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A Radiocarbon Date from Choga Mami

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Joan Oates
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Extract

There are two reasons for the regrettable shortage of radiocarbon dates for prehistoric Mesopotamia. One is that much of the relevant excavation took place before the development of such techniques; the second, the inconvenient fact that the prehistoric farmers of Mesopotamia were uncommonly tidy and swept clean their house floors, leaving for posterity little in the way of carbonized or any other remains. Excavations like that at Ras al ‘Amiya failed to reveal any recoverable quantity of charcoal in spite of a diligent search, while at Choga Mami, where every scrap of such material was preserved, many of the samples have proved too small for dating purposes. In this situation it is perhaps useful to publish quickly and briefly the first date from the latter site, remembering at the same time the unreliability of a single unsupported date from any site:

The charcoal sample which produced this date came from what has been termed, perhaps inadequately, the “Transitional Samarra/Hajji Muhammad phase”, so designated because the ceramic material included pottery comparable, and in some cases identical, with ceramic types of these two otherwise distinct assemblages. Although some of the pottery is indistinguishable from that found in true Samarran context, there is no doubt that this phase at Choga Mami clearly post-dates classical Samarra.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 1972 , pp. 49 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1972

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References

1 I wish to thank the British Museum Radiocarbon Laboratory for producing this first date. Other material is in their hands and it is hoped that further results will be available. We are also awaiting dates from bone samples which have been sent to the University of Southern California at the request of Dr. S. Bökönyi.

2 For a fuller discussion of the archaeological and ceramic evidence, see “Choga Mami 1967–68: a preliminary report”, Iraq 31 (1969), 115–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The sample, B.M. 483, came from the earliest phase of Level 9, Pl. XXIII and p. 126.

3 For Ras al ‘Amiya, see Stronach, D., Iraq 23 (1961), 95–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; to summarize the Choga Mami evidence: pottery identical with some late Halaf polychrome types from Arpachiyah came from a well dug from a level now lost, i.e. later than the extant Transitional levels, and in which was found an undoubtedly homogeneous collection of material including other Halaf pottery together with an unusual ceramic group with, presumably, Iranian connections. Unfortunately, owing to heavy erosion of the site it is impossible at Choga Mami precisely to relate this Halaf-like material chronologically with Hajji Muhammad, but this should prove possible at one of the many other prehistoric sites nearby. What is clear is that the “Halaf well” must be earlier than a second one excavated, the so-called “‘Ubaid well”, in which pottery identical with that from Ras al ‘Amiya was found (an identification based on a close examination of sherds in the Institute of Archaeology, London), together with red ware reminiscent of Khuzistan and, in particular, three large sherds of a spouted jar identical with a Mehmeh red-on-red ware type from Tepe Sabz (cf. Hole, , Flannery, and Neely, , Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Deh Luran Plain, 1969, fig. 66: aGoogle Scholar).

4 All B.C. dates quoted in this article follow the accepted practice and are calculated using the Libby half-life; the resulting dates are, of course, not intended to be interpreted strictly in terms of calendar years, see below, p. 52.

5 Stuckenrath, R. and Ralph, E. K., Radiocarbon 7 (1965), 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 El-Wailly, F. and es-Soof, B. Abu, Sumer 21 (1965), 19Google Scholar. I am indebted to Sayid Walid Yasin of the Directorate-General of Antiquities, Baghdad, for the information that during the 1970 season at Tell es-Sawwan a Level II building was excavated in which most of the sherds were of a crude coarse or semi-coarse ware; only two painted sherds were found in situ. These are described as “Hassuna” rather than Samarra; incised sherds were said to occur but not of the Hassuna type. It should be noted, however, that some apparently well-stratified painted Samarra ware has been reported from Level II in previous seasons.

7 Hole, Flannery and Neely, op. cit., 331–41 (I–1495: c. 5270 B.C., and I–1494: c. 5870 B.C.). Certain ground stone and clay objects of the Mohammad Jaffar phase have close parallels in Level I at Sawwan; compare, in particular, the stone phallus (Pl. 38: a) with Sumer 21, fig. 66, and the seated clay figure (fig. 97: a) with a Level I type from Sawwan, , Iraq 28 (1966), Pl. XLGoogle Scholar.

8 I am indebted to Professor Braidwood for information concerning new dates from Gerik-i-Haciyan which place Halaf material in the Ergani region at the beginning of the fifth millennium B.C. It should be noted also that there are four dates from Shemshara from levels in which Samarran pottery occurs (c. 5990, 5870, 8080, and 5350 B.C.). These were run on ceramic rather than charcoal samples, which may explain both their inconsistency and their slightly higher values. See Tauber, H., Radiocarbon 10 (1968), 323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Iraq 31 (1969), 135Google Scholar.

10 Hole, F., Iran 7 (1969), 171–172Google Scholar; see also Hole, Flannery and Neely, op. cit., p. 14, fig. 3.

11 I am very much indebted to Professor Hole and Professor Flannery for information concerning Chagha Sefid. Professor Hole kindly examined sherds of Choga Mami Transitional pottery in Cambridge and found that some of the more characteristic types had close parallels at Chagha Sefid.

12 See pp. 35–48, above.

13 Ferguson, C. W., “Bristlecone Pine: Science and Esthetics”, Science 159 (1968), 839–846CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Suess, H. E., “Bristlecone Pine Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale from 4100 B.C. to 1500 B.C.”, Radiocarbon Dating and Methods of Low-Level Counting, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna (1967), 143–151Google Scholar; Ralph, E. K. and Michael, H. N., “Problems of the Radiocarbon Calendar”, Archaeometry 10 (1968), 3–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Radiocarbon 11 (1969), 469–481CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The most up-to-date information can be found in Olsson, I. U. (ed.), Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, Proceedings of the Twelfth Nobe Symposium, Stockholm (1970)Google Scholar. It is generally agreed that no definite conclusions can as yet be reached concerning deviations before c. 5200 B.C. Should the evidence for a levelling off or even a decrease in atmospheric C14 activity before 6000 B.C. be substantiated, however, the result would be a closer approximation between radiocarbon and calendar dates in the seventh and eighth millennia B.C., thereby possibly bringing closer together some of the seemingly discrepant Near Eastern dates of the eighth to sixth millennia.