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TELL HALULA AND TELL KURAN
Palace of Naram-Sin. at Tell Brak
In archaeology tells are artificial topographical features — mounds — consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive settlements at the same site, the refuse of generations of people who built and inhabited them and natural sediment. The English word tell is derived from tall — Arabic for "mound" or "small hill"). Tells are associated most with the ancient Near East but are also found elsewhere. [Source: Wikipedia]
Tell Halula is a Neolithic site located in the middle Euphrates valley in Syria, east of Halab. It covers eight hectares and is flanked by two wadis: wadi Abou Qal Qal and wadi al-Fars. Systematic excavations were begun in 1991 under the direction of Dr. Miquel Molist, Professor of Prehistory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Since then, the site has been continuously excavated and has been revealed as one of the largest known Neolithic sites comparable to Ain Ghazal or Abu Hureyra. Archaeological trenches cover an area of 2500 square meters and almost 40 levels of occupation. The oldest settlement (levels 1–20) was inhabited around 7700–7600 B.C. (8700 years ago). Levels 20/21 to 34 correspond to the Late Neolithic (7600–6900 B.C.). Level 35 is transitional to the Halaf culture (6100 B.C.). Th is culture is represented by only two levels (36 and 37), dated from 6000 to 5500 B.C. (7000–6500 years ago). [Source: Short Fieldwork Report: Tell Halula (Syria), seasons 1992–2005, F. Estebaranz, L.M. Martínez, J. Anfruns, A. Pérez-Pérez, published online on www.anthropology.uw.edu.pl]
As of 2020, twenty-one houses had been excavated and 107 skeletons had been unearthed. In nine of the houses. Unfortunately, due to natural erosion and trench sections none of the very old discovered skeletons were complete. The settlement buildings were organised in several long parallel lines of east–west orientation. Each line contained several houses located 0.4–1.5 meters apart each other, all oriented north–south. Structures were rectangular and consisted of three to five rooms, always a central room (where burials were found near the entrance) and secondary ones in the northern side. This wasn’t the case for the inhumations from level 14. There burials were located outside the house.
The burial pits inside the houses were dug into the clay floor and plastered with lime. The bodies were placed on the side with both lower and upper limbs flexed. Several fetal positions were also observed, but only in the case of neonates and infants. In some burials remains of vegetable fibres, sacks, mats or baskets were found, so it is possible that the bodies had been covered. All pits were sealed with adobe cover, probably originally visible on the surface. The number of burial pits per house, varied from five up to 13. The mean number of pits per house is 8.5. Dental microwear pattern analysis was performed to determine the dietary habits of these populations as precisely as possible. Microwear pattern analysis is a fine technique for diet reconstruction through the analysis of the traces left by phytoliths on dental enamel.
According to Archaeology magazine: At Tell Kuran there is a 6,000-year-old layer of bones from 100 Persian gazelles. The mound is near a "desert kite," or a stone trap used to drive wild animals together for hunting. Researchers have concluded the gazelles were killed en masse, perhaps an early example of overkill hunting, which wiped out herds, disrupted migration, and led to their local extinction. People at the time relied on livestock for food, so the gazelle slaughter might have had a ritual basis. [Source: Archaeology magazine, July-August 2011]
Tell Brak — Early Urbanization and Warfare
Joan Oates (1928-2023) was one of the most famous Near East archaeologist. According to The Telegraph: Her most important work was carried out at Tell Brak, a vast, human-made mound in north-east Syria, where she and her husband David Oates began digging in 1976. During their early excavations Joan was occupied bringing up three children and was mainly involved in drawing potsherds — “the boring stuff” as she put it. But she was co-director with him of the excavations from 1988 then sole director after his death in 2004. [Source: The Telegraph,, March 25, 2023]
Her expertise in identifying and dating potsherds proved crucial, however, in 1981 when her husband began to dig a fortification from the second millennium B.C. at the north east end of the site. In one corner of the excavation, Joan spotted pieces of pottery dating back to the fourth millennium B.C. It took years of work to dig through the centuries but eventually evidence of urban settlement was found which revolutionised theories about early civilisation.
Eye figurines from the Eye Temple at Tell Brak
For many years the conventional wisdom held that urban living began in the late 4th century B.C. in the “cradle of civilization” once known as Sumer, located in the low-lying alluvial plain of southern Iraq. One of the most dramatic discoveries at Tell Brak was a building with massive red-brick walls and ovens which Joan Oates and her colleagues dated to about 3,800 B.C. By contrast very few large structures have been found from a time before 3500 B.C. in southern Iraq.
