Early Near Eastern Cultures

The term 'Fertile Crescent' refers to a geographical area in the Near East which arcs between the Jordan Valley of the Levant and the Euphrates and Tigris estuary. It also reaches up into southern and central Anatolia (modern Turkey), which is part of the northern Syrian zone in which true farming first seems to have occurred. It was in this Fertile Crescent that the distant effects of the most recent ice age faded perhaps the quickest, which allowed Neolithic Farmer processes to be undertaken in small but significant steps.

Moves towards full-farming went through ever-improving steps being taken towards the creation of civilisation, most notably during the Natufian period. The subsequent Khiamian accelerated the process as an early phase of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (abbreviated to PPNA). In turn the PPNA evolved into the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B culture (or PPNB).

The Sultanian was a sub-culture or regional variant of the PPNB. It was centred around the Jordan river valley and southern Levant, with a type site at the ancient city of Jericho in today's Palestinian West Bank. Other sites include Netiv HaGdud, El-Khiam, Hatoula, and Nahal Oren.

This culture's tools and other artefacts can be seen as being a development of the Khiamian, with the El Khiam lithic point of the Khiamian culture remaining relevant as part of the assemblage, although microliths disappeared in favour of bifacial core knapped stone tools, alongside axes and adzes.

This period witnessed the appearance of the first real villages in this region, alongside a marked hierarchy of site sizes. Its distribution is confined to low-lying areas, especially around the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, as well as the western base of the central mountain ridge. Sites have been located in well-watered areas, mainly adjacent to springs and ponds, and on alluvial fans upon which soil was being replenished by erosion further up-stream.

Circular housing construction continued, but innovations were appearing in terms of building materials, such as the wattle-and-daub walls which also appeared across large areas of Anatolia, and mud brick walls in some areas. Changes also occurred in terms of settlement intensity, with occupational layers becoming increasingly influenced by human interaction.

The first clear evidence emerged for communal constructional endeavours, largely in the form of the retaining wall, cultic towers, and associated storage installations at Jericho. Artistic representations evolved, with the appearance of clay figurines and the human figure, mainly female, taking precedence over the animal representations of earlier hunter-gatherer cultures. Continuity was reflected by post-mortem skull removal, as was the case with the broader cultural zone.

At the subsistence level, waterfowl and migratory birds had largely replaced the previous intensive exploitation of medium-sized mammals. Indirect evidence for cereal and legume cultivation has also been found. Actual domestication, however, did not occur in adjacent regions, such as at Tel Aswad, until towards the end of the period. What remained important though was the intensive collection of wild crops to be used as food supplements.

The organisation of the region's social system probably underwent certain changes in the face of increased community sizes. In the south, sites are almost totally absent since conditions there were particularly harsh. However, the small, seasonal occupation at Abu Madi I in the southern Sinai high mountains may represent vestigial, Harifian-related populations attempting to continue a traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle through the adoption of a few Khiamian traits.

The Sultanian represents part of an extensive interaction network, one which extended from the Dead Sea region to the middle Euphrates and beyond, to the Tigris and Zagros foothills. Obsidian from central Anatolia reached the southern Levant from this time onwards, already having appeared sporadically even in the final Natufian and Harifian.

Near East Kingdoms

Early Cultures

Images and text copyright © all contributors mentioned on this page. An original king list page for the History Files.