Ubaid Period: Mesopotamia's First Farming Villages and Temples

The Ubaid period was the prehistoric culture that first settled the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, from about 6500 to 3800 BC. Its farmers dug irrigation canals, lived in villages of mud brick, made painted pottery and built the earliest known temples of the region. The Ubaid period laid the foundations on which the cities of Sumer later rose.

Discovery and name

The culture takes its name from Tell al-Ubaid, a low mound about 6 kilometres west of the great city of Ur. The British archaeologist Harry Hall began work there in 1919, and Leonard Woolley excavated it more fully in the early 1920s. Beneath remains of the third millennium BC, they found a distinctive painted pottery of an earlier, prehistoric people.

At Ur, Woolley dug deep shafts in 1929 that cut through a thick layer of clean silt with Ubaid remains below it, a deposit he famously linked to the biblical Flood. Further evidence came from Eridu, where the Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar and the British archaeologist Seton Lloyd excavated between 1946 and 1949 and uncovered a long series of Ubaid temples and a large cemetery.

The earliest phase was only discovered in the 1980s, when a French team led by Jean-Louis Huot excavated Tell el-Oueili near Larsa. Its lowest levels, now called Ubaid 0, date to roughly 6500 BC.

Chronology

Archaeologists usually divide the period into phases numbered 0 to 4, with a terminal Ubaid phase. The scheme below is one widely used version; other studies shift each phase by several centuries, because the dates rest on relatively few radiocarbon samples.

The Ubaid overlaps with the Samarra culture of central Iraq, from which it probably drew some of its farming and irrigation know-how, and with the Halaf culture of northern Mesopotamia.

Life on the southern plain

Southern Mesopotamia is flat, hot and has too little rain for crops to grow without help. Ubaid farmers solved this by leading water from the Euphrates and its branches onto their fields through small canals. They grew barley and wheat, kept sheep, goats, cattle and pigs, and fished in the rivers and marshes.

Their houses were built of mud brick, often in a tripartite plan: a long central hall flanked by rows of smaller rooms. Well-preserved examples have been excavated at Tell Abada and Kheit Qasim in the Hamrin region of eastern Iraq. Settlements were mostly villages of a few hundred people, though some, such as Eridu and Ur, grew larger in the later phases.

Ubaid people used tools made of fired clay where stone was scarce. Clay sickles, clay “bent nails” whose purpose is still debated, and spindle whorls are typical finds. Stone, timber, bitumen and obsidian had to be brought in from outside the plain.

Pottery and figurines

Ubaid pottery is the period’s most recognisable product. It was made of fine pale clay, often buff or greenish, and painted in dark brown or black with bands, zigzags, cross-hatching and other geometric motifs. In the later phases potters used a tournette, or slow wheel, which made production faster and decoration more standardised.

From the late Ubaid come clay female figurines with slender bodies, shoulder pellets and elongated, reptile-like heads, found in graves at Ur and Eridu. Their meaning is unknown. Some carry a child, and they are often described as “lizard-headed” figures.

Temples and social change

The most important architectural sequence of the period comes from Eridu, where Safar and Lloyd excavated a series of buildings stacked one above another. The earliest was a small mud-brick room with an altar-like niche; by the late Ubaid the building had become a large tripartite temple on a raised platform. This sequence is discussed in the article on Eridu.

Many archaeologists see these buildings as the forerunners of Sumerian temples, and Eridu was later the city of the god Enki. Offerings of fish bones found in some levels have been linked to Enki’s association with fresh water, although this interpretation is debated.

Ubaid graves show relatively little difference in wealth. However, the growth of temples and larger houses has led some scholars to suggest that families or religious leaders were gaining influence over land, water and labour. The extent of social inequality remains one of the main questions about the period.

Expansion beyond the south

From around 5300 BC, Ubaid-style pottery and architecture spread northwards into upper Mesopotamia, gradually replacing the Halaf culture at sites such as Tepe Gawra near Mosul. Related cultures appeared in south-west Iran, in Khuzestan, and in eastern Anatolia.

Ubaid pottery also reached the Gulf. It has been found at dozens of coastal sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At H3 in As-Sabiyah, Kuwait, archaeologists found a clay model of a reed boat and a painted disc showing a boat with a mast, among the earliest evidence for sailing anywhere in the world.

From Ubaid to Uruk

The landscape of the Ubaid world was different from today’s. The head of the Gulf lay further inland than it does now, and much of the far south was a patchwork of marshes, lagoons and river channels. Settlements such as Eridu and Ur stood close to this watery fringe, where fish, reeds and waterfowl supplemented farming.

During the terminal Ubaid, roughly 4200-3800 BC, the culture changed gradually rather than collapsing. Painted pottery gave way to plainer, mass-produced wares, settlements in the south grew, and temple complexes became larger and more elaborate.

There was no sharp break between the Ubaid and the Uruk period that followed. The same sites, including Eridu, Ur and Uruk itself, continued to be occupied, and the tripartite plan of Ubaid temples and houses survived into later Mesopotamian architecture. For this reason many scholars treat the Ubaid as the formative stage of Sumerian civilisation.

Myths and facts

Myth: Woolley found proof of Noah’s Flood at Ur. Fact: Woolley interpreted a layer of clean silt roughly 2.5-3 metres thick above Ubaid levels at Ur as evidence of the Flood described in Genesis. Later work showed that the deposit was local and did not match flood layers at other sites, so archaeologists do not accept it as evidence of a single great flood.

Myth: The Ubaid people were the first city-dwellers. Fact: Even the largest Ubaid settlements were small by later standards. True cities, with tens of thousands of inhabitants, appeared in the following Uruk period.

Timeline

• c. 6500 BC: First known settlement at Tell el-Oueili (Ubaid 0).
• c. 5900-5500 BC: Ubaid 1 phase, named after the earliest levels at Eridu (dates differ between chronologies).
• c. 5300 BC: Ubaid influence begins to spread into northern Mesopotamia.
• c. 5000 BC: Ubaid pottery present at sites on the Gulf coast.
• c. 4700-4200 BC: Large tripartite temples on platforms built at Eridu.
• c. 3800 BC: The Ubaid gives way to the Uruk period.
• 1919: Harry Hall begins excavations at Tell al-Ubaid.
• 1946-1949: Safar and Lloyd excavate the Ubaid temples and cemetery at Eridu.

Why it matters

The Ubaid period turned the southern Mesopotamian plain into farmland and created the settlement pattern, irrigation methods and religious architecture that later Sumerian cities inherited. Without the Ubaid, the rise of Uruk and the world’s first urban civilisation would be hard to explain.