Ubaid period

The Ubaid period (c. 6500 to 3800 BCE) is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from Tell al-`Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley. In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium.

The term "Ubaid period" was coined at a conference in Baghdad in 1930, along with the Jemdet Nasr and Uruk periods that were also defined.
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Region
Spreading from Eridu, the Ubaid culture extended from the Middle of the Tigris and Euphrates to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then spread down past Bahrain to the copper deposits at Oman. The archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BCE, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation. At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, and there is no evidence of human presence in the area for approximately 1,000 years, the so-called "Dark Millennium". That might be due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron.

Ubaid phases
The Ubaid period is divided into four principal phases:
 * Ubaid 0, sometimes called Oueili, (6500–5400 BCE), an early Ubaid phase first excavated at Tell el-'Oueili
 * Ubaid 1, sometimes called Eridu corresponding to the city Eridu, (5400–4700 BCE), a phase limited to the extreme south of Iraq, on what was then the shores of the Persian Gulf. This phase, showing clear connection to the Samarra culture to the north, saw the establishment of the first permanent settlement south of the 5 inch rainfall isohyet.  These people pioneered the growing of grains in the extreme conditions of aridity, thanks to the high water tables of Southern Iraq.
 * Ubaid 2 (4800–4500 BCE), after the type site of the same name, saw the development of extensive canal networks from major settlements. Irrigation agriculture, which seems to have developed first at Choga Mami (4700–4600 BCE) and rapidly spread elsewhere, form the first required collective effort and centralised coordination of labour in Mesopotamia.
 * Ubaid 3/4, sometimes called Ubaid I and Ubaid II — In the period from 4500–4000 BCE saw a period of intense and rapid urbanisation with the Ubaid culture spread into northern Mesopotamia and was adopted by the Halaf culture.  The earliest evidence for sailing has been found in Kuwait indicating that sailing was known by the Ubaid 3 period. Ubaid artifacts spread all along the Arabian Littoral zone, showing the growth of a trading system that stretched from the Mediterranean coast through to Oman.

Early settlements
Sumerian settlers relied on the Euphrates as a resource for early agriculture. Their West Asain origins appear to trace back to the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia. These early Sumerian inhabitants drained marshes for agriculture, and developed trades in weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery. They also spoke one of the most earliest know languages, Sumerian, an agglutinative language isolate.

Ubaid period experienced a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu (Cuneiform: 𒉣𒆠), c. 6500 BCE, by farmers who brought with them the Hadji Muhammed culture, which first pioneered irrigation agriculture. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. The rise of the city of Uruk may be reflected in the story of the passing of the gifts of civilization (me) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect the transition from Eridu to Uruk.

Culture
Early Sumerian culture originated in the south, yet still has clear connections to even earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called “Sumerian problem”, related to the origins of Sumerian civilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.

Ubaid culture is characterized by large unwalled village settlements, characterized by multi-roomed rectangular mud-brick houses and the appearance of the first temples of public architecture in Mesopotamia, with a growth of a two tier settlement hierarchy of centralized large sites of more than 10 hectares surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1 hectare. Domestic equipment included a distinctive fine quality buff or greenish colored pottery decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint; tools such as sickles were often made of hard fired clay in the south. But in the north, stone and sometimes metal were used. Villages thus contained specialised craftspeople, potters, weavers and metalworkers, although the bulk of the population were agricultural labourers, farmers and seasonal pastoralists.

Society
The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised and decreasing. Bogucki describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility. Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, perhaps instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.

Urbanization
Throughout the Ubaid Period of 5000–4000 BCE, the movement towards urbanization began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry (Sumerian domestication) were widely practiced in sedentary communities". There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains. The Ubaid period in the south was associated with intensive irrigated hydraulic agriculture, and the use of the plough, both introduced from the north, possibly through the earlier Choga Mami, Hadji Muhammed and Samarra cultures.

Expansion
Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oecumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions".