---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marie Venner <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 10:48 PM Subject: Not much info about how this transition occurred, but it's interesting how architecture changed along with shift from care of commons to individual self-preservationhttps://www.theguardian.com/ science/2017/oct/11/lentils-origins-of-social-inequality *Not much info about how this transition occurred, but it’s interesting how architecture changed in the Ubaid from semi-permanent, mostly circular structures (and shared resources) to permanent, rectilinear buildings occupied by (individual) self-sufficient households…* The layer we’re excavating at the site dates to around 4,400 BC, according to our C14 samples, which places it near the end of a period called the Ubaid. In northern Mesopotamia the Ubaid covers about a thousand years (c.a. 5,300-4,300 BC) and it was a critical period of social transformation during which the foundations were laid for the birth of the first cities. In the Ubaid period, people began more intensive, year-round cultivation, leading them to build larger, more permanent settlements. Unlike the preceding Halaf period society, which seems to have been essentially egalitarian with resources held communally, the late Ubaid period saw the introduction of significant competition and social stratification. Economic production became privatised, and authority – both religious and secular – appears to have been centralised. As co-director Professor Robert Carter explains: *The weakening of a strong communal ideology surrounding food production and storage increased the potential for dominant families to emerge, either through consistently greater success, or through force or unequal conditions of exchange. This in turn created the preconditions of specialisation and social inequality upon which urban life was founded in Mesopotamia.”* Architecture changed in the Ubaid from semi-permanent, mostly circular structures to permanent, rectilinear buildings occupied by self-sufficient households. The ubiquitous structure of this new, more urban life was the tripartite house; a building with a large rectangular central space separating two suites of smaller rooms. It’s a tripartite house that we’re excavating at Gurga Chiya. The house sits on the south side of the settlement, off a broad, cobbled lane. Its walls are made of *pisé* – rammed earth – and after more than six thousand years they’re almost impossible to tell apart from the slightly less rammed earth surrounding them. It’s emblematic of the Ubaid that this large cache of lentils resides within a private house and not in a public building. It represents a valuable crop which was the property of one family and did not belong to the wider community, as it would have in the previous more egalitarian periods. The Gurga Chiya lentils represent an accumulation of private wealth during a time which saw the birth of the chief mechanisms of social inequality. -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/