Sha'ar Hagolan 1: Neolithic Art in Context.

• Author: Belfer-Cohen, Anna
• Position: Book Review

Sha'ar Hagolan 1: Neolithic Art in Context. Edited by YOSEF GARFINKEL and MICHELE A. MILLER. Oxford: OXBOW BOOKS, 2002. Pp. x + 262, illus. $85. [Distrib. in North America by David Brown Book Company, Oakville, Conn.]

This is a first report on the renewed excavations at the Pottery Neolithic site of Sha'ar Hagolan, directed by Y. Garfinkel on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, with M. Miller as co-director since the 1998 season. The report incorporates analyses of material from the first four field seasons (1989, 1990, 1996, 1997), a survey carried out in 1998, and some of the finds and analyses from the seasons of 1998 and 1999. The excavations at Sha'ar Hagolan continue and the results of the later seasons (from 2000 onward) are pending publication.

The material is presented and discussed as follows. The first part deals with the site, its extent, history of research, current excavations, and the architectural remains. The second part presents the pottery finds, the flint artifacts, and the groundstone tools. The third part discusses art objects--inventory, spatial distribution, ways of production and function. The fourth part deals with subsistence, demography and social organization at the site.

M. Stekelis, its first excavator, recognized Sha'ar Hagolan as the type-site of an early Pottery Neolithic culture, which he called the Yarmukian, of the sixth millennium B.C. He did not find clear architectural remains and concluded, "the Neolithic settlers of Sha'ar Hagolan apparently lived in circular huts, half sunk below ground level" (The Yarmoukian Culture of the Neolithic Period [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1972], 42; see p. 12 here).

The results of the renewed excavations have revealed quite the opposite. Yosef Garfinkel and David Ben-Shlomo present impressive evidence for domestic architecture, which consists mainly of room complexes built around large courtyards separated from their neighbors by narrow streets and alleys. While the presentation of the architecture and its interpretation on site is quite impressive (what's missing will undoubtedly become clearer with the publication of the results of later excavations), the discussion of Sha'ar Hagolan architecture within the context of early Near Eastern architecture is rather biased toward claims of the "first," the "biggest," the "only," etc. For example, the authors ignore Late PPNB architecture, which can be considered similar and preceding...