ON THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIONS BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE SETTLEMENTS OF THE HALAF CULTURE OF THE EASTERN EUPHRATES

Abstract

In the Russian archeology an opinion about the egalitarian appearance of the Neolithic settlements of the Halaf culture in Northern Mesopotamia was established. An assumption about the correspondence of its social structure to the level of chiefdom was made. However, no special studies in this direction have been carried out until now. This article contains the experience of identifying of social information from the archaeological sources of settlements in North-Eastern Syria. Developing the idea of the multicomponent specific of large settlements, the data that the link of social unification was a large family community are showed. Modern knowledge about the settlements allow to suggest that leaders of large-family communities exercised control over the development of specific sections of the settlement. Rare structural elements in housing construction (stone foundation, different qualities of wall plastering, floor covering, stone paving of the yard), which were not in the tradition of the Halaf cultural population, allow to consider them as signs of property and social gradation. In Russian and foreign science, a high level of pottery production in the Halaf culture has been noted. It is noted that the formation of independent production activity began with pottery, whereas in the relatively northern territories of Eurasia, many centuries later, this process began with metallurgy. This constitutes a feature of the ancient history of Mesopotamia.