Abu Hureyra is the ruins of an ancient settlement, located on the south side of the Euphrates valley of northern Syria, and on an abandoned channel of that famous river. Occupied from ~13,000 to 6,000 years ago, before, during and after the introduction of agriculture in the region. Abu Hureyra is remarkable for its excellent faunal and floral preservation--that is, the bones of animals and seeds of plants were found in very good condition there.
The tell at Abu Hureyra covers an area of some 11.5 hectares, and has occupations which archaeologists call Late Epipaleolithic to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. The cultural period during this long occupation is for Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, during which time apparently the site was abandoned.
Living at Abu Hureyra I
The earliest occupation at Abu Hureyra, ca. 13,000-12,000 years ago, was a permanent, year-round settlement of hunter-gatherers, who gathered over 100 species of edible seeds and fruits from the Euphrates valley and nearby regions. They also had access to an abundance of animals, particularly gazelles.
The Abu Hureyra I people lived in a cluster of semi-subterranean pit houses (semi-subterranean meaning, the dwellings were partially dug into the ground).
Beginning ~11,000 RCYBP, the people experienced environmental changes to a cold, dry conditions associated with the Younger Dryas period. Many of the wild plants the people had relied on disappeared. The earliest cultivated species at Abu Hureyra appears to have been rye (Secale cereale) and lentils and possibly wheat.
During the latter part of Abu Hureyra I (~10,000-9400 RCYBP), and after the original dwelling pits were filled in with debris, the people built above-ground huts of perishable materials, and grew rye, lentils and einkorn wheat.
Abu Hureyra II
The fully Neolithic Abu Hureyra II (~9400-7000 RCYBP) was composed of a collection of rectangular, multi-roomed family dwellings built of mud brick. This village grew to a maximum population of between 4000 and 6000 people, and the people grew crops including rye, lentils, and einkorn wheat, but added emmer wheat, barley, chickpeas and field beans, all of the latter probably domesticated elsewhere.
Abu Hureyra Excavations
Abu Hureyra was excavated in the 1970s by Andrew Moore and colleagues as a salvage operation prior to construction of the Tabqa Dam, which flooded this part of the Euphrates Valley and created Lake Assad. Excavation results from the Abu Hureyra site were reported by A.M.T. Moore, G.C. Hillman, and A.J. Legge, recently published by Oxford University Press.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the Guides to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and Plant Domestication, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Colledge S, and Conolly J. 2010. Reassessing the evidence for the cultivation of wild crops during the Younger Dryas at Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria. Environmental Archaeology 15:124-138.
Doebley, John F., Brandon S. Gaut, and Bruce D. Smith. 2006. The molecular genetics of crop domestication. Cell 127: 1309-1321.
Hillman G, Hedges R, Moore A, Colledge S, and Pettitt P. 2001. New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates. The Holocene 11(4):383-393.
Moore, A.M.T., G.C. Hillman, and A.J. Legge. 2000. Villages on the Euphrates: The Excavation of Abu Hureyra. Oxford University Press, London.
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