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Ubaid period
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The Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BCE)[1] is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia.

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The name derives from Tell al-`Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period

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material was conducted initially by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.[2]

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Ubaid period

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In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain

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although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium.[3] In the south it has

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a very long duration between about 6500 and 3800 BCE when it is replaced by the Uruk

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period [4]
In North Mesopotamia the period runs only between about 5300 and 4300 BCE.[4] It is

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preceded by the Halaf period and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period and succeeded by

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the Late Chalcolithic period.

Geographical Mesopotamia
range

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1 History of research

Period

Chalcolithic

2 Dating, Extent and periodization

Dates

circa 6,500 B.C.E. circa 3,800

B.C.E.

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3 Description

Special pages

4 Society

Type site

Tell al-`Ubaid

Permanent link

5 See also

Major sites

Eridu

Page information

6 Notes

Wikidata item

7 References

Preceded by Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period,

Hassuna culture, Samarra

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8 External links

culture
Followed by

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Languages

Azrbaycanca

History of research

[ edit ]

The term Ubaid period was coined at a conference in Baghdad in 1930, where at
the same time the Jemdet Nasr and Uruk periods were defined.[5]

Dating, Extent and periodization

[ edit ]

The Ubaid period is divided into three principal phases:

Ubaid 0, sometimes called Oueili, (6500-5400 BCE) an early Ubaid phase first

Catal

excavated at Tell el-'Oueili

etina

Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu[6] (54004700 BCE), a phase limited to the

Deutsch

extreme south of Iraq, on what was then the shores of the Persian Gulf. This

Eesti

phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north, saw the

Espaol

establishment of the first permanent settlement south of the 5 inch rainfall

Euskara

Uruk period

Eshnunna
Khafajah
Sippar Akshak
Kutha
Kish
Larak
Borsippa
Dilbat
Marad
Shuruppak Isin
Girsu
Bad-tibira
Eridu

isohyet. These people pioneered the growing of grains in the extreme

Franais

conditions of aridity, thanks to the high water tables of Southern Iraq.[7]

Ubaid 2 [6] (48004500 BCE), after the type site of the same name, saw

Hrvatski

the development of extensive canal networks from major settlements.

Map of Iraq showing important sites that were

occupied during the Ubaid period (clickable map)

Italiano

Irrigation agriculture, which seems to have developed first at Choga Mami (47004600

BCE) and rapidly spread elsewhere, form the first required collective effort and

Latina

centralised coordination of labour in Mesopotamia.[8]

Magyar
Nederlands

Ubaid 3/4, sometimes called Ubaid I and Ubaid II[9] In the period from 45004000

BCE saw a period of intense and rapid urbanisation with the Ubaid culture spread into

Norsk bokml

northern Mesopotamia and was adopted by the Halaf culture.[10][11] Ubaid artifacts

Occitan

spread also all along the Arabian littoral, showing the growth of a trading system that

Ozbekcha/

stretched from the Mediterranean coast through to Oman.[12][13]

Polski
Portugus

Spreading from Eridu the Ubaid culture extended from the Middle of the Tigris and

Romn

Euphrates to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then spread down past Bahrein to the

copper deposits at Oman. The archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid

Slovenina

period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BCE,

Slovenina

just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation.[14] At this time,

/ srpski
Srpskohrvatski /

Suomi

increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, and there is no evidence of

human presence in the area for approximately 1000 years, the so-called "Dark
Millennium".[15] This might be due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron.

