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The ‘Amuq Plain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

M. E. L. Mallowan
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Extract

Twenty-two years after the close of his investigations in north-west Syria, Braidwood produced this massive and expensive volume which covers the archaeology of a part of the ‘Amuq plain from the advanced Neolithic period down to about 2000 B.C. More than a quarter of a million words have been penned, and there are many hundreds of illustrations, including ten coloured plates which are good reproductions of sixty-nine prehistoric potsherds. Such lavish and verbose treatment may unfortunately defeat the purpose of the volume, for those who can afford the money, and still more the time required for the mastery of its contents, must be few indeed.

The classification of the material described depends basically on the partial excavation of three mounds: Judaidah, Çatal Huyuk and Ta’yinat, of which the first named produced the most abundant evidence. These excavations were supplemented by operations on a smaller scale at the mounds of Dhahab and Kurdu and by the surface exploration of many other sites.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 37 , Issue 147 , September 1963 , pp. 185 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1963

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References

* Appendices by Joan Crowfoot-Payne and Hans Helbaek, Technical Notes by Frederick R. Matson and others. University of Chicago Press, 1960. 601 pp., 89 pls. (including 10 in colour), 386 text-figs., 5 tables. $100.

(1) This is a lapis lazuli cylinder seal, probably of Early Dynastic III period, illustrated in Fig. 382, no. 5.

(2) On page 504 Braidwood records two radiocarbon dates which bear on the material found in Phases A and B, viz. Byblos A, 4600 B.C. ± 250, basal Mersin (Yümük Tepe) 6000 B.C. ± 250. This chronology will be regarded with reserve until such time as we have before us a pattern of dates from a greater variety of sources.

(3) For the recurrence of multiple brush-work at various periods, especially in Greece, in the Aegean, in Cyprus and in Egypt, see John Boardman in ANTIQUITY, XXXIV, 1960, pp. 85-89. Boardman now admits that many of the ‘Amuq designs were executed by this method.

(4) It is much to be hoped that these figurines, of crucial importance in the history of metallurgy, may once again be treated for corrosion and re-analysed in order that every constituent may be expressed in terms of a percentage.

(5) H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Plate lb.

(6) The archaeological evidence from various sites in Western Asia year by year adds to our knowledge of the beginnings of metallurgy and leaves no doubt that copper and silver were being worked in the latter half of the 5th millennium B.C. See now Seton Lloyd and James Mellaart, Beyce Sultan, vol. I (1962), and the account by David Stronach, of the metal tools found in Level XXXIV, the period known as Late Chalcolithic 2. This discovery, added to the evidence from Sialk I and to the more scanty traces from Chagar Bazar and Arpachiyah, lends support to my belief expressed in Iraq, 11, p. 104, that some of the finest Halaf pottery bowls betrayed a familiarity with metal shapes, see Stronach, loc. cit., p. 282. Recent evidence from Anatolia proves that native copper was used for ornament as early as the 7th millennium B.C.

(7) E. Heinrich, Kleinfunde aus den Archaischen Tempelschichten in Uruk, Taf 13a.