Storage story: Investigating food surplus and agricultural methods in Late Ubaid Gurga Chiya (Iraqi Kurdistan)

Abstract

The world’s earliest documented transition from village to urban life took place in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BCE. In order to recognize the steps leading to this process, archaeologists have long focused on the development of village life in the preceding ‘Ubaid period, corresponding broadly to the 5th millennium BCE. Our research aims to contribute to this ongoing process by presenting new evidence pertaining to changes in agricultural methods and the organization of food surplus from a site of the Late ‘Ubaid period called Gurga Chiya, located in the Sharizor Plain of Iraqi Kurdistan. Excavation of the mid to late 5th millennium BCE sequence at Gurga Chiya led to the discovery of an architectural complex with partially preserved pisé walls, most likely corresponding to a “tripartite” form of domestic building that appears widely characteristic of contemporaneous sites elsewhere in the Southwest Asia, from southeastern Turkey to central Iraq. One of the preserved rooms appears to have been used as a storage area for plant-based foods, as indicated by dense deposits of archaeobotanical remains, especially lentils and cereals. In this paper, we combine archaeological, architectural and archaeobotanical analysis to investigate the relationship between food storage and domestic economy at Gurga Chiya. These methods are supplemented by stable isotope analysis of Δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values from preserved grains at Gurga Chiya and from the adjacent, Late Neolithic site Tepe Marani, and provides a diachronic perspective on changes in the methods used for cultivating crops. The limited data acquired from Tepe Marani and Gurga Chiya seem consistent with a gradual shift towards lower inputs per unit area – thus more extensive cultivation regimes – over time.