Ain Ghazal: people modeled in plaster

Ain Ghazal, near modern Amman in Jordan, developed during the later eighth millennium BCE. Residents grew wheat, barley and pulses, kept goats and continued obtaining wild animals. Stone and mud-brick houses had plastered floors. Households stored food and made tools around their dwellings, while an expanding village required coordination over water, cultivation and repairs.

Fields and grazing grounds surrounded the settlement. Fuel and building materials came from the same environment. Concentrating many households in one place brought repeated demands on land and changed the landscape through cultivation and the movement of animals.

References: [1]

The plaster figures used bundles of reeds as an internal frame. Layers of plaster covered the frame, with carefully modeled faces and dark outlines around the eyes. Some figures have bodies; others are busts, including double-headed examples. Makers prepared and heated limestone and shaped wet plaster. Skills used in buildings were therefore applied to human images that required their own sequence of preparation and finishing.

References: [1]

Figures were deposited in groups, while burials and skull treatment also occurred in the settlement. Residents linked bodies, images and inhabited places through repeated ritual arrangements. Houses, village size and food strategies continued to change over centuries. Buildings, plant remains and figures together reveal how productive work and collective practices intersected in a community learning to sustain a large farming settlement.

References: [1]