About Pre History - the archaeology of the ancient Near East
The Near East - the region known politically as the Middle East - is the home of both a long and eventful history as well as a much longer and fascinating prehistory. Here on Pre History I will cover the story of the Near East as we know it from the archaeological study of what people left behind as hunter-gatherers turned into farmers, as villages turned into cities, and as empires rose and fell.
As we finish off the Neolithic we must first go backwards to one of the less well known but vastly important cultures of the Neolithic Near East - the Samarra. As the first known Neolithic culture of Southern Mesopotamia the Samarra gave rise to many developments which underpinned the later civilisations of this part of the ancient Near East. It is also an ancient culture for which we have perhaps as many questions as answers. Hopefully more answers will come in time as more sites are excavated and studied. Even today, though, there is still a fair bit which we do know about the Samarra.
If you have any questions or comments you can email me at prehistorypodcast@gmail.com or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.
1 Aug 2022
Episode 25: The Neolithic Comes to Transcaucasia
In the east of Anatolia and off to the north of Mesopotamia is the southern Caucasus, which is also known as Transcaucasia. This region combines being one of the last parts of the Near East to have mobile hunter-gatherers, and one of the first regions of the Near East to practice copper metallurgy. In between we have the sixth millennium cal BCE, when Transcaucasia has its own unique Neolithic.
If you have any questions or comments you can email me at prehistorypodcast@gmail.com or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.
6 Jun 2022
Episode 24: Early Chalcolithic Anatolia
After all of the arguments that we saw for the Wadi Rabah as to whether it was part of the Late Neolithic or part of the Early Chalcolithic, this time we shall have a look at Anatolia in the first half of the sixth millennium cal BCE - which is widely agreed here to the Early Chalcolithic. Unlike the more widespread cultures of the Halaf or the Wadi Rabah, each of which spanned multiple modern-day countries, Anatolia in the Early Chalcolithic is home to multiple smaller cultures across its different regions.
If you have any questions or comments you can email me at prehistorypodcast@gmail.com or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.
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