Watkins_Göbekli_Tepe_Jerf_el_Ahmar.pdf

8/17/2019 Watkins_Göbekli_Tepe_Jerf_el_Ahmar.pdf

1/10

15

A significant change occurred at thebeginning of the Neolithic in southwestAsia as far as architecture is concerned.By contrast with preceding periods, com-munities engaged in a great deal of effortand concern for the architecture of hous-es, communal buildings, and the organi-zation of whole settlements. There wereundoubtedly important social factors atwork in the new, permanent, sedentaryvillage communities that emerged in theEpi-palaeolithic period, but there were

more significant cognitive and culturaldevelopments that enabled people todevelop new frameworks of symbolicrepresentation that were worked outin concrete terms in buildings, theirfittings, their use, and the planning ofsettlements. I propose that systems ofnon-linguistic, external symbolic rep-resentation and storage were devisedaround the beginning of the Neolithicperiod, several thousand years beforethe first proto-scripts. In southwest Asia,

there was a fortuitous coincidence ofthe beginnings of sedentism and perma-nent villages on the one hand and theco-evolution of cognitive and culturalfaculties for external symbolic storageon the other hand. Architecture and thebuilt environment, as we know, frameand help to form our perceptions. Theyform “theatres of memory”, the arenawithin which social and other relationsare played out. And the settlements ofthe earliest Neolithic in south-west Asia

show how, for the first time in humanhistory, people were discovering thispower to form, conceptualise and sym-bolise their living environment. Livingin a built environment for the first timeconstituted inhabiting symbolic worldsof their own construction, opening theway to the formation of new, larger,richer social worlds.

“La révolution

des symboles au Néolithique”

My starting point is with the work of Jacques Cauvin (1994; revised andupdated English edition 2001). The

beginning of the Neolithic in south-westAsia, Cauvin argued, presents quite dif-ferently from the immediately preceding

Epipalaeolithic. For him, it was “la révo-lution des symboles au Néolithique”, andthe dominant symbols were of a femaledivinity and divine male principle. Eachyear since Cauvin first published theseideas, and particularly each year sincehis death in 2001, we have seen the dis-covery of more and more sites with richsculptural imagery, and we can now seethat there is more symbolic representa-tion than just the figuring of a male andfemale pair of divinities. And more andmore of this rich repertoire of imagery iscontained within monumental architec-tural contexts. I want to develop a theory

Architecture and the symbolic construction of new worlds

Trevor WatkinsUniversity of Edinburgh

Figure 1:Sculpted monoliths suc-from Göbekli Tepe have

led to the interpretationof the site as a cult centrerelated to the economicgeographer’s notion of a“central place”.Illustration by RainaStebelsky

15


2/10

6

concerning the use of architecture inthe early Neolithic, whether for singlebuildings or for structuring whole set-tlements. I want to develop the thesisthat the realization of the potentialof architecture for constituting andembodying cultural ideas that framedthe way that people lived was a phe-

nomenon that makes the people of theearliest Neolithic in an important sensethe first people to be substantially likeourselves. It needs to be made clear atthe outset that I am not trying to claimthat culture in the Neolithic period wascategorically different from culture inthe preceding Epipalaeolithic period.The evolution of human cognition andits employment of culture was a grad-ual process, but, around the beginningof the Holocene period, the evolution-

ary process passed through a criticallyimportant threshold in the emergenceof fully symbolic culture, opening theway to a rapid florescence of richlysymbolic cultural worlds. First, let’s be clear on the sequenceand the chronology. From the transi-tion between the Upper Palaeolithicand the Epipalaeolithic periods(around 20,000 years ago, and beforePeriod 0 in the system developed by Jacques Cauvin and his colleagues at

the Maison de l’Orient in Lyon), somehunter-gatherer societies had begunto develop new settlement and sub-sistence strategies. These involvedincreased reliance on stored harvestsof pulses, cereals and other grasses.Greater reliance on stored harvestsimplied longer periods of residence inone base-camp. Arguably from the veryearliest Epipalaeolithic (for example,at Ohalo II – Nadel, & Hershkovitz1991; Nadel, this volume; Nadel &

Werker 1999; Kislev, Nadel, & Carmi1992), some hunter-gatherer communi-ties were resident at a single locationwithin an immediately accessible ter-ritory of diverse ecological zones thatoffered richly varied food resources. Bythe last phase of the Epipalaeolithic,Period 1, equivalent to the Natufian inIsrael, Jordan and Syria, it is possible topoint to a number of communities thathad become fully or effectively seden-tary, living in permanent village com-munities and permanent built environ-ments, employing the proto-types ofsymbolic architecture.

