Early evidence of reed boats from southeast Anatolia. (News & Notes).

Early evidence of reed boats from southeast Anatolia. (News & Notes). Recent analyses of bitumen bitumen(bĭty`mən)a generic term referring to flammable, brown or black mixtures of tarlike hydrocarbons, derived naturally or by distillation from petroleum. (petroleum tar) artefacts from the siteof Hacinebi Tepe (Stein 1999) in the Euphrates valley in Turkey havegenerated new information on early boat technology. The pieces areremnants of the coating placed on early reed boats to waterproof them.The largest and earliest fragment, dated by stratigraphically associated[sup.14]C samples to 3800 BC, is c. 20x20 cm and weighs 0.66 kg. Itsimpressions of reed bundles lashed together with rope are similar toarchaeological and ethnographic patterns of reed boats and unlike theimpressions of waterproofed basketry basketry,art of weaving or coiling and sewing flexible materials to form vessels or other commodities. The materials used include twigs, roots, strips of hide, splints, osier willows, bamboo splits, cane or rattan, raffia, grasses, straw, and crepe paper. and reed mats that also appear atHacinebi. While they are not the earliest reed-boat fragments in theworld, these are the earliest fragments from this region, demonstratingthe widespread use of this technology. The world's earliest reed-boat fragments are from the H3 siteon the Subiya coastal plain in Kuwait (6th millennium BC (Crawford2001)). The Hacinebi fragments are similar and in many cases identicalto the bitumen artefacts from the site of Ra's al-Junayz in Omanidentified as fragments of reed boats from 2500-2200 BC (Cleuziou &Tosi 1994). The perpendicular construction of reed and rope and thepresence of barnacles demonstrate that the Ra's al-Junayz artefactswere exposed to salt water for an extended period of time as awaterproofing layer on a reed material (Cleuziou & Tosi 1994). Thesereed bundles were lashed together to form vessels that were eitherboat-shaped rafts, whose buoyancy relied on the reeds themselves, oractual boats which had the ability to displace water (Johnstone 1980;Thesiger 1964: 126-7, plate 41). This technique of construction has beennoted historically and ethnographically in areas of the world rangingfrom Peru to New Zealand (Johnstone 1980: 7-17; Hornell 1946: 39-60) andseems to be the most efficient way to construct riverine riv��er��ine?adj.1. Relating to or resembling a river.2. Located on or inhabiting the banks of a river; riparian: "Members of a riverine tribe ... craft usingonly reed and rope (Heyerdahl 1979: 15-19). While modern reconstructionsof ancient reed boats including the one from Ra's al-Junayz, haveaccurately depicted these vessels (Vosmer 2000), bitumen was rarely usedon them, making them prone to waterlogging For the financial term, see watered stock.Waterlogging is a verbal noun meaning the saturation of such as ground or the filling of such as a boat with water.Ground may be regarded as waterlogged when the water table of the ground water is too high to conveniently permit and/or rotting (Heyerdahl1979: 24; Tzalas 1995). The 4th-millennium inhabitants of Hacinebihowever, had access to Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. Ex Steud., thecommon reed (Brown 1979), and several Anatolian bitumen sources(Schwartz et al. 1999; Lebkuchner 1969). In the ancient Near East, bitumen was an effective waterproofingagent, also used extensively as a mortar and adhesive (Forbes 1936). Itsuse for waterproofing reed boats is mentioned in ancient texts fromMesopotamia (Quails 1981: 254-5; Ports 1997:130), by Strabo in the 1stcentury AD and by Layard and Chesney in the 19th century (Johnstone1980:11). In addition, 5thmillennium BC clay models of bitumen-coveredreed boats from the site of Eridu in Southern Mesopotamia (Safar 1981),and from the site of Tell Mashnaqa in northern Syria (Weiss 1994),further attest to the antiquity and wide geographic range of this formof transport. The discovery of these boats in Anatolia adds to ourunderstanding of Hacinebi. [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] The site appears to have been a Local Anatolian Late Chalcolithicsettlement on the Euphrates River with a small enclave of merchants fromsouthern Mesopotamia during the later phase of occupation (3700-3300BC). This community was part of a network known as the Uruk expansion,the extensive inter-regional exchange network established by theearliest city-states of southern Mesopotamia in the Uruk Period(3700-3200 BC) (Stein 1999: 117-69). However, the oldest reed-boat piecedates to the early phases of the site before any evidence of thisspecific trading relationship with southern Mesopotamia. Non-local items dating to before Mesopotamian