Ubaid period
The Obed- time (also Obed- horizon or English Ubaid culture ) is an archaeological period of the late Chalcolithic in Mesopotamia. It lasted from about 5500-3500 BC
History of Research
The Ubaid period is named after the archaeological site of Tell el - Obed, a settlement mound (tell) in Mesopotamia.
Chronology
The Obedkultur took about 5500-3500 BC Defines the Obed- phase through the ceramic. Your ornament consists of dark bands running around and interposed therebetween patterns. The pattern repertoire is compared with earlier periods considerably simplified. The execution of the drawings suggests the use of a rotary countertop ( Tournette ), but still no rotating potter's wheel. The pottery was first produced only in the south of Babylonia. Later it spread all over the Middle East from up to Mersin ( Cilicia ), Syria and eastern Anatolia.
A distinction is made on the basis of the ornament and the coloring of ceramic four periods:
- Eridu pottery: about 5500 BC
- Obed I: approximately 5300 BC
- Obed II: about 4800 BC
- Obed III: about 4400 BC
- Obed IV: about 3900 BC
Then the oldest stage of Urukperiode begins.
Settlements
In this period, agriculture has been operated with the aid of artificial irrigation in central Mesopotamia. The best-known settlements of this period are Eridu, Ur and the eponymous Tell el- Obed. It occurs on a house with a new floor plan, the central hall house. Here was a central space as a functional center and distributor to the adjacent rooms. Bitumen residues as fragments of sealing material for ships that are over 7,000 years old, archaeologists have in as- Sabiyah (Kuwait ), a Neolithic village discovered at the edge of a lagoon. Presumably there existed a dock for Mesopotamian merchants. There is some evidence that the ceramics of Obed, which was found along the Arabian Peninsula to Bahrain and Qatar and on the other shore of the Persian Gulf, over the sea and is not transported by land.
Social structure
Also new is expressing itself in different buildings status differences appear to be. Likewise, there were central community buildings that were obviously not used for the cult. Particularly instructive here is the completely excavated Tell Abbot. It is very likely that the development of a political and / or religious elite had already taken place, had thus been a hierarchy.
For the first time, have regional centers seem to have emerged. So you found in Tepe Gaura three large central buildings (possibly "temple" ), which could not possibly be determined only for a settlement of this size. It is believed that this place was the religious center of the region. Overall, the finding is due to the lack of other meaningful findings so far still incomplete and fuzzy. Only in Susiana, one can detect a nationally cultic center with great certainty, as it has here examined a larger area and found in smaller places no religious buildings as in Susa.
Economy
In the economic control mechanisms already been applied, which can be proven in a large range of patterns by the finds of counters and stamp seals, which were mainly found in terracottas of small humans and animals. The system of irrigation canals - but in rainfed agriculture - has been demonstrated.
Spread
Why this culture was so widespread in comparison to their predecessors, is controversial. For a long time it was assumed that the Ubaid people emigrated. More recent theories assume a simultaneous, converging development at different population groups. Not influenced each other, but independently, the socio -economic structures could have developed in parallel and expressed, caused more by the cultural exchange than by immigrant groups.
Simultaneous cultures
The development in the Iranian plateau is similar in parts. The pottery was painted as in the other parts of the Near East - but the patterns were mostly figurative than elsewhere. However, the central hall house has not been established. Here already appears the traditional connection between Mesopotamia and Iran to begin. On the one hand, there was always in the following years, a cultural connection, at the same time each independent development.