Tell Sabi Abyad, the Late Neolithic Settlement: Report on the Excavations of the University of Amsterdam (1988) and the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden (1991-1993) in Syria. Two volumes.

• Author: SCHWARTZ, GLENN M.
• Position: Review

Tell Sabi Abyad, the Late Neolithic Settlement: Report on the Excavations of the University of Amsterdam (1988) and the National Museum of Antiquities Leiden (1991-1993) in Syria. Two volumes. Edited by PETER M. M. G. AKKERMANS. Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul, vol. 76. Leiden: NEDERLANDS HISTORISCHARCHAEOLOGISCH INSTITUUT TE ISTANBUL, 1996. Pp. xiv + 566, maps, illus. HFl 199; $115.

Some of the most exciting results in recent Syrian archaeology have been produced by the excavations at Tell Sabi Abyad in the Balikh valley, a prosperous village in the late Neolithic and Halaf periods and a Middle Assyrian administrative center in the Late Bronze Age. Begun in 1986 as a spin-off of the Dutch excavations at Hammam ET-TURKMAN directed by Maurits van Loon, the Sabi Abyad project soon came into its own under the direction of van Loon's student Peter M. M. G. Akkermans, now of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Results from the late Neolithic and Halaf occupations are the concern of this work, conceived as an interim report with an emphasis on description rather than retrospective interpretation.

Several centuries after the "collapse" of Pre-Pottery Neolithic societies, sedentary occupation in the Balikh region revived in the sixth millennium B.C. At Sabi Abyad, this period is represented by levels 11-7 (Ceramic Neolithic), 6-4 (Transitional), and 3-I (Early Halaf). The site thus provides an excellent sequence documenting the transition from the Ceramic Neolithic to Halaf periods, a poorly understood phenomenon. Thus far, the evidence indicates a gradual and indigenous evolution of Halaf-material-culture styles and strategies, rather than a foreign incursion.

After a brief foreword by Akkermans, the volume proceeds in earnest with a chapter by T. J. Wilkinson on the geoarchaeology of the Sabi Abyad region, including a discussion of offsite features such as canal systems and sherd scatters. Almost all of these date to historic periods and are thus not immediately relevant to the Neolithic issues dealt with in the rest of the book, but the report is of Wilkinson's usual high standard. M. Verhoeven and P. Kranendonk lay the groundwork for the main issues of the volume with their study of the stratigraphy and architecture of the Neolithic levels. In the chapter on pottery by M. Le Miere and O. Nieuwenhuyse, varying samples of data, some of which are quantified, are provided along with abundant...