced by a wheel coiling technique11

. A rotary device is also employed for

some roughly standardized miniature bowls with string-cut bases. These features indicate significant contacts with

Besorian sites (Grar, Gilat)12

, Palestinian central highlands, Ghassulian culture (Teleilat Ghassul G-A)13

, Beer Sheva

settlements (Abu Matar, Shiqmim, Safadi)14

and northern Jordan (Pella, Abu Hamid II-III, Tell Shuna North)15

. But

beyond this superficial similarities, the most typical forms of Besorian, Ghassulian and Negev Chalcolithic (churns,

cornets and streaky wash treatment) are absent at Qarassa. Then, the parallels with Tell el-Khazzami near Damascus (de

Contenson 1968), the Chalcolithic Golan16

and the “Néolithique Récent – Enéolithique” at Byblos (Dunand 1973)

indicate the quite local character of Southern Syria. The links with central and northern Levant grow in importance in

the Terminal Chalcolithic. In the later occupation of Qarassa, some samples of hammerhead bowls, typical of the Amuq

F phase, are documented17

.

Between “cultures”, technical traditions and society

In the great chronological and terminological confusion of the Late Neolithic – Chalcolithic periods in southern

Levant18

, the proposed relative chronology has a provisional character. In particular, Qarassa assemblage supports a

reassessment of Abu Hamid and Teleilat Ghassul sequences. Abu Hamid phase II and Ghassul phases G-F, previously

considered “early chalcolithic” and associated with the Wadi Rabah complex, are probably to ascribe to the Middle

Chalcolithic19

(Fig. 4).

Such a result is a good example of the usefulness of a “classical” approach to archaeological materials – the “typology”

– to recognize some regularities (the so-called “cultures”) in order to schematize the chrono-cultural landscape.

11

These bowls, known from every chalcolithic site all over the southern Levant, are the most diffused “type fossil” for

this phase (Gilead and Goren 1995, note 1; Roux and Courty 1998). 12

Gilead and Goren 1995; Commenge 2006. 13

Lovell 2001; Bourke and Lovell 2004. 14

Commenge Pellerin 1987, 1990; Levy 1987; de Contenson 1956. 15

Bourke et alii1998; Lovell et alii 2007; de Contenson1961. 16

See Epstein (1998, 161-162). In the same way, the middle-late chalcolithic lithic assemblage of Qarassa is strictly

connected with the samples known from the Golan (Epstein 1998, figs. 207, 216). 17

Braidwood and Braidwood 1960: fig. 174.380, 400. 18

Gopher and Gophna (1993) include the Wadi Rabah culture in the Late Neolithic, whereas other scholars (Kaplan

1960; Garfinkel 1999) reed the Wadi Rabah complex as expression of the transition to the Early Chalcolithic (see

Banning 2002). 19

Abu Hamid phase II has often been put in relation with Wadi Rabah materials (Lovell Dollfus and Kafafi 2007)

even if some classical chalcolithic churns are documented and Wadi Rabah carinated bowls and bow-rim jars are

absent. In the same way, G phase at Teleilat Ghassul has been interpreted as “Early Chalcolithic” (Lovell 2001; Bourke

2007) and Wadi Rabah-related (Lovell 2001) despite the first appearance of churns and cornets and the absence of

burnished ware. Nevertheless, the assemblages of Ghassul G and Abu Hamid II can be easily read as evidence of

middle chalcolithic conservative tendencies (as visible in Qarassa TN phase II), devoid of any formal and chronological

link with Rabah typology (Bourke 2007: 23; Banning 2007: 84). Moreover, this reading fits well with the most recent

radiocarbon determinations (Banning 2007: 78, 89-90).

