End of the line? Obsidian at Umm Qseir, a Halafian farmstead in the Syrian steppe

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Obsidian sourcing in the Near East was principally developed to investigate the Neolithic Revolution, but limitations of these early studies were soon recognized. Critics noted that sites included in the models span millennia and vary in size and function. Greater insight is offered by a more contextualized examination of the nature and timing of sites. Within the Neolithic sequence, one phase of considerable interest is the Halaf period (c. 6000–4500 BCE) in Northern Mesopotamia. The spread of Halaf “tradition,” arguably the earliest example of a widely shared material culture in the region, has been tied to varied hypotheses of movement (of people, objects, and/or ideas) that remain largely untested. The use of obsidian sourcing to investigate Halafian phenomena (e.g., the spread of Halaf ceramics, the practice of dryland farming) would ideally involve high temporal resolution and consider settlement function and scale (e.g., an early urban center, a small farming village). Umm Qseir, the smallest known Halaf site, fulfills both. Occupied for less than two centuries, Umm Qseir was an environmentally marginal farmstead managed year-round by just two or three families at a time. The closest contemporary settlement was more than 30 km to the north, within the conventional limits of dryland farming (annual rainfall > 250 mm). Here we reconstruct and refine obsidian sourcing data for Umm Qseir artifacts from 1990s and 2000s studies, and we present new data for a small assemblage. We also highlight techno-typological clues that elucidate production, use, and maintenance of such artifacts. Ultimately, such findings offer insights into the exchange strategy of Syrian steppe farmsteaders and reflect an important means of risk management.