Tell Qaramel is a tell, or mound, located in the northern part of Syria ca 25 km north of Aleppo. The tell lies between the modern village of Qaramel and the Quweiq river to the east, and the Neolithic site extends to the south. A survey in the late 1970’s found evidence of settlement at the site from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Age (ca 10,000–8,800 BCE) through to the Hellenistic period (ca 323 - 31 BCE). The PPN (pre-pottery Neolithic) phase is associated with a wider area of about 3.5 hectares, which extends to the south and south-west of the site. The Neolithic area is covered by up to 2.5 m of later deposits through the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The Tell Qaramel site includes fascinating structures such as five of the oldest rounded towers in the world, two shrines (and one of them probably functioned as some kind of community building), as well as more than 60 circular and oval houses along with utility buildings. The tell was divided in 14 occupational levels, and these levels were in turn divided into horizons based on over 80 carbon dating results.
It is this area that has been the focus of detailed investigation between 1999 - 2007, and so far about six areas have been investigated and four excavated: which is only about 1.5% of the entire site. Excavations at the settlement were concentrated on remnants of the early stages of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
The structures uncovered at Tell Qaramel appear to be the oldest permanent stone-built settlement. Five circular stone towers were radiocarbon-dated to the period from the middle of the 11th millennium BCE to about 9650 BC, which makes them the oldest structures of this type in the world. This dating makes the structure two thousand years older than the tower found at Jericho, which was previously believed to be the oldest known tower structure in the world.
This tower structure consists of a succession of five round stone structures. The oldest one (dated to between the eleventh millennium and 9670 BCE) was about six meters in diameter and it was identified as having had some sort of communal function. It had an elevated hearth at the center of the structure and had two benches centered to it. The fourth phase was the biggest one at c. 7.5 meters in diameter. It had stone walls that were c. 2.25 meters thick but it had no internal structure. It had evidence of being damaged by fire and then being rebuilt and was potentially meant as a defensive structure.
The five different horizons into were:
Horizon H0 is dated to 14,890–8,980 BCE contains only fragmentary occupation remains of the Early Epipaleolithic occupation.
Horizon H1 is dated to 8,890–7670 BCE is represented by levels of occupation in the Proto Neolithic stadium.
Horizon H2 is dated to 8,670–7250 BCE contains levels of occupation which represent attributes typical of the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.
Horizon H3 is dated to 7820–6710 BCE covers layers and structures from the Middle PPN. Single-room circular and oval buildings existed together with multi-room forms and initial sub-rectangular rooms. This horizon has two exceptional structures; a monumental elongated building which is divided into three different shapes and arrangements. The function of this structure as a shrine or common house is confirmed by the arrangement inside and the presence of both human and animal graves. This kind of burial was quite common during the Pre Pottery Neolithic. In this structure two spectacular foundation deposits were found: a massive imported flint “Jericho type” celt (a long, thin tool similar to an axe) and a complete limestone female figurine. The second magnificent building was a circular structure with a large auroch bull crania made from stone (an auroch is an extinct form of cattle). Four real cattle skulls were situated in a round pit in the floor surrounded by pebbles, located within the arch of one of these stylized horns.
Horizon H4 dated to 7310–6780 BCE represents the final stage in the development of the settlement, corresponding to the beginning of the Late PPN. Remains of horizon H4 have been discovered only in the southernmost trenches, which suggests that in the final moments of development the PPN village changed its range more to the south and west.
Text: Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir. MENAM Archaeology. Copyright 2022.´´§§
Further reading:
Dendrinos, Dimitrios. 2017. Gobekli Tepe, Tell Qaramel, Tell Es-Sultan: Why is Gobekli Tepe a 6th millennium BC site, and Evolution of Early Neolithic Architecture.
Mazurowski, R.F., Michczyńska, D.J., Pazdur, A. & Piotrowska, N. 2009, "Chronology of the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic Settlement Tell Qaramel, Northern Syria, in the Light of Radiocarbon Dating", Radiocarbon, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 771-781.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, Google maps
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