4

Obviously, archaeological “cultures” have a “cultural” meaning too, but this more substantial value is very difficult to

define. In this sense the notion of “culture”, considered as material expression of a people or an ethnic group (as defined

by the nationalist ideology of Kossinna – Viet 1994 – or by the Marxist one of Childe – Childe 1929), contains many

wrong, ideological and essentialist elements. Archaeological “cultures” (and above all ceramic “cultures”) are not and

cannot be conceived as pure data one can organize to read the anthropological landscape. There is no reason to imagine

past realities as less complex than the current one. It implies that the controversial notion of “ethnic groups”20

should be

replaced by the dynamic concept of “ethnicity”21

, and that an essentialist idea of “culture” contradicts all

anthropological evidences, where “pots are not people”.

Qarassa clearly suggests the limits of a traditional ceramic analysis aiming at classifying sherds according to a

“normative” idea of these chrono-cultural boxes called “cultures”. Since Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, Tell

Qarassa can be associated to some cultures (Yarmoukian and Wadi Rabah), but with some peculiarities: it belongs to

these entities, but not completely. A situation more and more marked in the Middle and – above all – in the Late

Chalcolithic, when Qarassa is, at the same time, perfectly integrated in the Levantine chalcolithic koiné, and

characterised by some local features. This picture seems to portray a very specific cultural condition, but, in reality, it

matches with all the Levantine Chalcolithic sites, with restricted ceramic provinces around the villages, a high level of

macro-regional amalgamation of practices and exchanges, and a local character of the productive and sustaining

strategies. At this level, one could read “cultures” as polythetic and non-normative “social fields”22

, intended and

unintended sets of interactions and social influences on a territory. Fundamentally, the problem is to approach the

identity of past social entities avoiding all kind of essentialism.

In this sense a technical approach to ceramic assemblage and ancient identities should recognize the traditional “ways of

doing” of different social groups, with their boundaries and material relations. At Qarassa, any passage of the ceramic

chaîne opératoire has been examined to broad the perspective traditionally linked to shapes and decorations, seen as the

only vectors of differences between cultures. The analysis encompasses all stages of the manufacturing process and

highlights different traditions corresponding to different producer groups (Roux and Courty 2005).

First, the study distinguishes technical entities and their variants: recurrent combinations of macrotraces show a set of

specific operations corresponding to different technical groups (Fig. 4).

Vessels were shaped by:

breaking a mound of clay and by hammering it,

20

A concept largely created by the bureaucracies of the colonial empires as projection of simplistic and unhistorical

European points of views (Amselle and M’Bokolo 1985). 21

The complex and shifting mechanisms of the formation and variations of the dichotomy Us / Them (Barth 1969). 22

Wolf 1982; Welsh and Terrel 1998; Layton 1997, 38-39

5

hollowing-out a lump and pinching and stretching it,

overlapping coils,

wheel-coiling technique.

In a second phase, within the different technical groups, sherds are classified by petrographic features. Both on the basis

of the fine mass and non-plastic inclusions (nature, size, distribution, morphology and quantity), three main

petrographic macro-groups have been identified.

A group: yellowish-beige fabrics, vegetal and mineral inclusions (basalt, calcite and ferruginous particles).

B group: orange-red and brownish mineral fabrics, important quantities of ferruginous inclusions.

C group: orange-reddish fabrics with small size vegetal and mineral inclusions (basalt, limestone) and coal particles.

The last step of the analysis consists in a morphological and stylistic classification (that is a traditional typology) of

sherds within each techno-petrographic group.

The technical traditions identified in this way represent the chaînes opératoires specific to different social

groups (Fig.4), because, even if “pots are not people”, they embody the peculiar way of doing of their potters, they are

product and expression of them, their differences, organization, traditions and technical identities. If all current

anthropological studies demonstrate the correspondence between a social group and a particular way of doing (Gelbert

2003), on the other hand there is no general rule to establish in an univocal way the nature of social aggregations

underlying the various traditions. Anyway, the variability of technical traditions can be examined in a synchronic

(concerning their boundaries in every archaeological layer) or diachronic perspective (in their transformations over long

periods), in order to reconstruct the relationships between the social groups behind the different traditions. Rather than

trying forcibly to determine ethnic identities (often risking to create them), one can suggest some hypotheses about the

social groups recognizable by their involuntary technical identity.