Building design, settlement planning

While there are interesting signs inPeriod 1 of what was to come, as Cauvinhas argued, from the beginning of theNeolithic, Period 2, equivalent to thePPNA of the Levantine region, therewas an explosion of symbolic activity.Communities of the earliest Neolithic

show a great deal of cultural concernwith the architecture of buildings andthe organization of whole settlements.This was slowly driven into my con-sciousness through the experience ofexcavating Qermez Dere in north Iraqin the late 1980s (Watkins et al. 1991;Watkins et al. 1995; Watkins 1990, 1992,1996). The small settlement at QermezDere had been laid out in two contrastinghalves that performed complementaryfunctions. Part way through its life, the

village was re-formed, but once again intwo complementary halves. This time,the southern half of the site was used forhouses that were dug into what had beena dumping area for all sorts of debris andwaste in the earlier stage of the history ofthe village. The buildings were extraor-dinary for the care with which they werebuilt and the persistent maintenanceand renovation that was lavished onthem. One house, which we carefullydisassembled over several seasons of

investigation, had been rebuilt at leastthree times. And each phase showedrepeated replastering and modificationof the internal details. Impressed bythe expensively repeated rebuildings,elaborate care expended in their main-tenance, and the pairs of nonstructuralpillar-like features that each contained, Isuggested that these houses were morethan shelters from the elements; rather,they reminded me of the ways in whichwe in our cultural traditions have made

our houses into “homes” (Watkins 1990).“Home”, I should not have to remindyou, is a cultural or social construct – anallusion to the work of the Americanphilosopher John Searle (1995), and hisdiscussion of the construction of socialreality. Much more dramatic is the site of Jerfal-Ahmar, on the Euphrates in northSyria (Stordeur 1998a; 1998b; 1999; 2000;Stordeur & Jammous 1995; Stordeur etal. 1996; Stordeur et al. 1997; Stordeuret al. 2000). The site belongs to Period2, the earliest aceramic Neolithic period,coming to an end at the transition to

Living in

a built environment

for the first time

constituted inhabiting

symbolic worlds of

their own construction,

opening the way to

the formation of new,

larger, richer

social worlds.

16


3/10

17

Period 3, the beginning of the so-calledPPNB of the Levant. Early in the his-tory of the village, there existed a large,fully subterranean building (EA 30) in anopen space at the centre of the village.The floor of the structure was more than2 m below the surface, and the ellipticalbuilding ranged between 6.8 and 7.4 m

across. Stordeur describes it as “commu-nautaire ”, a communal or public build-ing, and argues that it was “ polyvalent ”,or multi-functional. Stordeur believesthat it was at the same time a communalfood storage facility and a building withreligious functions, where meetings andrituals may have taken place. At the endof its life, it was emptied, a human headwas placed in it, and in the central areaa decapitated body was spread-eagled.And then the structure was destroyed

by fire, its burning roof collapsing on thedecapitated body. Finally, the structurewas obliterated as the cavity left by itsdestruction was filled with more than300 m3 of soil. Stordeur (2000: 31, 32,36) has compared this building with avery similar building at Tell Mureybet,“maison 47”, of very similar date. Atthe very end of the excavations, as thewaters were rising, a second, similar, cel-lular building (EA 7) was found, datinglater in the stratigraphic sequence of the

eastern part of the settlement. It seemsto have been the replacement for EA30. Two human skulls had been depos-ited in a recess at the base of one of thepost-holes for the posts that supportedits roof, a foundation deposit that mir-rored the skull and corpse that had beenplaced in EA 30 at the end of its life.

In the western part of the settlement,at a later date again, another large sub-terranean building was constructed (EA53) on the same general scale as the

earlier buildings, but internally quitedifferent. Like EA 30, it was a complexconstruction with a double skin of walls,the inner of which included a numberof vertical timber posts. The circularinterior had a bench running around thewall, and the bench had a kerb formedof large limestone slabs, decorated witha frieze of pendant triangles in relief.Six large roof support posts of fir ( Abies),which must have been brought fromsome distance, were set in post-holesat regular intervals in the kerb. Finally,Stordeur (2000: 40 & fig. 11) mentionsbriefly another, similar structure that

was found only as the waters rose intothe excavations. It, too, had a kerb ofgreat limestone slabs, each with a friezeof pendant triangles along its top edge.One of the slabs was also carved withan additional design that seems to havebeen a schematic representation of aheadless human body. And that slab was

flanked by two, tall stelae topped withvulture-like heads and a “collar” of pen-dant triangles at the “neck”.

And very recently, excavation of anoth-er early aceramic Neolithic site on theEuphrates in north Syria, upstream from Jerf al-Ahmar, Tell ‘Abr 3, has begunto reveal a further example of a cen-tral, communal, circular building (Yartah2004). The communal building at Tell‘Abr, of which only a fragment survived,was between 10 and 12 m in diameter,

more than 1.5 m below ground level(but, allowing for the above-ground wall,about 2 m from floor to roof), and it hadbeen burnt as part of its abandonment.Like Building EA30 at Jerf al-Ahmar,the Tell ‘Abr building had a “bench”around the interior, fronted by a “kerb”of large, limestone slabs. At the front ofthe kerb, there was a circle of woodenposts that had supported a roof structure,collapsed and burnt mud from which wasfound on the floor. Several slabs carved

with simple, linear geometric designs orschematically drawn animals were foundset on edge between the posts and infront of the kerb. Structured settlements and central,communal buildings are not confinedto Syria. A cluster of remarkable sites insoutheast Turkey has been brought intothe limelight in recent years. AlthoughRobert Braidwood and Halet Çambelbegan the excavations at Çayönü Tepesiin the 1960s, the extraordinary, non-

domestic buildings in the centre of thesettlement only began to be brought intofocus in the 1990s (Özdogan 1995; 1999;Özdogan & Özdogan 1990). Anothersmall settlement, Nevalı Çori, was exca-vated before being drowned by the lakebehind a major dam. It had monumen-tal domestic architecture like ÇayönüTepesı, but attention has focused onthe subterranean cult-building at thecentre of the settlement (Hauptmann1993, 1999). The most remarkable ofall the sites, however, is Göbekli Tepe(Schmidt 1998; 2001; 2003; 2004; 2005a;2005b).

