Extra paper

ON TERMINOLOGY IN NEAR EASTERN PREHISTORY

Jean PERROT

From the 10th to the 5th millennia cal BC, Southwest Asia was the scene of a radical change in the relationship of humans with their environment. They gradually began to tame the natural surroundings that until then had constrained them. When and how did this mastery come about? What caused it, and what consequences did it have? These have been our key research questions for the past half-century. They are questions that we have sometimes tended to lose from sight in our overly detailed studies. The tree begins to hide the forest. Today, our discipline is in a confused situation for a number of reasons: there is a bulk of archaeological data and, simultaneously, there are big gaps in knowledge; there is the weakness of a poorly structured ensemble of information, the scientific status of which is still tentative; and, perhaps first of all, our vocabulary and terminology remain inadequate. It is becoming urgent that we tighten our thinking and that we get more focused and precise in our use of methods, concepts and words.

Concerning methods, few would be shocked to hear me claim that the archaeological 'reality' is a reality that owes much to the imagination and intuition of the excavator. Besides being inventories and catalogues, fieldwork reports are rarely more than collections of hypotheses. The numerous specialists from various disciplines that the archaeologist invites to scrutinise the 'reality' that he lays before them are not always aware of its limitations; just as the archaeologist is not always conscious of the frailties of the disciplines whose advice he seeks. The equivocal interdisciplinarity, not only for archaeology, muddles the reconstruction of 'what really happened', the nature and turn of events that are the raw materials of historical reconstruction.

Every discipline has its concepts, its vocabulary, a terminology all of its own that it is ill-advised to abandon. Archaeology in the initial stages of its investigation involves the use of geological, stratigraphical, chronological and historical terms. It sometimes tends to confuse them. It has a convenient jargon of the 'digs', but it should avoid applying it for all purposes without precaution. Some words and acronyms are only masking ignorance.

From European prehistory, Near Eastern prehistory has inherited some of the old 'pigeon-holes', weary of their ever-changing labels (Neolithic, Chalcolithic, etc.). It is time to cast them off. It should be noted that the meaning of words we often employ like 'production', 'domestication', 'civilisation', etc., varies depending on whether they are used to describe a state or a process. Others - this is the case of 'agriculture', 'stock-breeding' or 'writing' - correspond to long-term processes that should be completed before they are hastily named. We must abandon the illusion that an object can be analysed using the words we associate with that object; those words have no place in the description of phases of the process by which that object is constituted. A plant or an animal cannot be called 'domestic' until the domestication process is complete. A 'pre-domestic' state is a wild state. Humans may capture a wild animal, master it and keep it in captivity, but still those are not acts of domestication. All domestication processes started with an intention and the formulation of a project aiming at controlling the reproduction of an animal in order to profit more from it. Only then can the animal be appropriated in its new status.

If there is a word or a terminology that prehistory could profit from by not using, it is 'religion' according to the meaning and usage commonly given by our dictionaries, which are 'relations of the human soul with God'. The process of neolithisation belongs to the field of myth; rituals warrant its transmission in order to assure the necessary social cohesion: rites of passage from one stage of life to another; initiation rites; funeral rites. Their repetition is carried out in specialised places of the anthropological space. The 'exceptional buildings' of the 10th-9th millennia cal BC settlements no doubt represent such 'ritual spaces'. They are places of sociability aimed at strengthening the identity of the community; places of initiation; meeting places for the living and the dead. During the 8th-7th millennia cal BC, the socioeconomic forces appearing with the development of agriculture and animal domestication brought about a larger feeling of security and led to a disintegration of the old mythical and social structures. New myths and new structures are in formation when the process of neolithisation is about to be achieved. At this moment, we feel that something is happening which will become of importance subsequently, but which is not yet sufficient to allow us to speak of a capacity to conceive the divine.

The first concern of the archaeologist is to establish an environmental and chronological framework. We must concede that in this matter the results are not corresponding to the efforts made, primarily because of sampling difficulties and because of the risks of contamination of the organic remains: the environment can only be reconstructed from an uninhabited milieu. The recent progress made in palaeoclimatology provides us now with a reliable environmental and chronological framework without any reference to archaeological data. The climatic phases identified for Southwest Asia as a whole from 12,000 to 3000 cal BC can now be applied to regions and ecological 'niches', according to the relation existing between the general climate and today's ecological systems. The ancient environmental framework is dated by various radiometric methods and is confirmed by dendrochronology for the past 20,000 years. This framework is reliable for the northern hemisphere with a margin of error of less than 5 % - something that many historians would envy us. We can use it directly, region by region, in dating the events that we succeed to reconstruct, without bothering about dates acquired through the bias of archaeology. Let us compare before we date.

Fig. 1: CANeW Paleoclimatological chart
Near and Middle East: 12th-5th millennia cal BC
Data compiled by Jean Perrot

Just after the last glacial maximum (see Fig. 1 prepared in consultation with Martine Rossignol-Strick), climatic conditions in the Near East were still quite unfavourable, as characterised by an arboreal vegetation. Summers were short and cold, and the available humidity was insufficient. The Iranian and Anatolian plateaus remained apparently uninhabited. During the Bölling-Alleröd phase (12,000-11,000 cal BC), thermic and pluviometric conditions improved, the pollen diagrams indicating the return of Gramineae and Trees. This is the time of the Early Natufian in the Southern Levant.

A severe deterioration set in during the Younger Dryas (11,000-10,000 cal BC), the climate becoming generally more arid and colder than it had been during the glacial maximum (pers. comm. M. Rossignol-Strick). In the Near East, this phase was characterised by a general decline in the cultural development and by a return to mobility. The Younger Dryas marks the end of the Epi-Palaeolithic. In geological terms it represents the shift from the Pleistocene to the Holocene.

Subsequently, a transitional period was starting in which humidity and heat returned. Oak forests were re-established first in the western Taurus Mountains, to extend towards the east and south (Oak needs summer rains and an average minimum amount of precipitation of 600mm/yr). In the most favourable regions permanent settlements were established, like in the Middle Euphrates and Tigris valleys, in the eastern Taurus and the northern Zagros, and, later, in the Southern Levant in the oases of the Lower Jordan valley.

From 8000 cal BC onwards Southwest Asia knew mild winters and humid summers, and a temperate and warm arboreal vegetation. Annual average temperatures were higher than in present-day temperate Europe (pers. comm. M. Rossignol-Strick). We enter a phase of a climatic optimum, which is going to last for nearly 3000 years, with short negative variations at around 7200 cal BC.

Towards 8000 cal BC, the sea level had risen to the -33m mark. Communications between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea were being re-established, possibly affecting also the relations between West Anatolia and Eastern Europe. At about 7000 cal BC the sea started to fill the Arabo-Persian Gulf; towards 6000 cal BC it had reached the -12m mark, and around 5000 cal BC it had risen to its present level, henceforth knowing only minor fluctuations.

The climate and the environment determined the sedentarisation process. Sedentary life is a primary and necessary condition of neolithisations. From the middle of the 8th millennium cal BC onwards, humans act as equals vis-à-vis nature in the neolithisation process. Gradually, the dynamism and ability of humans to adapt themselves to the new food strategies (based on a variable combination of agricultural components) enabled them to establish permanent settlements in the semi-arid zones, in the proximity of water sources. Population growth and the concomitant socioeconomic forces that are in formation at that time bring the neolithisation process to its achievement and expansion even before the end of the climatic optimum.

Today, it is up to us to establish, region by region, a new terminology that accounts for the events while acknowledging local rhythms and particularities, following, in calendar years, the common framework of Southwest Asia.