Tell Abu Hureyra

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Tell Abu Hureyra was a Neolithic settlement in what is now Syria. It lay some 120 km east of Aleppo on the right, the south bank of the Euphrates. The settlement remains were 1972/1973 exposed by Andrew Moore in a rescue excavation, immediately prior to flooding by the Assad reservoir.

Here are several settlement phases were detected:

• Layers of the Natufian, 11500-10000 BP. The settlement in the total are unlikely to have lived more than 100 to 200 people, consisted of a few sunken round huts made ​​of wood and other perishable materials. These were later replaced by single storey buildings. The settlement seems to have been inhabited throughout the year. The residents were initially hunters and gatherers and ate mostly of gazelles and wild grain. Were collected, among other nuts and seeds of bulrush ( Scirpus maritimus / tuberosus ), wild lentils, wild pistachio ( Pistacia atlantica) and Gänsefußgewächsen.

The loss of wildlife and the disappearance of many plants in climate change ( Younger Dryas ) forced the residents may look to plants such as rye (Secale cereale L. subsp. Vavilovii ( Grossh. ) Zhuk. Iranicum Kobyl or p. ) To domesticate, the previously has not grown. The grains were AMS dated. Thus, the Neolithic began in the Levant.

• Intermediate period 10000-9400 BP with lightly-built houses, which were similar to those of Abu Hureyra I.

• The second settlement (Abu Hureyra 2), which was created after a settlement gap of several millennia ( 9400-7000 BP), was ten times as great as the first in about 15 hectares and is one of the largest settlements of the time. It consisted of rectangular mud-brick houses. The human bones indicate heavy physical work, probably the ordering of fields. They cultivated emmer wheat, bread wheat, durum wheat, barley, chick peas and broad beans. Around 5900/5800 BC the settlement was abandoned.