Looking Closely (Paperback)

Soviet archaeological research in southern Turkmenistan revealed a series of small Late Neolithic and Aeneolithic villages strung along the streams that emerge from the Kopet Dag and water the narrow foothill zone separating the mountains from the Kara Kum desert. A commonly accepted premise of their work was that these communities garnered their technological knowledge if not their populations from regions to the south and west in present-day Iran.

Since 2010 we have reinvestigated one of these sites, the small Late Neolithic (ca. 6200-5600 BCE) and early Aeneolithic (ca. 4800-4350 BCE) village of Monjukli Depe. Our research examines microhistories of cultural techniques as a source of insights into long-term and spatially extensive change as well as internal variations and similarities in material practices. This volume presents results of this work. A Bayesian modeling of 14C dates demonstrates a long hiatus between the Neolithic and Aeneolithic strata of the site as well as a hitherto unattested very early Aeneolithic phase (“Meana Horizon”). A sequence of densely built, well preserved Aeneolithic houses exhibits marked similarities to earlier Neolithic architecture in the region. Despite overall standardized plans, the houses reveal significant variations in internal features and practices. Similar flexibility within a set of common dispositions is evident in burial practices. Very limited quantities of pottery offer a stark contrast to the frequent occurrence of spindle whorls, indicating a substantial production of thread, and to a large and varied assemblage of clay tokens. A wide variety of fire installations attests to routinized handling of fire, which did not prevent at least one building from succumbing to a conflagration. Animal herding was heavily based on sheep and goats, while cattle figured prominently in feasts.

The Meana tradition at Monjukli Depe exhibits significant structural similarities to other early village societies in Western Asia and will make this volume of interest to scholars working on similar times and contexts.

Table of Contents

i. Table of contents
ii. List of figures
iii. List of tables
iv. Preface – Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck

1. Introduction to the Project
Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck

2. Stratigraphy and Settlement Layout
Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck

3. Chronological Modeling for Monjukli Depe and the Kopet Dag Region
Ilia Heit

4. The House as Process: A Biography of Building 10 in Monjukli Depe
Vera Egbers

5. “Fire is a Good Servant but a Bad Master” – The Burnt House 14 at Monjukli Depe
Hana Kubelková

6. The Fire Installations from Monjukli Depe: Indicators for Social and Technological Change
Julia Schönicke

7. Remains of the Feast Days? A Comparative Study of Faunal Remains from Aeneolithic Monjukli Depe
Jana Eger

8. Dealing with the Dead in Aeneolithic Monjukli Depe: Norms and Handlungsräume in Burial Practices
Nolwen Rol

9. Demography and Pathology at Monjukli Depe
Dawnie Wolfe Steadman

10. The Pottery from Monjukli Depe and its Visual Affordance
Julia Schönicke

11. The Spindle Whorls from Monjukli Depe
Arnica Keßeler

12. Narrowing Down the Real World: Zoomorphic Figurines from Monjukli Depe
Jana Eger

13. The Tokens from Monjukli Depe
Julia Daitche

14. Conclusion: Looking Closely, Looking Back
Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck

Bibliography

Susan Pollock is currently professor at the Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie at the Freie Universität Berlin. She previously held a position as Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY. She has longstanding research interests in the village and early state societies of Western Asia and has conducted field projects in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey as well as Turkmenistan.

Her recent work has involved much more recent periods, with field projects on sites of the 20th century in and around Berlin. She researches processes of subjectivation, commensality and food-related practices, political economy, and feminist approaches to the past.

She is the author of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden that Never Was, editor of Between Feasts and Daily Meals. Toward an Archaeology of Commensal Spaces, and co-editor (with Reinhard Bernbeck and Kamyar Abdi) of The 2003 Excavations at Tol-e Baši, Iran: Social Life in a Neolithic Village.

Reinhard Bernbeck is professor at the Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie at the Freie Universität Berlin. Previously, he taught at Bryn Mawr College and in the Department of Anthropology at Binghamton University.

Apart from the work in Turkmenistan reported here, he has pursued fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, and more recently in Germany, where he has worked on sites of conflict from the last century. He has a long-standing interest in the political and ideological dimensions of archaeology, as well as in the emergence of social inequalities.

He has authored several monographs, among them Theorien in der Archäologie (1997) and recently Materielle Spuren des nationalsozialistischen Terrors (2017). He has co-edited numerous books, including Ideologies in Archaeology (with Randall H. McGuire, 2011), Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology (with Ruth Van Dyke, 2015), and Interpreting the Late Neolithic in Upper Mesopotamia (with Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Jana Rogasch, 2013).

Birgül Öğüt studied Near Eastern Archaeology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich. She is currently completing her doctorate at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin on the macrostone implements from the Aenolithic occupation of Monjukli Depe.

She worked as a research assistant in a project at Gohar Tepe, Iran, based at the LMU Munich and in the Monjukli Depe project at the FU Berlin. In addition, she has taken part in excavations in Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Her research fields include the Iron Age iconography of the storm god, the ceramics of central and southeastern Anatolia, figurines and ceramics of the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Iran and Central Asia, and studies of stone tools and phytoliths.