Scattered across the building’s floor were objects ranging from spindle whorls, flint and obsidian blades to stones, mostly imported, for making beads — jasper, marble, serpentine, diorite, as well as mother-of pearl inlays cut to be used in jewellery — proof that Brak had been a place of wealth and sophistication in the early stages of human civilisation. Elsewhere the archaeologists found traces of a brick platform and a wall built 1,000 years before that.
Further excavations beyond the high mound provided evidence that between 3900 and 3400 B.C. Brak covered some 320 acres, with an estimated 20,000 people living within the city limits, and thousands more in dozens of smaller settlements within a 10-mile radius. Brak, they concluded, probably developed independently as an urban centre earlier than cities of southern Mesopotamia such as Babylon and Uruk, reaching its peak at about the time the better-known cities were taking form.
Beginning in 2006, the most startling find was a series of mass graves containing mostly disarticulated human bones belonging to individuals between 20 and 45 years of age, surrounded by debris datable to c 3900-3600 B.C. Evidence suggested that the graves were the result of organised conflict, though the scale of the settlement at the time suggested that an external attack was unlikely. The conflict, Joan Oates suggested, might have been the result of internal social stresses associated with urbanisation.
Tell Hamoukar
Tell Hamoukar is an interesting 6000-year-old site in eastern Syria near the border of Iraq and Turkey. With a central city covering 16 hectares, it is as highly developed as sites in southern Iraq such as Uruk and Nippur and seems to debunk the theories that ancient civilization developed in southern Iraq and spread northward and westward. Instead Tell Hamoukar is offered as proof that several advanced ancient civilizations developed simultaneously in different parts of the Middle East. [Source: Natural History magazine, Clemens Reichel of the Oriental Institute of Chicago]
Excavations indicate that Tell Hamoukar was first inhabited around 4000 B.C. perhaps as early as 4500 B.C. By around 3700 B.C. is covered at least 13 hectares and displayed signs of an advanced civilization: a 2.5-meter-high, 3.4 -meter-wide defensive wall, large scale bread making and meat cooking, a wide array of cylinder seals, presumably used to mark goods. Many seals were used to secure baskets and other containers of commodities.
The simplest seals had only simple markings. More elaborate ones had kissing bears, ducks and a leopard with 13 spots. Scholars believed that more elaborate seals were used by people of high status and indicate a hierarchically-ordered society. But as advanced as Tell Hamoukar and other places in the area were they are not regarded as advanced as those in southern Iraq, where writing developed.
Tell Hamoukar contains a 500-acre site with buildings with huge ovens, which offer evidence that people were making food for other people. The city seems to have been a manufacturing center for tools and blades that utilized obsidian supplies further north and supplied the tools throughout Mesopotamia to the south. Other sites being excavated in northern Syria include Tell Brak and Habuba Kabira, both of which appear to be much larger than previously thought.
A team led by Clemens Reichel of the Oriental Institute of Chicago and Syrian Department of Antiquities have been excavating Tell Hamoukar since 1999.. Guillermo Algaze of the University of California, San Diego is an archaeologist that specialize in north-south relations in Mesopotamia.
Tell Hamoukar and Uruk
Owen Jarus wrote in The Independent: Hamoukar flourished in northern Syria since at least 4000 B.C. People there traded in obsidian and in later times copper working became increasingly important to the city’s economy. Thousands of clay sealings — once used to lock doors or containers and impressed with stamp seals — were found at the ancient site. They tell of a bureaucratic system that was almost as complex as our own. [Source: Owen Jarus. The Independent, September 24, 2010]
Uruk is credited with being the first great Sumerian city. It was a massive city bu ancient Mesopotamian standards, located to the south in modern day Iraq. Unlike Hamoukar it was lacking in natural resources such as timber and metal. Yet, despite this lack of resources, its people were on the move. “This Uruk culture from the south started expanding all over the Middle East,” said Professor Clemens Reichel, of the University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum, who is leading the excavation at Hamoukar. His team’s work is being supported by the Department of Antiquities in Syria and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Warfare at Tell Hamoukar in Syria 5,500 Years Ago
The oldest known example of large scale warfare is from a fierce battle that took place at Tell Hamoukar around 3500 B.C. Evidence of intense fighting include collapsed mud walls that had undergone heavy bombardment; the presence of 1,200 oval-sapped “bullets” flung from slings and 120 large round balls. Graves held skeletons of likely battle victims. Reichel told the New York Times the clash appeared to have been a swift, rapid attack: “buildings collapse, burning out of control, burying everything in them under a vast pile of rubble.”
