Temple of Ourouk and its stone ziggourat, with the ditch
Photo University of Chicago
Architecture
The Neolithic culture of Obeïd continues during nearly one millenium then are metamorphosed. The excavations of Eridou and Such el-Oueili make it possible to seize its first signs of evolution around the end of the O C thousand-year-old. Previously uniform, architecture starts to be different. Large masonries in tripartite plan, which could be temples, are set up. In the same way, of important brick terraces are realized, works probably intended for a collective use. Even if these changes remain limited, they represent probably the birth of a social hierarchisation within these first village communities of low Mésopotamie.
The urbanization
At the beginning of thousand-year-old IVe, the extent of the change is such as the archeologists do not hesitate to see there the starting point of a new cultural stage. This one, baptized time of Ourouk (3750-3150), prolongs and accentuates the preceding tendency to urbanization and confirms the gradual passage of the domestic community to a more complex social organization. The villages, before of reduced size, take little by little the form of important urban areas.
The material culture, such as it is known for us since the excavations of the site of Ourouk, reveals undeniable marks of evolution. Thus, on all the sites of the Mesopotamian South, the painted ceramics of the time of Obeïd yields the place to a monochromic production of bowls built with the hand starting from moulds which allow the mass production of it.
In architecture, the evolution started at the time the preceding one seems to be accentuated. On the site of Ourouk, one discovered the ruins of large buildings exceeding 70 m length sometimes and which seem to derive from the tripartite structures of the culture of Obeïd. Their frontages decorated of projecting and of returning carry mosaic decorations. Architectural novel methods make their appearance: one employs the breeze block thus, left brick containing gypsum. Mortars are used and one makes mural mosaics starting from stone or clay cones.
The design of built space obeys from now on precise rules of planning. The urban perimeter is often registered in believed brick ramparts, the habitat denser and is ordered better. In correspondence with this fitting-out, the company itself starts to be treated on a hierarchical basis.
Social organization and stock management
In the iconography of the cylinder seals a bearded and capped character of a diadem appears then, sometimes appearing a warrior embanking his enemies, sometimes a minister of religion.
The archeologists see the single chief of the city there, a kind of “king-priest”. At this point in time true methods of management develop. Thus, is a prelude to about it with the writing, of the calculi, tokens out of terra cotta, are used with fine accountants.
The metallurgy, another witness of the vitality of low Mésopotamie, also knows notable improvements. The craftsmen test themselves with first voluntary alloys and, in addition to the imported copper of the peninsula of Oman, they use lead, the money and gold. In the same way, the innovation gains agriculture. Towards recent Ourouk (3 ' 500-3' 100), one adopts a swing-plow-seeder, of which the use probably aims at increasing surfaces.