Structured settlements

and central,

communal buildings

are not confined

to Syria. A cluster of

remarkable sites in

southeast Turkey has

been brought into the

limelight in recent years.

17


4/10

8

Göbekli Tepe is a mound about 300 min diameter and more than 15 m high,situated on a prominent ridge in the

limestone hills that overlook the plain ofHarran, near Urfa. It is not a settlementmound in the normal sense, for it has(so far) produced no domestic housesor anything that resembles the normalstratigraphic accumulation of surfacesand occupation debris. The matrix of themound seems to be a vast accumulationof deliberately deposited broken stonedebris with an admixture of occupa-tion debris, including large amounts ofchipped stone, considerable amounts

of animal bone and a small amount ofcarbonised plant materials. Since themound is composed of a great amountof domestic refuse, but is not a settle-ment site itself, it would be natural tolook for settlement around the mound.All around the mound there are featurescut into the bedrock, such as postholepatterns, cisterns (?), large cylindricalfeatures and quarries from which stonemonoliths have been cut, and densecarpets of chipped stone. But these fea-

tures do not constitute a settlement,and extensive survey work has foundnone closer than about 15 km, under thecentre of the old city of Urfa (Yeni Yol- Bucak & Schmidt 2003; Çelik 2000a).

The mound seems to be full of subter-ranean structures, excavated to depthsbetween 2 and 5 m into the matrix, andformed by massive, dry-stone retainingwalls. Every structure so far excavatedhas been found to have been deliberate-ly and completely refilled with the stonymatrix material at the end of its “life”.Geophysical survey indicates that thereare more than a dozen further subterra-

nean structures just below the surface ofthe mound. The latest structures, datingto the later aceramic Neolithic, similarin date, therefore, to the Nevalı Çoriand Çayönü Tepesı structures, containthe smallest monoliths with the leastamount of figurative decoration. Theearlier structures are larger, sub-circular,

and contain more monoliths that arethemselves much larger (up to 5 m tall)and more elaborately carved. In eachenclosure, there is an opposed pair ofT-shaped limestone monoliths, and theplaces where they were quarried can beseen on the eroded limestone surfacesall around the mound itself. In the ear-lier structures, more of the monolithswere erected around the perimeter ofthe enclosure, set at right angles tothe retaining wall with their bases in a

stone-built bench (fig.2). Some of theearly structures can be seen to have beenrebuilt. Their second form was erectedwithin the earlier retaining wall, thespace between the old and the new wallsbeing filled with broken stone debris.Some of the T-shaped monoliths seem tohave been re-sited, their sculptured ani-mals partly or completely hidden wherethey have been built into (or perhapsembodied within) a retaining wall. As atNevalı Çori, there are other sculptured

stones that have been found where theywere dumped. The T-shaped monolithswere intended to be anthropomorphic,as they share the same features as thosefrom Nevalı Çori, and one or two havearms and hands carved in very low relief.The raised relief sculpted onto the sur-faces of the monoliths is almost entirelyof wild (and dangerous) animals, largebirds, snakes, lizards, and scorpions. How Göbekli Tepe is related to thecommunities that built it and made its

sculpted monoliths is as yet unknown.Schmidt (2003; 2005a; 2005b) has begunto think of the site as a cult centre thatis in some sense related to the economicgeographer’s notion of a “central place”.He has also introduced to his discussionreference to the thinking of the influ-ential urban theorist Lewis Mumford(1961), who speculated that the originalcities arose where a permanent settle-ment was established around a centralshrine. While we have so few cult cen-tres like Göbekli Tepe, and while we stillknow relatively little about the uniquesite and its functioning, it is impos-

Figure 2: The raised reliefs of

the Steinzeit-Tempel(stone age ‘temple’)at Göbekli Tepe are

almost entirely of wild(and dangerous) animals,

large birds, snakes, lizards,and scorpions.

Illustration by

Raina Stebelsky

18


5/10

19

sible to define its role in the settlementlandscape – which is one that is veryunfamiliar to us, whether from personalexperience of reading in the anthropo-logical literature. Setting those difficul-ties aside, we can at least appreciate thatthe sites mentioned (and Schmidt 2005bis careful to list them more thoroughly,

document what has been reported, andgive the appropriate publication details)give prominent and central positionsto buildings of elaborate architecturaldesign, with which are associated clearindications of imagery and symbolism,whether in visual form or in the shape ofuse for ritual activities.

In a paper parallel to Schmidt’s(2005b), Rollefson (2005) briefly reviewsthe evidence for ritual architecture andritual centres in the southern Levant,

fortunately relieving this author of theneed to document further the explosionof symbolic architecture that began inthe final Epipalaeolithic, and continuedthrough the aceramic Neolithic in thatregion. Rollefson attributes the growthof ritual activity to population increaseboth within individual settlements andin the overall density of human popula-tion within the landscape. He subscribesto the theory of religion as the social“glue” holding societies together.