No one knows who the attacker of Tell Hamoukar was but circumstantial evidence points to Mesopotamia cultures to the south. The battle may have been between northern and southern Near Eastern cultures when the two cultures were relative equally, with the victory by the south giving them an edge and paving the way for them to dominate the region. Large amount of Uruk pottery was found on layers just above the battle. Reichel told the New York Times,”If the Uruk people weren’t the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefitted from it. They are all over this place right after its destruction.”
The slings were crude but could still inflict some damage. The archaeologists tested the slings' with their own bullets. “The impact is quite remarkable,” said Reichel. At one point he was accidentally hit in the head by a colleague who was practising. “He wasn’t very good at that point, but by god I felt it,” he said. “Once he got really good, the speed, the velocity, that those guys get, is amazing... I’m virtually certain it can be fatal.” [Source: Owen Jarus. The Independent, September 24, 2010]
Artefacts from Hamoukar which postdate the battle, are similar in style as items created at Uruk. This makes an Uruk army the likeliest attackers. "If the Uruk people weren't the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefited from it. They took over this place right after its destruction," Reichel told the New York Times back in 2005.
Discoveries at Tell Hamoukar have changed thinking about the evolution of civilization in Mesopotamia. It was previously though that civilization developed in Sumerian cities like Ur and Uruk and radiated outward in the form of trade, conquest and colonization. But findings in Tell Hamoukar show that many indicators of civilization were present in northern places like Tell Hamoukar as well as in Mesopotamia and around 4000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. the two placed were pretty equal.
According to Archaeology magazine: Analysis of aerial and satellite imagery has revealed the presence of an extensive 4,000-year-old defensive network in northern Syria. This Middle Bronze Age system is composed of as many as 1,000 stone towers, forts, and enclosures, which were erected along the mountainous ridges east of Hama to protect and surveil the landscape. The structures were all built within sight of one another so that communication could be maintained using either light or smoke signals. [Source: Archaeology magazine, May-June 2018]
Did Uruk Fight It Own People 5,500 Years Ago Near Tell Hamoukar
Discoveries announced in 2010 at a settlement near Hamoukar shed more light on the 3500 B.C. battle — and raised more questions. The settlement it seems was a colony of Uruk. Owen Jarus wrote in The Independent: It’s a small site, probably occupied by no more than a few hundred people. Its pottery remains were scattered over a hectare. When researchers analysed the pottery they found that much of it consisted of Uruk pottery. “It’s the same stuff that you would find in Southern Mesopotamia, almost 700 kilometers to the south,” said Reichel. .[Source: Owen Jarus. The Independent, September 24, 2010]
Researchers believe that this colony was there to facilitate trade, but was probably not controlled by Uruk’s rulers. “I’m tending more to them being sub-state entities,” said Reichel, private entrepreneurs, perhaps like the British East India Company of more recent colonial times.
Itit appears the Uruk colony was destroyed in the same conflict that destroyed Hamoukar. Pottery remains discovered at the settlement suggest the two events happened at the same time. “We found evidence of burning, we found sling bullets... and we found some remains of human bodies,” said Professor Reichel. He added, “this is highly preliminary, and more work needs to be done on that. But the fact that we have dead bodies, some destruction and sling bullets, suggests that these guys put up some resistance,” said Reichel.
Why Was Their War Involving Uruk
Owen Jarus wrote in The Independent: Which brings us to the big question — if Uruk troops destroyed Hamoukar why would they have gone after their own people living in the nearby colony? One possibility is that the soldiers were not aware that they were attacking their own people, a sort of “shoot first ask second” action. Another option is that that the Uruk colonists tried to stay out of the conflict but were regarded as “traitors” by the invading army. “Maybe they did stay out — maybe the attacking army said, well, look at those traitors — those bastards — let’s get even with them,” said Reichel. [Source: Owen Jarus. The Independent, September 24, 2010]
A third theory, and the most tantalizing, is that the people of the colony sided with Hamoukar against the intruders — a dicey situation if indeed the invading army came from Uruk. This is not such as far-fetched an idea as it seems, the colonists appear to have been profiting from their trade. If Hamoukar was taken over by anyone, who is going to stand to lose from that?
“They were the intermediaries between goods from foreign lands and the mothership back south, and they profited from that position,” said Reichel. As such, “it would have been advantageous for these guys, of the Uruk colony, to side with the locals, to maintain the status quo, and not support a takeover of the site by anyone. Certainly not by their own people if that’s what happened.” “Then and now it might have been the same story — just because you speak the same language and come up from the south doesn’t mean that you’re my friend,” said Reichel. “You may be my brother but not necessarily my friend.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Live Science, Wikipedia, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. The Independent, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.
Last updated June 2024