contact, such ascopper, shell and chlorite chloriteWidespread group of layer silicate minerals composed of hydrous aluminum silicates, usually of magnesium and iron. The name, from the Greek for “green,” refers to chlorite's typical colour. , suggest that local Anatolian trade existedat the site in earlier periods (Stein 1999:137-8). The presence of boatsand the lack of fishing equipment at the site adds further weight to theargument that the people of Hacinebi were developing long-distanceexchange relationships on their own before the arrival of Mesopotamiansto the site. This area of Anatolia has been known historically as animportant crossing-point of the Euphrates and a region of riverinetraffic lying on a number of ancient trade routes (Stein 1999:117-18;Herodotus 1973 (vol. I): 194-8). Thus, the presence of earlywaterproofed boats provides a more complete picture of the ancientexchange economy of Southeast Anatolia. [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] References AMIET, P. 1980. La glyptique mesopotamienne archaique. Paris:Editions CNRS CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research, France)CNRS Centro Nacional de Referencia Para El Sida (Argentinean National Reference Center for Aids). BASS, G.F. 1972. A history of seafaring based on underwaterarchaeology. London: Thames & Hudson. BROWN, L. 1979. Grasses: an identification guide. Boston (MA):Houghton Mifflin. CLEUZIOU, S. & M. TOSI. 1994. Black boats of Magan. Somethoughts on Bronze Age water transport in Oman This article is about transport in Oman. Railways0 km Railway links with adjacent countriesUnited Arab Emirates - no - no railways Saudi Arabia - no - maybe planned - 1435mm gauge Yemen - no - no railways yet Highways and beyond from theimpressed bitumen slabs of Ra's al-Junayz, in A. Parpola & P.Koskikallio (ed.), South Asian archaeology 1993, II: 745-61. Helsinki. CRAWFORD, H. 2001. The British Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait,British School of Archaeology in Iraq The British School of Archaeology in Iraq is the only body in Britain devoted to research into the ancient civilizations and languages of Mesopotamia.The School was founded in 1932 as a memorial to the life and works of Gertrude Bell. Newsletter 7(May): 6. FORBES, R.J. 1936. Bitumen and petroleum in antiquity. Leiden: E.J.Brill. HERODOTUS. 1973. The histories. Trs. Aubrey de Selincourt Aubrey de Selincourt (S��lincourt) (June 7, 1894 – December, 1962) was an English writer, classical scholar, and translator.de Selincourt was educated at Rugby School, and won an open classical scholarship to University College, Oxford. .Harmondsworth: Penguin. HEYERDAHL, T. 1979. Earlyman and the ocean. New York (NY):Doubleday. HORNELL, J. 1946. Water transport: origins and early evolution.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . JOHNSTONE, P. 1980. The sea-craft of prehistory. Cambridge (MA):Harvard University Press The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. . LAYARD, A.H. 1853. The monuments of Nineveh; including bas-reliefsfrom the palace of Sennacherib and bronzes from the ruins of Nimroud.From drawings made on the spot, during a second expedition to Assyria.London: John Murray. LEBKUCHNER, R.F. 1969. Occurrences of the asphaltic substances insoutheastern Turkey and their genesis, Bulletin of the Mineral Researchand Exploration Institute of Turkey Ankara Foreign Edition 72: 74-96. POTTS, D.T. 1997. Mesopotamian civilization: the materialfoundations. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. SAFAR, F., M.A. MUSTAFA & S. LLOYD. 1981. Eridu. Baghdad:Republic of Iraq Ministry of Culture and Information, State Organizationof Antiquities and Heritage. SCHWARTZ, M., D. HOLLANDER & G. STEIN. 1999. ReconstructingMesopotamian exchange networks in the 4th millennium BC: geochemical andarchaeological analyses of bitumen artifacts from Hacinebi Tepe, Turkey,Paleorient 25(1): 67-82. STEIN, G. 1999. Rethinking world-systems. Tucson (AZ): Universityof Arizona (body, education) University of Arizona - The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. Press. THESIGER, W. 1964. The marsh Arabs. London: Longmans, Green. TZALAS, H.E. 1995. On the obsidian trail: with a papyrus craft inthe Cyclades, in Tropis III: 3rd international symposium on shipconstruction in antiquity:. 441-69. Athens: Hellenic Institute for thePreservation of Nautical Tradition. VOSMER, T. 2000. Ships in the ancient Arabian Sea: the developmentof a hypothetical reed boat model, Proceedings of the Seminar forArabian Studies 30: 235-42. WEISS, H. 1994. Archaeology in Syria, American Journal ofArchaeology 98: 111-12. Mark Schwartz, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University,Evanston IL 60208-1310, USA. M-schwartz@northwestern.edu