While there is general agreement now-adays that what Cauvin (1994) called “larévolution des symboles” occurred at thebeginning of the Holocene (presaged, ofcourse, in the Epi-palaeolithic period),there is a poor ability to explain whyit should have happened then and notearlier. In what follows, I shall be turn-ing Rollefson’s evolutionary perspectiveon its head. He takes a classic ecologicalline, supposing that larger co-residentcommunities and higher population den-

sity in general required adaptations thattook the form of socio-cultural mecha-nisms which served as the sociological“glue” holding together the larger, morestressed communities of the aceram-ic Neolithic period. In his preliminarydiscussion of the deficiencies of mosttheories of religion, Pascal Boyer simplyundermines the “social glue” theory(Boyer 2001: 26-8). I argue that co-evo-lutionary processes developed humancognition and culture towards a fullysymbolic stage of culture, and that thatopened the way for large-scale, perma-nently co-resident communities to oper-

ate within wide-area networks. Havingfirst faced the challenge of devising newways to conceptualize their condition asmembers of sedentary, village communi-ties in symbolic form, these hunter-gath-erers quickly turned to the explorationof the culturally rich possibilities of thisnew way of life. Following the leads of

Ian Hodder (1990) and Peter Wilson(1988), we may call the result of this co-evolutionary process in southwest Asia“domestication”.

Domestication

In his book The Domestication of the Human Species, based on a cross-culturalknowledge of ethnographically docu-mented hunter-gatherers, the anthro-pologist Peter Wilson argued for a cleardifference between the traditional,

small-scale, mobile hunter-gatherer bandsocieties and sedentary hunter-gatherersocieties, who live in permanent build-ings in village societies. Wilson calledthe former type the “open society”,while sedentary hunter-gatherer societ-ies, like village-farming societies, arecalled “domesticated” societies (Wilson1988). He considered “domestication”in the same sort of terms as Ian Hodder(1990) in his book The Domesticationof Europe: Structure and Contingency in

Neolithic Societies. Domestication is theeffect of living in houses, living in vil-lages. In “open societies” people wereconstantly aware of each other withinthe group. He argued that domesticationwas a significant event in human evolu-tion because it challenged that natural,evolved dependence on paying constantattention to one another. On the otherhand, living in houses grouped in vil-lages offered the potential for structur-ing people’s thinking.

Wilson argues that the way that weconduct ourselves is as much in responseto sensory inputs as a matter of instincts;thus the adoption of houses and villagelife – domestication – involved newresponses and new thinking, in terms ofthe development of structure in sociallife, the elaboration of thinking aboutstructure in the world, and ways of signi-fying links between structure in domesticlife and structure in the world. Wilson’sanalysis of modern, mobile hunter-gath-erers shows that they rely on uninter-rupted and unimpeded attention, so thateach member of the group is constantly

Domestication is

the effect of

living in houses,

living in villages.

In “open societies”

people were constantly

aware of each other

within the group.

19


6/10

0

aware of the whereabouts of the othersand what they are doing. These “opensocieties” are marked by an emphasison “focus” (Wilson 1988: 31), whilesedentary “domesticated” societies aredistinguished by an emphasis on the“boundary” (Wilson 1988: 57-8). Wilsonwrites : “Architecture is a materializa-

tion of structure, and the adoption ofarchitecture as a permanent feature oflife introduces spatial organization andallocation as an ordering visual dimen-sion” (Wilson 1988: 61). It was naturalfor domesticated societies to form ana-logues between their built environmentand community, between house andhousehold, and between the built envi-ronment that they create and inhabitand the world in which they live. Wilsonintroduces frequent examples of seden-

tary societies for whom the structure oftheir villages and their houses expressesthe structure of their social lives. And,like other anthropologists, Wilson citesexamples of sedentary societies whoseideas about the organization of the cos-mos are modelled in the structuring oftheir houses and their settlement. Inanother recent publication, I have goneon to mention some of the many writersand thinkers who have noted the signifi-cance of the architecture of the house in

the representation of ideas about thestructure of the world (Watkins 2003). However, neither Wilson nor Hoddercan tell us why the emergence of domes-tication occurred when it did, around theend of the Pleistocene and the begin-ning of the Holocene periods. For that,we need to turn to overtly evolution-ary theories concerning the evolution ofhuman cognition and culture.

The co-evolution of mind and culture

The thesis that I want to try and build isthat the cognitive and cultural evolutionof modern humans, Homo sapiens, hadreached a stage where it could readily betriggered into the development of pow-erful new forms of symbolic representa-tion in material form. There are severalcognitive psychologists, linguists andneuro-scientists working on the generalidea of cognitive and cultural co-evolu-tion – a process in which human minds/brains were stimulated into new waysof thinking and representing ideas in a

positive feedback loop where humanminds develop new cultural media that

in turn engender new ways for mindsto think. The most obvious examplesof such cognitive-cultural co-evolution-ary revolutions are the emergence of afull, modern language capacity, and thedevelopment of writing.

Like a number of archaeologists, Ihave found Merlin Donald’s ideas and

arguments extremely stimulating andvery exciting (Donald 1991; 1998; 2001).The essence of Donald’s hypothesisis that the modern human mind hasevolved further and further from theprimate mind by means of a series ofthree major adaptations, each of whichwas driven by the emergence of a newrepresentational system (Donald 1991,conveniently précised in Donald 1998).Each of these new representational sys-tems was added to the already existing

faculties: one did not supplant or replaceanother.

