Ubaid period

Pottery jar from Late Ubaid Period

Nippur

Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.[2]

Ur

In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known

period on the alluvium although it is likely earlier periods
exist obscured under the alluvium.[3] In the south it has
a very long duration between about 6500 and 3800 BC
when it is replaced by the Uruk period [4]

Uruk
Borsippa

In North Mesopotamia the period runs only between

about 5300 and 4300 BC.[4] It is preceded by the Halaf
period and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period and succeeded by the Late Chalcolithic period.

Babylon
Sippar
Khafajah
Eshnunna

1 History of research

Eridu

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 dened.[5]

Larsa
Umma

2 Dating and periodization

Girsu

Map of Iraq showing important sites that were occupied The Ubaid period is divided into three principal phases:
during the Ubaid period (clickable map)
The Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BC)[1] is a
Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu[6] (53004700
prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives
BC), a phase limited to the extreme south of Iraq,
from Tell al-`Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of
on what was then the shores of the Persian Gulf.
Ubaid period material was conducted initially by Henry
This phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra
1

6 NOTES

culture to the north, saw the establishment of the 4 Society

rst permanent settlement south of the 5 inch rainfall isohyet. These people pioneered the growing of The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis
grains in the extreme conditions of aridity, thanks to of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised social
the high water tables of Southern Iraq.[7]
stratication and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of Trans-egalitarian competi Ubaid 2 [6] (48004500 BC), after the type site tive households, in which some fall behind as a result of
of the same name, saw the development of exten- downward social mobility. Morton Fried and Elman Sersive canal networks from major settlements. Irri- vice have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise
gation agriculture, which seems to have developed of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads
rst at Choga Mami (47004600 BC) and rapidly of kin groups linked in some way to the administration
spread elsewhere, form the rst required collec- of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for
tive eort and centralised coordination of labour in mediating intra-group conict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, perMesopotamia.[8]
haps instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive
[9] democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved
Ubaid 3/4, sometimes called Ubaid I and Ubaid II
through a council of ones peers, were no longer sucient
In the period from 45004000 BC saw a period
for the needs of the local community.
of intense and rapid urbanisation with the Ubaid
culture spread into northern Mesopotamia and was Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear
adopted by the Halaf culture.[10][11] Ubaid artifacts connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle
spread also all along the Arabian littoral, showing Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes
the growth of a trading system that stretched from been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to
the origins of Sumerian civilisation. Whatever the ethnic
the Mediterranean coast through to Oman.[12][13]
origins of this group, this culture saw for the rst time a
clear tripartite social division between intensive subsisThe archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifa- tence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming
cial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Ara- from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists depenbia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BC, just after the dent upon their herds, and hunter-sher folk of the Araphase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation.[14] bian littoral, living in reed huts.
At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert
Stein and zbal describe the Near East oikumene that
nomadism, and there is no evidence of human presence
resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the coloin the area for approximately 1000 years, the so-called
nial expansionism of the later Uruk period. A contexDark Millennium.[15] This might be due to the 5.9 kilotual analysis comparing dierent regions shows that the
year event at the end of the Older Peron.
Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful
spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and
transformed supercial elements of Ubaid material cul3 Description
ture into locally distinct expressions.[17]
The earliest evidence for sailing has been found in
Ubaid culture is characterized by large village settleKuwait indicating that sailing was known by the Ubaid
ments, characterized by multi-roomed rectangular mud3 period.[18]
brick houses and the appearance of the rst 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 5 See also
of less than 1 hectare. Domestic equipment included a
distinctive ne quality bu or greenish colored pottery
Ubaid house
decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint;
tools such as sickles were often made of hard red clay
Tell Zeidan
in the south. But in the north, stone and sometimes metal
were used.
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]

6 Notes
[1] Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham Beyond the Ubaid:
Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric
Societies of the Middle East (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, Number 63) The Oriental Institute of the

