Pottery Neolithic To Middle Chalcolithic (Amuq A-E) Tell Kurdu

Keywords= Tell Kurdu / Amuq Valley / Pottery Neolithic / Chalcolithic

Excerpts and Definitions and Addendums:

Overview: ..... The Oriental Institute chose Tell Kurdu because the mound was occupied during a period in which an important transformation was taking place from the early domestication concerns of the Neolithic to the incipient urbanism of the Chalcolithic Period ..... *

Addendum: ..... The Oriental Institute team surveyed all the mounds in the Amuq Plain. From the sherd collections they made they estimated that several others sites had been occupied in the Amuq A and B phases; Six mounds - including Tell Kurdu - were believed to contain Neolithic 3 deposits ..... See the Chapter 5 Neolithic 3 Tell Judaidah Section of The Neolithic of the Levant .....

Tell Kurdu was briefly excavated in 1938 under the direction of Robert Braidwood of the Oriental Institute as part of the Henry Breasted inspired Syrian-Hittite Expedition (1932-1938). Although Islamic and Roman wares were found on the surface the preponderant assemblage consisted of Chalcolithic painted wares. The volume Braidwood helped publish on the results of the excavations at Tell Kurdu and other early sites (1960) is still a hallmark publication for the relative chronology of Northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

Mounds in the Plain of Antioch: An Archaeological Survey
Robert Braidwood (1937) [Volume 48]
ORIENTAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS

Excavations in the Plain of Antioch (Volume I):
The Earlier Assemblages (Phases A-J)
R. Braidwood and L. Braidwood (1960) [Volume 61]
ORIENTAL INSTITUTE PUBLICATIONS

Between 1996 and 2000 a new phase of research took place under the direction of Aslihan Yener as part of the OI .....

THE AMUQ VALLEY REGIONAL PROJECTS

The year 2001 marked the beginning of the next stage in the Tell Kurdu Excavations as Aslihan Yener handed responsibility for the excavations over to Directors Rana Özbal and Fokke Gerritsen et al of

THE TELL KURDU PROJECT Publications / Online Reports

Tell Kurdu was occupied in the Chalcolithic Amuq Phases C-D-E and was roughly contemporaneous with both the Halaf (sixth millennium BC) and Ubaid (fifth millennium BC) cultures. It has gained importance in understanding the rise of early complex societies and Anatolian developments during the Ubaid Period when there was considerable contact with Mesopotamia and the Tigris-Euphrates basin sites. The presence of painted Mesopotamia-related Ubaid-like wares at Tell Kurdu implies the presence of colonial enclaves just as in the subsequent Uruk Period. On this subject see .....

Excerpt 39: ..... Uruk artifacts are found in two distinct types of sites across the northern planes: [1] sites in which isolated Uruk objects appear in the context of an otherwise local late chalcolithic assemblage and [2] sites characterized by a cultural assemblage that is overwhelmingly southern Mesopotamian in origin and Uruk in type. The first can be understood as indigenous occupations in contact with Uruk settlements elsewhere. Examples are numerous and range from the Amuq Plain to Nuzi in northeastern Iraq. The second - however - may be considered to represent intrusive settlements .....

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Tell Kurdu is a large and low bilobed mound covering 17 hectares and is situated close to the eastern edge of the former Amuq Lake (Lake Antioch or Amik Gölü) [MAP]. Braidwood placed four trenches: three on the higher south mound and one on the lower north mound during a hurried two-week campaign in 1938 .....

The renewed excavations offer an opportunity to define the Amuq C-E ceramic sequence with far greater temporal resolution. The Amuq D assemblage as originally defined by Braidwood and the early Amuq E assemblage as evident from the 1998 season are part of an important regional variation of the Halaf-Ubaid transition found in northwestern Syria and the adjacent portion of southeastern Turkey - while the Amuq C and Amuq E assemblages express regionally local variants of the Halaf and Ubaid complexes respectively .....

Tell Kurdu is one of the larger pre-Uruk centres outside the core Mesopotamian area. Its large size - its location in the fertile center of the valley - and its Chalcolithic (Amuq C-E) dating can contribute significantly to an understanding of the rise of early complex societies and urbanization in SouthWestern Asia .....

EXCAVATIONS AT TELL KURDU: 1996 AND 1998 (AJA)
Christopher Edens and K. Alishan Yener (Pages 198-215)

American Journal of Archaeology
Volume 104 - Number 2 - April 2000
Library of Congress # CC 1 A6

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