The first representational system toemerge is labelled by Donald “mimeticculture”, dependent on mimesis, or non-verbal action-modelling involving ges-ture including vocal gesturing, non-ver-bal communication, and shared atten-tion. It is very difficult for us to imagine;it was limited and slow, but Donald isemphatic that it constituted the proto-type of human culture, and facilitated

some degree of information storage andtransmission.Language, in the form in which we

know it around our world, was the sec-ond of the modes of representation.Language, Donald explains, gives ushumans a powerful means of explic-it recall from memory, the ability toaddress and organize knowledge, andto make it accessible to further reflec-tion. As I have sought to emphasiseelsewhere (Watkins 2003; 2004; 2005; inpress a; in press b), taking my cue fromTerence Deacon’s book, The Symbolic

Species (Deacon 1997), and as Donaldalso emphasises, full modern languageinvolves much more than the forma-tion of a lexicon, or the emergence ofthe physical ability to speak as modernspeakers do. Crucially, language impliesa facility with symbolic representation. Ifmodern humans have had the cognitiveand cultural capacity to manage the sys-tem of symbolic representation that wecall language, they have had the poten-

tial to devise other modes of symbolicrepresentation, too. The early archaeo-

The essence of

Donald’s hypothesis

is that the

modern human mind

has evolved

further and further

from the primate mind

by means of a series

of three major

adaptations,

each of which was

driven by

the emergence of a new

representational system.

20


7/10

21

This geometric

approach to houses,

combining curvilinear

and straight lines,

should be emphasized,

since it became

part of a tradition,

as possibly evidenced

by later buildings

in Mureybet and

Jerf al-Ahmar.

logical indications of that capacity forsymbolic representation in material formand action antedate the first figurativerepresentations of the European UpperPalaeolithic; they are found associatedwith the newly emerged Homo sapiens inAfrica (D’Errico et al. 2003). However, the greatest change in

human culture has been what Donaldrefers to as the emergence of “theoreticculture”, a mode that is supported bysystems of “external symbolic storage”.And this most recent transformation ofculture has found its full realization inthe use of alphabetic writing systems.Ideas and information encapsulated inexternal symbolic storage systems (thinkof a university library, with shelves fullof archaeological journals and all thevaried monographs) are accessible to

any of us, at any time. We may criticizeor reformulate the information that wefind, and add to it with our own publi-cations for others to synthesise in theirturn. It should not be hard for us to rec-ognize that, while the genetic makeupof our brains may not have changedover the last few generations, centuriesor millennia, the ability to link to anaccumulating external memory store hasafforded our minds cognitive powersthat would not otherwise have been

possible. Donald speaks of our minds ashybrid minds, dependent on their abilityto access external symbolic information.The emergence of external symbolicstorage systems is a cultural and not abiological phenomenon, and it changesthe cognitive working of the humanmind, enabling us to evoke qualitativelynew types of representation. In his more recent book ( A Mind So Rare:The Evolution of Human Consciousness),Donald expands on the ideas of brain-culture co-evolution (Donald 2001).He discusses at length the process of“deep enculturation” in human learn-ing and the development of individu-al consciousness. Deep enculturationdescribes the way that a fully symboliccultural environment directly affects theway that major parts of what Donaldcalls “the executive brain” develop frominfancy. Symbolic culture effectivelywires up functional subsystems in thebrain that would not otherwise exist.

If these ideas have huge implications

for the ways that the minds of peopletoday have learned to operate in the very

different cultural environments withinwhich they developed, they have equal-ly significant implications for the waysthat the minds of prehistoric peopledeveloped within prehistoric culturalenvironments. Following Donald’s logic,cultures that were fully symbolic andminds that operated within fully sym-

bolic cultural contexts are quite differentfrom less than fully symbolic culturesand less than fully symbolically literateminds. As members of today’s Westernarchaeological community, it is easy toappreciate the importance of the writ-ten word as a mode of external symbolicstorage. Because of our education andupbringing with its emphasis on literacyand the printed word, it is less easy forus to appreciate the role of other, non-verbal, non-literate modes of symbolic

representation. Yet, as archaeologists, weought to be aware of the importance ofboth portable artefacts and fixed con-structions and buildings as modes ofsymbolic representation in other cul-tures (and, indeed, in our own cultures).

I take a similar view to that articu-lated by Colin Renfrew in responseto Donald’s view of external symbolicstorage and writing (Renfrew 1998). Onthe one hand, Renfrew rejected theidea of an Upper Palaeolithic revolution

as the beginning of human modernity(Renfrew 1996) and, on the other hand,he thought that Donald’s concern withalphabetic writing as the beginning oftruly effective external symbolic storagemissed a significant earlier revolution.Renfrew emphasised the potential ofnon-verbal, non-literate symbolic cul-ture in constituting modes of symbolicstorage and transmission several millen-nia earlier than the first, non-alphabeticwriting systems. In his recent writing, hehas developed the view that fully sym-bolic material culture, emerging beforethe first writing systems, constitutes afurther significant stage in human cul-tural and cognitive evolution (Renfrew2003), and he calls these ideas a theoryof material engagement (Renfrew 2004).The idea that I wish to develop here andin other recent publications is that archi-tecture is a specially powerful mode ofexternal symbolic storage, that this modeof symbolic representation in architec-tural form was first realised at the end

of the Epipalaeolithic and the beginningof the Neolithic in southwest Asia, and

21


8/10

2

that this realization of the potential ofsymbolic material culture accounts forthe precocity of southwest Asia from thistime on for several thousand years.