Svenska
Tagalog

Description

Trke

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[ edit ]

Ubaid culture is characterized by large unwalled village settlements, characterized by multiroomed rectangular mud-brick houses and the appearance of the first temples of public
architecture in Mesopotamia, with a growth of a two tier settlement hierarchy of centralized
large sites of more than 10 hectares surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1
hectare. Domestic equipment included a distinctive fine quality buff or greenish colored
pottery decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint tools such as sickles
were often made of hard fired clay in the south. But in the north, stone and sometimes
metal were used. Villages thus contained specialised craftspeople, potters, weavers and
metalworkers, although the bulk of the population were agricultural labourers, farmers and
seasonal pastoralists.
During the Ubaid Period [5000 B.C. 4000 B.C.], the movement towards urbanization
began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry [domestication] were widely practiced in
sedentary communities". There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as
far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains.[16] The Ubaid period the
the south was associated with intensive irrigated hydraulic agriculture, and the use of the
plough, both introduced from the north, possibly through the earlier Choga Mami, Hadji
Muhammed and Samara cultures.

Society

[ edit ]

The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of
increasingly polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki

The Neolithic
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Mesolithic
Fertile Crescent
Heavy Neolithic
Shepherd Neolithic
Trihedral Neolithic
Pre-Pottery (A, B)
Qaraoun culture
Tahunian culture
Yarmukian Culture
Halaf culture
Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period
Ubaid culture
Byblos
Jericho
Tell Aswad
atalhyk
Jarmo
Europe
Boian culture
Butmir culture
Cernavod culture
Coofeni culture
Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
Dudeti culture
Gorneti culture
GumelniaKaranovo culture
Hamangia culture
Linear Pottery culture
Malta Temples
Petreti culture
Sesklo culture
Tisza culture
Tiszapolgr culture
Usatovo culture
Varna culture
Vina culture
Vuedol culture
Neolithic Transylvania
Neolithic Southeastern Europe
China
Peiligang culture
Pengtoushan culture
Beixin culture
Cishan culture
Dadiwan culture
Houli culture
Xinglongwa culture
Xinle culture
Zhaobaogou culture
Hemudu culture
Daxi culture
Majiabang culture
Yangshao culture
Hongshan culture
Dawenkou culture
Songze culture
Liangzhu culture
Majiayao culture
Qujialing culture
Longshan culture
Baodun culture
Shijiahe culture
Yueshi culture
Tibet
South Asia
Mehrgarh

describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall

behind as a result of downward social mobility. Morton Fried and Elman Service have
hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains,
perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines

farming, animal husbandry

pottery, metallurgy, wheel
circular ditches, henges, megaliths
Neolithic religion

and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social
order. It would seem that various collective methods, perhaps instances of what Thorkild

Chalcolithic

Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through
a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.
Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in
the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked
to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumerian civilisation.
Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear
tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and
animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their
herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.
Stein and zbal describe the Near East oikumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion,
contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis
comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through
the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous

Pottery jar from Late Ubaid Period

identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material

culture into locally distinct expressions".[17]
The earliest evidence for sailing has been found in Kuwait indicating that sailing was known by the Ubaid 3 period.[18]

See also

[ edit ]

Ubaid house
Tell Zeidan

Wikimedia Commons has

media related to Ubaid
Period.

Notes

[ edit ]

Archaeology portal

1. ^ Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham Beyond

10. ^ Susan Pollock,Reinhard Bernbeck (2009).

the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the

Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East
(Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization,

Ancient Near East

portal

Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical

Perspectives . p. 190.
11. ^ Peter M. M. G. Akkermans, Glenn M.

Number 63) The Oriental Institute of the

Schwartz (2003). The Archaeology of Syria:

University of Chicago (2010) ISBN 978-1-

From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban

885923-66-0 p.2, at

Societies (c.16,000-300 BC)

http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/sa
oc/saoc63.html

"Radiometric data suggest

that the whole Southern Mesopotamian Ubaid

(Stacey International)
13. ^ Crawford, Harriet E.W.(1998), "Dilmun and its

period, including Ubaid 0 and 5, is of immense

duration, spanning nearly three millennia from

. p. 157.

12. ^ Bibby, Geoffrey (2013), "Looking for Dilmun"

Gulf Neighbours" (Cambridge University Press)

14. ^ Parker, Adrian G. et al. (2006). "A record of

about 6500 to 3800 B.C".

