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The people of 'Ain Ghazal lived year-round at the site, relying for their subsistence on hunting, herding, and farming. They ate meat and milk products from the goats they herded and grew wheat, barley, lentils, peas,
and chickpeas. About half of the meat came from hunting wild animals, including cattle, boar, and gazelle. They also gathered wild plants, almonds, figs, and pistachios.
The economy and culture of 'Ain Ghazal share many
traits with a prehistoric culture archaeologists call Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (around 8500 - 5500 B.C.), which has been identified at many sites in what are now parts of Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Like other
Neolithic cultures of the Near East, the PPNB culture is characterized by year-round villages whose populations used advanced stone tools and survived by farming grains and legumes, herding sheep and goat, and hunting and gathering
wild animals and plants. But the PPNB culture was a kind of Neolithic "golden age," with large and prosperous settlements, abundant evidence for long-distance exchange of obsidian, shells, and other materials, impressive
lime-plastered houses, and a rich assemblage of objects with symbolic functions. Around 6000 B.C., most settlements were abandoned. Only a few-including 'Ain Ghazal-continued to flourish. What brought about the end of the PPNB
culture? Some archaeologists believe there was an environmental change, brought about either by a natural climatic shift or by ecological degradation caused by destruction of forests and other vegetation. Villages located on the
margins of zones receiving adequate rainfall for farming would have been severely affected by minor environmental shifts, causing inhabitants to migrate. |