The built environment as external

symbolic storage network

The emergence of harvesting, food stor-

age, and sedentary life in village com-munities came at a perfect time to coin-cide with human cognitive and culturalevolution. Communities in southwestAsia began to use material culture inthe same way that they used language.Language is differential, rather than ref-erential. The signs (words) take mean-ing from their ‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’context, in relation to one another. Thesame may be said for architecture. Thebuilt environment of the village offered

an arena within which abstract ideasabout the structure of the community,the relationship of the community withtheir world, and even the structure ofthat world could be articulated in theirbuildings, and the relationship of build-ings to one another. Further, individu-al buildings constituted arenas withinwhich much more could be symbolicallyconstructed in their fittings and fixtures,and in the rituals conducted withinthem. In building their houses and vil-

lages, they were framing concepts andconstructing in symbolic form the mostsignificant aspects of their world andtheir lives. For us, architecture and thebuilt environment constitute our wayof living; architecture materializes oursocial institutions, frames our percep-tions and forms the arena within whichsocial and other relations are played out.Significantly, it provides the frameworkfor the “deep enculturation” of humaninfants. Growing up in an architecturally

expressive environment, surroundedby artefacts with symbolic values, andguided by parents and other seniors whoalready know this world, makes us whowe are. Anthropologists, architects and socialthinkers believe that architecture servesas a structuring device in the think-ing of contemporary or recent societies.That most influential of anthropologicaltheoreticians, Lévi-Strauss, has writtenextensively on the house as a socialform, proposing house-based societies– sociétés à maison – as a category ofsocial organization, distinct from societ-

ies based in kinship, or hierarchicallyorganized societies based on class, statusor power. Lévi-Strauss was impressedby the Annaliste historian GeorgesDuby, who wrote about the institutionof noble houses in medieval France.Indeed, house-based societies are to befound widely in the ethnographic litera-

ture (I have written more fully on thissubject elsewhere; see Watkins 2003).And we may note that post-structuralistand social thinkers such as Bourdieu,Derrida and Giddens also say that thehouse serves as a structuring instrument.We are clearly in good company. However widely found the examplesof societies, architects, anthropologists,or social thinkers who use the architec-ture of the house as a mode of structur-ing their thought or ideas, we cannot

assume that contemporary cultural expe-rience can be universalised. What we areseeing at the end of the Epipalaeolithicand the beginning of the Neolithic peri-ods of southwest Asia is the emergenceof a new, fully modern mode of cognitiveand cultural representation.

What I have sought to suggest is thathuman cognitive and cultural evolu-tion had reached a point in the finalPalaeolithic where external symbolicstorage networks became possible. In

southwest Asia, where dependenceon stored harvests and the trend tosedentism happened to evolve in theEpipalaeolithic, house-building andlife in villages were turned into whatwe know as architecture and the richlymeaningful world of the built environ-ment. The new way of life was dra-matically different from the whole ofhuman experience living in small-scale,mobile, hunter-gatherer groups of fluidmembership. Living in relatively large-

scale, permanently co-resident commu-nities within a tightly drawn territory,as Wilson (1988) suggested, presentedchallenges but also opportunities.

The primary challenge was that ofconstructing a new sense of communitybased not only on kinship but also on co-residence. At the same time, the village-community needed to be understoodin the context of its neighbouring com-munities. The anthropologist, AnthonyCohen, has worked for many years onthe notion of community and how com-munities are formed, maintained, andseen by their members and non-mem-

22


9/10

23

bers. In a small book of primary impor-tance, Cohen described community as:

‘that entity to which one belongs,greater than kinship but more imme-diate than the abstraction we call“society”. It is the arena in whichpeople acquire their most fundamen-

tal and most substantial experienceof social life outside the confines ofthe home... At the risk of substitutingone indefinable category for another,we could say it is where one acquires“culture”.’ (Cohen 1985: 15)

Cohen shows how communities aresymbolically constructed and main-tained through the manipulation of theirsymbols in the minds of their members(Cohen 1985: 15). The symbolic con-

struction of community involves greatcognitive and cultural complexity. Theconstruct of community became possiblefor humans only with the emergence ofminds that were capable of operating interms of symbolic culture. This capacityto build and maintain communities thatwere larger than the circle of immedi-ate kin was necessary for the ability ofearly Neolithic groups to live together,for the first time in human history, in

co-resident groups of several hundred orseveral thousand people in permanentsettlements. Once the challenge of thesymbolic construction of community hadbeen met, the opportunities offered bythe new facility with symbolic culturecould be explored

The power of the built environment

resides in the fact that – as we can appre-ciate – people live within it: it is not anoptional extra, like a library, that onecan consult when one wants. We inhabitthe symbolic world of architecture. Itallows us to construct and read mean-ings at many levels and of many kinds. Itallows us to construct environments thatenrich other forms of dramatic symbol-ism played out within them. Here I amthinking particularly of ritual and drama.I am therefore arguing that the first

sedentary hunter-gatherers and farm-ers of southwest Asia recognized thepotential of the built environment asa powerful cultural system of externalsymbolic storage and reference. In theearly Neolithic they were literally con-structing new worlds of the imaginationthat they could inhabit and in whichtheir children grew up in a more power-ful environment for enculturation than

Homo sapiens had ever known.

23


10/10

References

Boyer, P. 2001. Religion Explained: the human instinctsthat fashion gods, spirits and ancestors. London, WilliamHeinemann.