Holocene climate change from lake

2. ^ Hall, Henry R. and Woolley, C. Leonard.

geochemical analyses in southeastern

1927. Al-'Ubaid. Ur Excavations 1. Oxford:

Arabia"

Oxford University Press.

465476. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2006.07.001

3. ^ Adams, Robert MCC. and Wright, Henry T.

Archived from the original

1989. 'Concluding Remarks' in Henrickson,

Elizabeth and Thuesen, Ingolf (eds.) Upon This

(PDF). Quaternary Research 66 (3):

(PDF) on

September 10, 2008.

15. ^ Uerpmann, M. (2002). "The Dark Millennium

Foundation - The Ubaid Reconsidered.

Remarks on the final Stone Age in the Emirates

Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp.

and Oman". In Potts, D. al-Naboodah, H.

451-456.

Hellyer, P. Archaeology of the United Arab

4. ^ a

Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham.

Emirates. Proceedings of the First International

2010. 'Deconstructing the Ubaid' in Carter,

Conference on the Archaeology of the U.A.E.

Robert A. and Philip, Graham (eds.) Beyond the

London: Trident Press. pp. 7481. ISBN 1-

Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the

Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East.

900724-88-X.
16. ^ Pollock, Susan (1999). Ancient Mesopotamia:

Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University

The Eden that Never Was. New York:

of Chicago. p. 2.

Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-57334-

5. ^ Matthews, Roger (2002), Secrets of the dark

mound: Jemdet Nasr 1926-1928, Iraq

3.
17. ^ Stein, Gil J. Rana zbal (2006). "A Tale of

Archaeological Reports 6, Warminster: BSAI,

Two Oikumenai: Variation in the Expansionary

ISBN 0-85668-735-9

Dynamics of Ubaid and Uruk Mesopotamia". In

6. ^ a

Kurt, Amlie Ancient near East V1

Elizabeth C. Stone. Settlement and Society:

(Routledge History of the Ancient World)

Ecology, urbanism, trade and technology in

Routledge (31 Dec 1996) ISBN 978-0-415-

Mesopotamia and Beyond (Robert McC. Adams

01353-6 p.22

Festschrift) . Santa Fe: SAR Press. pp. 356

7. ^ Roux, Georges "Ancient Iraq" (Penguin,

Harmondsworth)

370.
18. ^ Carter, Robert (2006). "Boat remains and

8. ^ Wittfogel, Karl (1981) "Oriental Despotism:

maritime trade in the Persian Gulf during the

Comparative Study of Total Power" (Vintage

sixth and fifth millennia BC" . Antiquity 80

Books)

(307).

9. ^ Issar, A Mattanyah Zohar Climate change:

environment and civilization in the Middle East
Springer 2nd edition (20 Jul 2004) ISBN 978-3540-21086-3 p.87

References

[ edit ]

Martin, Harriet P. (1982). "The Early Dynastic Cemetery at al-'Ubaid, a Re-Evaluation". Iraq 44 (2): 145185.
doi:10.2307/4200161 . JSTOR 4200161 .
Moore, A. M. T. (2002). "Pottery Kiln Sites at al 'Ubaid and Eridu". Iraq 64: 6977. doi:10.2307/4200519 . JSTOR 4200519 .
Bogucki, Peter (1990). The Origins of Human Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 1-57718-112-3.
Charvt, Petr (2002). Mesopotamia Before History. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25104-4.
Mellaart, James (1975). The Neolithic of the Near East. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-14483-2.
Nissen, Hans J. (1990). The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 90002000 B.C. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 0-226-58658-8.

External links

[ edit ]

Stone Statue from Tell al-'Ubaid - British Museum

Copper Bull figure from Tell al-'Ubaid - British Museum
Recent (2008) site photographs - British Museum
Ancient Mesopotamia

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Categories: Ancient Mesopotamia

History of Kuwait

This page was last modified on 6 March 2016, at 04:24.

Archaeological cultures of the Near East

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Archaeology of Iraq

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