Ghassulian

Common card · No. 356276

Ghassulian refers to a culture and an archaeological stage dating to the Middle and Late Chalcolithic period in the Southern Levant (c. 4400 – c. 3500 BC). Its type-site, Teleilat el-Ghassul, is located in the eastern Jordan Valley near the northern edge of the Dead Sea, in modern Jordan. It was excavated in 1929-1938 and in 1959–1960, by the Jesuits. Basil Hennessy dug at the site in 1967 and in 1975–1977, and Stephen Bourke in 1994–1999. The Ghassulian stage was characterized by small hamlet settlements of mixed farming peoples, who had emigrated from the north and settled in the southern Levant: today's Jordan, Israel and Palestinian territories. People of the Beersheba culture (a Ghassulian subculture) lived in underground dwellings, a unique phenomenon in the archaeological history of the region, or in trapezoidal houses of mud-brick. Those were often built partially underground (on top of collapsed underground dwellings) and were covered with remarkable polychrome wall paintings...

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