Bucak, E. & Schmidt, K. 2003. Dünyanın en eski heykeli. Atlas. Aylık co_rafya ve ke_if dergisi, sayı 127, kim 2003:36-40.

Cauvin, J. 1994. Naissance des divinités, Naissance de l’agriculture: La Révolution des Symboles au Néolithique. Second, revisededition, 1997. Paris: CNRS Publications. [Published(2000) as The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.]Çelik B. 2000. An Early Neolithic Settlement in the Centerof _anlıurfa, Turkey, Neo-Lithics: A Newsletter of Southwest

Asian Lithics Research, 2-3/00: 4-6.Cohen, A. P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community.

London: Routledge.Deacon, T. W., 1997. The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution

of language and the human brain. London: Allen Lane, ThePenguin Press.

D’Errico, F., Henshilwood, C., Lawson, G., Vanhaeren, M.,Tillier, A.-M., Soressi, M. Bresson, F., Maureille, B.,Nowell, A., Lakarra, J., Backwell,, L. & Julien, M. 2003.Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language,Symbolism, and Music – An Alternative MultidisciplinaryPerspective. Journal of World Prehistory 17/1: 1-70.

Donald, M., 1991. Origins of the Human Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge (MA):Harvard University Press.

1998. Hominid Enculturation and Cognitive Evolution,

in Cognition and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage , eds. C. Renfrew, & C. Scarre. (McDonaldInstitute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute forArchaeological Research, 7-17.

2001. A Mind so Rare. London: W. W. Norton & Co.Hauptmann, H. 1993. Ein Kultgebäude in Nevalı Çori, in

Frangipane, M. et al. (eds.), Between the Rivers and over the Mountains. Archaeologica Anatolica et Mesopotamica AlbaPalmieri Dedicata: 37–69. Rome.

1999. Frühneolithische Steingebäude in Südwestasien,in Beinhauer, K. W., Cooney, G., Guksch, C. E. & Kus,S. (eds.), Studien zur Megalithik. Forschungsstand undethnoarchäologische Perspektiven, Beiträge zur Ur- undFrühgeschichte Mitteleuropas 21: 227-238.

Hodder, I. 1990. The Domestication of Europe: Structure andContingency in Neolithic Societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Kislev, M. E., D. Nadel, & I. Carmi, 1992. Epi-palaeolithic(19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee,Israel. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology71, 161-6.

Mumford, L. 1961. The city in history: its origins, its transforma- tions, and its prospects. London: Secker & Warburg.Nadel, D. & I. Hershkovitz, 1991. ‘New subsistence data and

human remains from the earliest LevantineEpipalaeolithic.’Current Anthropology 32: 631-5.

Nadel, D. & E. Werker, 1999. The oldest ever brush hutplant remains from Ohalo II, Jordan Valley, Israel (19000BP). Antiquity 73, 755-64.

Özdogan, A. 1995. Life at Çayönü During the Pre-PotteryNeolithic Period (According to the Artifactual Assemblage),in: Readings in Prehistory. Studies Presented to Halet Çambel :79–100. Istanbul.

1999. Çayönü, in Özdogan, M. & Bagelen, N. (eds.), Neolithic in Turkey.The Cradle of Civilization: 35–63.Istanbul.

Özdogan, M. and A. Özdogan, 1990. Çayönü, a conspectus ofrecent work, in Aurenche, O., Cauvin, M.-C. and SanlavilleP. (eds), Pet réhistoire du Levant : processus des changementsculturels : 68-77. Paris. Éditions du CNRS-Paléorient.

Renfrew, C. 1996. The sapient behaviour paradox: how totest for potential?, in Modelling the Early Human

Mind , eds. P. Mellars, & K. Gibson. (McDonaldInstitute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institutefor Archaeological Research, 11-14.

1998. Mind and Matter: Cognitive Archaeology andExternal Symbolic Storage, in Cognition and MaterialCulture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage , eds. C.

Renfrew, & C. Scarre. (McDonald Institute Monographs.)Cambridge: McDonald Institute for ArchaeologicalResearch, 1-6.

2003. Figuring it Out . London: Thames & Hudson. 2004. Towards a Theory of Material Engagement, in

Demarrais, E., Gosden, C. & Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking Materiality: the engagement of mind with the

material world : 23-31. (McDonald Institute Monographs.)Cambridge: McDonald Institute for ArchaeologicalResearch.

Renfrew, C. & C. Scarre (eds.), 1998. Cognition and MaterialCulture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage . (McDonaldInstitute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute forArchaeological Research.

Rollefson, G. 2005. Early Neolithic Ritual Centers in theSouthern Levant. NeoLithics: A Newsletter of South-west

Asian Lithics Research 2/2005.Schmidt K., 1998. Frühneolitische Tempel. Ein

Forschungs bericht zum präkeramischen NeolithikumObermesopotamiens. Mitteilungen der DeutschenOrientgesellschaft zu Berlin 130, 17-49.2001. Göbekli Tepe and the Early Neolithic Sites ofthe Urfa Region: a Synopsis of New Results and CurrentViews. Neo-Lithic: A Newsletter of South-west Asian

Lithics Research 1/01: 9-11. 2003. The 2003 Campaign at Göbekli Tepe (Southeastern

Turkey), Neo-Lithics: A Newsletter of South-west Asian Lithics Research 2/03: 3-8.

