[P2P-F] Fwd: 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-preservation

Fri Oct 13 17:54:03 CEST 2017

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marie Venner <marie at vennerconsulting.com>
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

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