HASSUNA, IN UPPER MESOPOTAMIAN IRAQ
We are not sure just how soon after Jarmo the next assemblage of Iraqi material is to be placed. I do not think the time was long, and there are a few hints that detailed habits in the making of pottery and ground stone tools were actually continued from Jarmo times into the time of the next full assemblage. This is called after a site named Hassuna, a few miles to the south and west of modern Mosul. We also have Hassunan type materials from several other sites in the same general region. It is probably too soon to make generalizations about it, but the Hassunan sites seem to cluster at slightly lower elevations than those we have been talking about so far.
The catalogue of the Hassuna assemblage is of course more full and elaborate than that of Jarmo. The Iraqi government’s archeologists who dug Hassuna itself, exposed evidence of increasing architectural know-how. The walls of houses were still formed of puddled mud; sun-dried bricks appear only in later periods. There were now several different ways of making and decorating pottery vessels. One style of pottery painting, called the Samarran style, is an extremely handsome one and must have required a great deal of concentration and excellence of draftsmanship. On the other hand, the old habits for the preparation of good chipped stone tools—still apparent at Jarmo—seem to have largely disappeared by Hassunan times. The flint work of the Hassunan catalogue is, by and large, a wretched affair. We might guess that the kinaesthetic concentration of the Hassuna craftsmen now went into other categories; that is, they suddenly discovered they might have more fun working with the newer materials. It’s a shame, for example, that none of their weaving is preserved for us.
The two available radiocarbon determinations from Hassunan contexts stand at about 5100 and 5600 B.C. ± 250 years.
OTHER EARLY VILLAGE SITES IN THE NUCLEAR AREA
I’ll now name and very briefly describe a few of the other early village assemblages either in or adjacent to the hilly flanks of the crescent. Unfortunately, we do not have radioactive carbon dates for many of these materials. We may guess that some particular assemblage, roughly comparable to that of Hassuna, for example, must reflect a culture which lived at just about the same time as that of Hassuna. We do this guessing on the basis of the general similarity and degree of complexity of the Sears Roebuck catalogues of the particular assemblage and that of Hassuna. We suppose that for sites near at hand and of a comparable cultural level, as indicated by their generally similar assemblages, the dating must be about the same. We may also know that in a general stratigraphic sense, the sites in question may both appear at the bottom of the ascending village sequence in their respective areas. Without a number of consistent radioactive carbon dates, we cannot be precise about priorities.
SKETCH OF HASSUNA ASSEMBLAGE
POTTERY
POTTERY OBJECTS
CHIPPED STONE
BONE
GROUND STONE
ARCHITECTURE
REED MATTING
BURIAL