The Yarmukian Culture in Israel

Published in Paleorient 19/1 (1993), pp.115-134

Yosef Garfinkel
Institute of Archaeology
The Hebrew University
Jerusalem 91905
Israel

The Yarmukian Culture is one out of several Pottery Neolithic units which flourished in the Southern Levant in the 6th millennium B.C. The other cultures are the Jericho IX unit commonly named Pottery Neolithic A, the Southern Coastal plain unit, and the Desert Societies (see Fig. 1). Various suggestions were raised over the years concerning these culturals units and especially their chronological relations one to the other, but none has gained any scholarly concensus(1). In this article we will concentrate on the most well defined unit which is the Yarmukian Culture. The following aspects will be presented: history of research, sites description, stratigraphy and geographical distribution, pottery, the flint industry, stone tools, art objects, burial customs, the ecomony, the architecture and settlement pattern, long distance trade, and chronology.  

I. History of Research

II. Sites Description, Stratigraphy and Geographical Distribution

III. Pottery

IV. The Flint Industry

V. Stone Tools

VI. Art Objects

VII. Burial Customs

VIII. Ecomony

IX. Architecture and Settlement Pattern

X. Long Distance Trade

XI. Chronology

XII. Discussion

Bibliography

 Acknowledgement

This article is largely based on Chapter 3 of my PHD Thesis (Garfinkel 1992a). I wish to thank my supervisors Prof. A. Ben-Tor and Prof. N. Goren-Inbar for there help; J. Perrot, the excavator of Munhata, allowed my to study and publish the pottery, the figurines, and other baked clay objects from the site. I am indebted to him for this. The excavations at Sha`ar Hagolan and the analysis of the finds were made possible through grants from the Israel National Council for Research and Development, the Irene Sala CARE Archaeological Foundation, and the Berman Center for Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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