University of Chicago (2010) ISBN 978-1-885923-660 p.2, at http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/

saoc/saoc63.html; Radiometric data suggest that the
whole Southern Mesopotamian Ubaid period, including
Ubaid 0 and 5, is of immense duration, spanning nearly
three millennia from about 6500 to 3800 B.C.
[2] Hall, Henry R. and Woolley, C. Leonard. 1927. Al'Ubaid. Ur Excavations 1. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[3] Adams, Robert MCC. and Wright, Henry T. 1989. 'Concluding Remarks in Henrickson, Elizabeth and Thuesen,
Ingolf (eds.) Upon This Foundation - The Ubaid Reconsidered. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. pp.
451-456.
[4] Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham. 2010. 'Deconstructing the Ubaid' in Carter, Robert A. and Philip, Graham (eds.) Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle
East. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago. p. 2.

[16] Pollock, Susan (1999). Ancient Mesopotamia: The Eden

that Never Was. New York: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-57334-3.
[17] Stein, Gil J.; Rana zbal (2006). A Tale of Two
Oikumenai: Variation in the Expansionary Dynamics of
Ubaid and Uruk Mesopotamia. In Elizabeth C. Stone.
Settlement and Society: Ecology, urbanism, trade and technology in Mesopotamia and Beyond (Robert McC. Adams
Festschrift). Santa Fe: SAR Press. pp. 356370.
[18] Carter, Robert (2006). Boat remains and maritime trade
in the Persian Gulf during the sixth and fth millennia BC
(PDF). Antiquity 80 (307).

7 References
Martin, Harriet P. (1982). The Early Dynastic Cemetery at al-'Ubaid, a Re-Evaluation. Iraq
44 (2): 145185. doi:10.2307/4200161. JSTOR
4200161.

[5] Matthews, Roger (2002), Secrets of the dark mound:

Jemdet Nasr 1926-1928, Iraq Archaeological Reports 6,
Warminster: BSAI, ISBN 0-85668-735-9

Moore, A. M. T. (2002). Pottery Kiln Sites

at al 'Ubaid and Eridu.
Iraq 64: 6977.
doi:10.2307/4200519. JSTOR 4200519.

[6] Kurt, Amlie Ancient near East V1 (Routledge History of

the Ancient World) Routledge (31 Dec 1996) ISBN 9780-415-01353-6 p.22

Bogucki, Peter (1990). The Origins of Human Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 1-57718-112-3.

[7] Roux, Georges Ancient Iraq (Penguin, Harmondsworth)

[8] Wittfogel, Karl (1981) Oriental Despotism: Comparative Study of Total Power (Vintage Books)
[9] Issar, A; Mattanyah Zohar Climate change: environment
and civilization in the Middle East Springer; 2nd edition
(20 Jul 2004) ISBN 978-3-540-21086-3 p.87
[10] Susan Pollock,Reinhard Bernbeck (2009). Archaeologies
of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives. p. 190.
[11] Peter M. M. G. Akkermans, Glenn M. Schwartz (2003).
The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex HunterGatherers to Early Urban Societies (c.16,000-300 BC). p.
157.
[12] Bibby, Georey (2013), Looking for Dilmun (Stacey
International)
[13] Crawford, Harriet E.W.(1998), Dilmun and its Gulf
Neighbours (Cambridge University Press)
[14] Parker, Adrian G. et al. (2006). A record of Holocene
climate change from lake geochemical analyses in southeastern Arabia (PDF). Quaternary Research 66 (3): 465
476. doi:10.1016/j.yqres.2006.07.001.
[15] Uerpmann, M. (2002).
The Dark Millennium
Remarks on the nal Stone Age in the Emirates and
Oman. In Potts, D.; al-Naboodah, H.; Hellyer, P. Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates. Proceedings of
the First International Conference on the Archaeology of
the U.A.E. London: Trident Press. pp. 7481. ISBN
1-900724-88-X.

Charvt, Petr (2002). Mesopotamia Before History. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-41525104-4.
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.

8 External links
Stone Statue from Tell al-'Ubaid - British Museum
Copper Bull gure from Tell al-'Ubaid - British Museum
Recent (2008) site photographs - British Museum

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Ubaid period Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubaid%20period?oldid=654751002 Contributors: Bryan Derksen, Djnjwd, Rursus,

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