2004. Frühneolithische Zeichen vom Göbekli Tepe Neolitik Göbekli Tepe Betimlemeleri . TÜBA-AR. Türkiye

Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Dergisi 7: 93-105.2005a. Die „Stadt“ der Steinzeit. In Falk, H. (ed.), Wegezur Stadt - Entwicklung und Formen urbanen Lebens inder alten Welt, Vergleichende Studien zu Antike undOrient 2: 25-38. Bremen.

2005b. “Ritual Centers” and the Neolithisation of UpperMesopotamia. NeoLithics: A Newsletter of South-west

Asian Lithics Research 2/2005.Searle, J. 1995. The construction of social reality. London:

Allen Lane.Stordeur, D., 1998a. Espace naturel, espace constraint à Jerf

el Ahmar sur l’Euphrate. In Fortin M. & Aurenche O.(eds), Espace Naturel, Espace Habité en Syrie du Nord(10e - 2e millénaires avant J. C.) : 93-108. Toronto : TheCanadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies. Lyon: Maisonde l’Orient (Travaux de la Maison de l’OrientMéditerranéen 33, 28).

1998b. Jerf el Ahmar et l’horizon PPNA en HauteMésopotamie, Xe-XIe millénaire avant J.-C. In :Lebeau M. (ed.) About Subartu : studies devoted to Upper

Mesopotamia, vol. 1 : 13-30. Brussels. Brepol. 1999. ‘Organisation de l’espace construit et organisation

sociale dans le Néolithique de Jerf el Ahmar (Syrie, Xe -

IXe millénaire av. J. C.), in Habitat et Société: XIVe Rencontre Internationale d’Archéologie et d’Histoire

d’Antibes, eds. F. Braemer, S. Cleuziou, & Coudart, A.Antibes: Éditions APDCA, 131-49.

2000. New discoveries in architecture and symbolism at Jerf el Ahmar (Syria), 1997-1999. Neo-Lithics : A Newsletter of South-west Asian Lithics Research 1/00 :1-4.

Stordeur, D., D. Helmer, B. Jammous, & G. Willcox, 1996. Jerf-el Ahmar: a new Mureybetian site (PPNA period) onthe Middle Euphrates. Neolitbics: A Newsletter of South-

west Asian Lithics Research, 2/96, 1-2.Stordeur, D., D. Helmer, & G. Willcox, 1997. Jerf-el Ahmar:

un nouveau site de l’horizon PPNA sur le moyen EuphrateSyrien. Bullétin de la Société Préhistorique Française 94(2),282-5.

Stordeur D. & B. Jammous, 1995. Pierre à rainure à décoranimal trouvée dans l’horizon PPNA de Jerf el Ahmar,Syrie. Paléorient 21,1 : 129-130.

Stordeur D., M. Brenet, G. Der Aprahamian & J.-C. Roux2000. Les bâtiments communautaires de Jerf el Ahmar etMureybet, horizon PPNA (Syrie). Paléorient 26,1 : 29-44.

Watkins, T., 1990. The origins of house and home. World Archaeology 21(3), 336-347.

1992. ‘The beginning of the Neolithic: searching for mean- ing in material culture change.’ Paléorient, 18/1: 63-75. 1996. ‘The origins of the household in North

Mesopotamia.’ In Veenhof, K. (ed..) Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia:79-88.

2003. Memes, memeplexes and the emergence of religionin the Neolithic, in Magic Practices and Ritual in the NearEastern Neolithic, vol. 8, Studies of Production,

Subsistence and Environment , eds. H. G. Gebel, B. D.Hermansen & C. Hoffmann Jensen. Berlin: Ex Oriente,43-7.

2004. Building Houses, Framing Concepts, ConstructingWorlds, Paléorient 30.1: 5-24.

2005. Architecture and “theatres of memory” in theNeolithic of southwest Asia, in DeMarrais, E., Gosden,C. & Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking materiality: theengagement of mind with the material world, 97-106.Cambridge: McDonald Institute for ArchaeologicalResearch.

In press (a). The neolithic revolution and the emergenceof humanity: a cognitive approach to the first comprehen-

sive world-view, in The Transmission and Assimilation ofCulture: Perspectives from the Eastern Mediterranean,

ed. J. Clarke. (British Academy Monographs.) Oxford:Oxford University Press.

In press (b). The emergence of networked communities,in Towards New Frameworks, ed. Gebel, H. G., Schmidt,K., Özdogan, M. & Rollefson, G. Berlin: Ex Oriente.

Watkins, T., A. V. G. Betts, K. Dobney, & M. Nesbitt, 1991.Qermez Dere, Tel Afar: Interim Report No 2, 1989. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department ofArchaeology, Occasional Paper Paper No. 13.

Watkins, T., K. Dobney, & M. Nesbitt, 1995. Qermez Dere,Tel Afar; Interim Report No. 3. Edinburgh, Department ofArchaeology, University of Edinburgh, Project Paper No.14.

Wilson, P.J., 1988. The Domestication of the Human Species. New Haven (CT) & London: Yale University Press.

Yartah, T. 2004. Tell ‘Abr 3, un village du néolithiqueprécéramique (PPNA) sur le Moyen Euphrate. Premierapproche. Paléorient 30/2: 141-58.

2424

Documents

Watkins_Göbekli_Tepe_Jerf_el_Ahmar.pdf