Applied to the assemblage of Tell Qarassa North, such an approach offers many fruitful insights. The technical

evolution shows a first rupture between Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, with the disappearance of the shaping

technique by hammering a lump of clay. At the same time, beneath the veneer of strong continuity, ceramic pastes are

submitted to a slow process of selection, with a constant decrease of the A group, in favour of the ferruginous B group.

These same prodromes of a specialization process are visible on the morphological level, with a long tendency towards

regionalization.

The major techno-social evolutional rupture happens between Middle and Late Chalcolithic, around the middle

of the 5th millennium BC23

(Fig. 4). The predominance of the B fabrics becomes more remarkable, while the pastes of

23

This passage has been associated (Lovell 2001) with the substantial architectural change documented in Teleilat

Ghassul H/G and Abu Hamid I/II. But the same transition from pit dwellings or circular houses to rectilinear

6

the C group are employed only for culinary vessels. Moreover, the overlapping coils of 4,5 cm thick disappears and the

wheel coiling technique emerges as manufacturing method exclusively reserved for V-shaped bowls and miniature pots.

This very innovative step marks a discontinuity in terms of quantity (that becomes serial for some shapes) and quality

(of the new complex skills acquired through a long apprenticeship). It indicates a somewhat rationalized production,

with a more and more restricted number of part time specialists24

. In this period Tell Qarassa belongs to the general

chalcolithic koiné of Southern Levant, but the outcomes of regionalization are visible in the strict similarities with

Byblos “Enéolithique Ancien”, Tell el-Khazzami and the Golan. The parallels cover also lithics, domestic architecture,

spindle whorls and basalt artefacts (Epstein 1998). Indeed, regionalization has nothing to do with cultural isolation. On

the contrary, it can express a reorganization of social links on specific geographical bases. Even if largely hypothetical,

a territorial organization under a network of lineages seems reasonable for explaining, on the one hand, the first

appearance of a hierarchical and somewhat specialized production. On the other, it can take into account the absence of

large top-down-oriented powers, the horizontal modalities of cooperation between social actors and the long-distance

relations that during the Chalcolithic become more and more frequent. In fact, if for the chlorite vessels of Hagoshrim in

the Wadi Rabah phase it is possible to suggest a “down the line trade (Rosenberg, Getzov and Assaf 2010, 291), the jars

and hammerhead bowls with typical Amuq shapes at the end of the Chalcolithic clearly indicates regular contacts

between different groups, and some borrowings between potters of different traditions. The emergence of distinct

ceramic provinces (as the Ghassulian one, or the Beer Sheva “culture”) can be interpreted as a material trace of large

territorially based kinship groups, constantly linked by a dense and dynamic network of exchanges with well fixed

axes.25

Obviously, the hypotheses here suggested are just provisional elements of an ongoing work. But instead of

inferring ancient identities from an imaginary ethnic definition based on a pretended material cultural regularity, the

reconstruction of a history of ways of doing offers the possibility to observe some cultural dynamics. In the realm of the

pre- and protohistoric archaeology, where the material culture is the only support to produce a positive discourse, it is

not a negligible possibility.

architecture has been identified many centuries earlier in Munhata 2b/2a, or Jericho PNA/PNB. The adoption of a

rectilinear architecture seems to be a discontinuous process in the southern Levant, with early occurrences as at Sha’ar

Hagolan and some long-standing traditional solutions (as apsidal houses). For a discussion see Garfinkel and Ben

Shlomo (2009). 24

The emergence of some kind of specialization is also stressed by Bourke (2007: 22) and Lovell (2001: 50). Anyway,

the presence of part-time specialists does not automatically indicate the vertical organization of the society: the

structuring of the so-called social complexity can depend on many different forms of agency, without large scale top-

down-oriented powers (or elites) and through horizontal modalities of cooperation between different social components. 25

For instance, the absence of significant copper finds at Qarassa (as well as at Ghassul IV and Abu Hamid) could

indicate that the exchange of this kind of artefacts concerned above all the areas south to the Dead Sea, Tell Feinan, and

the Negev (Lovell 2001: 51).

7

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