Triangles engraved in an almost identical manner on hundreds of fragments of basalt bowls from the Chalcolithic period 6,500 years ago, found in settlements in all regions of ancient Israel - from the south to the Golan region - testify to a system of social conventions that bound the various communities, according to a series of studies by researchers at the Zinman Institute for Archeology of the University of Haifa
Triangles engraved in an almost identical manner on hundreds of fragments of basalt bowls from the Chalcolithic period 6,500 years ago, found in settlements in all regions of ancient Israel - from the south to the Golan region - testify to a system of social conventions that bound the various communities, according to a series of studies by researchers at the Zinman Institute for Archeology of the University of Haifa .
"Ancient cultures, like today's cultures, create and develop systems of agreed upon symbols or signs, which enable the identification and identification of the members of the communities or ethnic groups and have a meaning or meanings unique to them. The triangles, which were engraved on prestigious tools of that time, indicate that those ancient inhabitants, in the period before the birth of the great ancient Near Eastern civilizations, not only felt that they all belonged to the same social group, but it was also important for them to mark this clearly and prominently and even convey the message this to more distant cultures with which they are in trade relations," said Prof. Danny Rosenberg, head of the laboratory for the study of ancient stone tools at the Zinman Institute and head of the department of archeology at the University of Haifa, who is leading the research together with Rivka Hazan, a doctoral student at the laboratory for the study of stone tools, who wrote her master's research on the subject The agreed marks on the basalt bowls.
The Chalcolithic culture in the Land of Israel existed approximately between 4,500 BC and 3,900 BC. It is mostly characterized by relatively small settlements, engaged in agriculture and sheep herding. At the same time, they develop the copper processing industry for the first time and even develop trade relations with more distant areas. J
The returnees of the Chalcolithic period are known from various regions of Israel, mainly from the Negev to the Galilee and the Golan and eastward to the Jordan Valley, and it seems that the inhabitants of the Chalcolithic villages had economic ties and felt a cultural and social kinship with each other, even though they did not have any central government. A central feature in associating a settlement from that period with this culture is the existence of basalt bowls. The study of the Chalcolithic period began nearly 100 years ago, during which hundreds of basalt bowls were discovered, similar in shape and production method. "It should be remembered that in order to produce a basalt bowl, a great deal of knowledge and experience was required, and it is probable that the number of basalt masons who could produce such bowls, which excel in meticulous symmetry and an excellent finish, was not large. Therefore, it is common to think that these bowls had great value and that the settlements where these bowls were found belong to the same broad group of people who share common cultural characteristics. However, how close they were and how close people who lived in the Beer Sheva area felt to those who lived in other areas - that was very difficult to say," explained Prof. Rosenberg.
The researchers at the Laboratory for the Study of Ancient Stone Tools, in conjunction with researchers from various universities around the world, decided to focus on the basalt soils in order to understand the socio-economic systems of the people of the Chalcolithic period, who are responsible for a large part of the important technological, social and economic developments in the region in the following centuries as well. The studies - not all of them are finished yet - included geochemical analyzes with the aim of identifying the source of the basalts, microscopic analyzes that examined the technology and techniques of production and the use of tools and attempts to extract ancient organic remains from their contents, in order to restore what they once contained.
It is already clear to the researchers that the basalt that was used to chisel the bowls along the settlements came from several sources in Israel and was probably produced in different places. Despite this, the vast majority of bowls were decorated in an almost identical pattern: a series of triangles engraved on the inside of the bowls, all at the top, their vertices pointing down towards the inside base of the bowl with the rim of the bowl serving as the base of the triangle. In addition, the lengths of the sides are often equal as are the angles, and most triangles are "filled" with an equal or similar number of diagonal lines that always descend from the same direction.
"Chiving on the basalt, with the tools of that time, is not simple and requires a lot of professional knowledge. The fact that the makers of the bowls in different and distant regions nevertheless follow the same repeating pattern shows the desire of calculi communities to mark and strengthen the social connection between them," said doctoral student Rebecca Hazan, who completed her thesis under the guidance of Prof. Rosenberg, on the decorations of the basalt bowls .
"Since at this time trade was already taking place between distant cultures all along the Fertile Crescent region, the specific code of the calculative society of the Land of Israel was a kind of statement - we belong to the same cultural group. Every time you hold a bowl with the triangle decorations, know that it was created by our culture and belongs to or symbolizes a series of social conventions," added Prof. Rosenberg.
However, as in any culture, even in the Chalcolithic period of our region there were artists - who were not ready to accept the conventions. In a small part of the basalt bowls, the researchers found completely different patterns, with the pattern of each bowl being different from the other. "Suddenly we find a bowl that is completely covered with different patterns of engraving, from the base to the rim. This is an attempt to say something different, to differentiate from the accepted or the social convention. Maybe someone wants to say, I'm different from all the others," the researchers explained.
Now, after documenting the code and the repeating pattern and its characteristics, the University of Haifa researchers have one "simple" task left - to decipher it. "There was a reason why they chose triangles to decorate the bowls, triangles that were engraved on the inside of the bowls when they face down and inside them the same number of diagonal lines and at very similar intervals. It makes sense that it said something that everyone understood - a certain convention that the Chalcalites in the Galilee, the Lowlands and the Negev, as well as in the Jordan Valley - understood. Now we are focusing on continuing the research and trying to decipher the meaning of the signs", Prof. Rosenberg concluded.
