This document summarizes Neolithic art from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Europe between 9,000 BCE and 3,200 BCE. It describes early settlements like Jericho and Göbekli Tepe that featured carved stone pillars. Sites like Çatalhöyük and Ain Ghazal produced large plaster sculptures and wall paintings depicting hunting scenes and humans. Megalithic monuments emerged in Europe like Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland and Stonehenge in England, built from massive stones without use of metal tools.

1. Neolithic art of Europe, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia

2. From Paleolithic to Neolithic
Changes marking the transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic period:
• End of the Ice Age.
• Increased technological sophistication.
• Transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agrarian ones.
• Replacement of nomadic lifestyles with the development of settlements.

3. Chronology
Near/Middle East (Anatolia and Mesopotamia): ca 9,000 BCE
North Africa: ca 6,000 BCE
Europe: 6,500 BCE (southeast Europe), 4,000 BCE (northwestern Europe)

4. Chronology
Near/Middle East (Anatolia and Mesopotamia): ca 9,000 BCE
North Africa: ca 6,000 BCE
Europe: 6,500 BCE (southeast Europe)
4,000 BCE (northwestern Europe)
Aerial photograph of Sesklo, Thessaly, Greece
(established ca 6,800 BCE)

5. Anatolia and Mesopotamia
Aerial photograph of Jericho, West Bank (established ca 10,000 - 9,000 BCE)

6. Anatolia and Mesopotamia
Aerial photograph of Jericho, West Bank (established ca 9,000 BCE)
Jericho (ca 9,000 BCE)
9,000 BCE: establishment of a small village.
8,000 BCE: creation of the neolithic settlement.
7500 BCE: a wide rock-cut ditch and a thick
Wall (5-foot) surround the town. Estimated
population: more than 2,000.

7. Anatolia and Mesopotamia
Aerial photograph of Jericho, West Bank (established ca 9,000 BCE)
Human skull with restored features, from Jericho, ca.
7200–6700 bce. Features modeled in plaster, painted,
and inlaid with seashells. Life-size. Archaeological
Museum, Amman.

8. Human skull with restored features, from Jericho, ca.
7200–6700 bce. Features modeled in plaster, painted,
and inlaid with seashells. Life-size. Archaeological
Museum, Amman.
Neolithic portraiture?
• Cranium severed from the dead body and reconstructed
to lifelike appearance.
• Faces were recreated with the use of plaster.
• Use of seashells for eyes and paint to represent hair.

9. T-shaped stone pillar with animal reliefs, from Göbekli Tepe,
Turkey, ca. 9000 bce. Sanliurfa Museum, Sanliurfa.
The Neolithic Temple at Göbekli Tepe (ca 9,000 BCE)
• The excavation of 1965 revealed 20 semi-circular structures with
stone pillars.
• The stone pillars are decorated with shallow reliefs of animals
(including birds and insects) as well as human arms and hands.
• Religious rather than habitation site.
• The dating of the findings (ca 9,000 BCE) problematizes the
assumption that the construction of stone temples follows the
formation of permanent village communities.

10. Ain Ghazal (ca 7,200 – 5,000 BCE)
Settlement established ca 7,200 BCE and occupied until 5,000
BCE near Amman (modern Jordan).
It featured houses of irregularly shaped stones with plastered
floors and walls painted red
Details of the Neolithic Settlement at Ain
Ghazal, ca 7,200-5,000 BCE (near Amman,
modern-day Jordan)

11. Human figures from Ain Ghazal, Jordan, ca. 6750–6250 BCE. Plaster, painted and inlaid
with bitumen, 3′ 5″ high. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
In 1983 and 1985, 32 statues were discovered buried
in Ain Ghazal.
They were made of white plaster built up over a core
of reeds and twine. The pupils of the eyes were
drawn with black bitumen, a tarlike substance.
Impressively life-like and significantly larger than
earlier Paleolithic sculptural representations of
humans.

12. Human figures from Ain Ghazal, Jordan, ca. 6750–6250 BCE. Plaster, painted and inlaid
with bitumen, 3′ 5″ high. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Human with feline head, from
Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany, ca.
40,000–35,000 BCE. Mammoth ivory, 11
5/8’’ high. Ulmer Museum, Ulm.

13. Çatal Höyük (ca. 7500 and 6000 BCE)
Deer hunt, detail of a wall painting from level III, Çatal Höyük, Turkey,
ca. 6000 BCE. Museum of Anatolian Civilization, Ankara.
The paintings of the older decorated rooms feature hunting
scenes prominently.
The dating of these paintings suggests that they were created
after the advent of agriculture in the wider area. Nevertheless,
for the inhabitants of Çatal Höyük hunting appears to have
retained its centrality to the economy of the settlement.

14. Çatal Höyük (ca. 7500 and 6000 BCE)
Deer hunt, detail of a wall painting from level III, Çatal Höyük, Turkey,
ca. 6000 BCE. Museum of Anatolian Civilization, Ankara.
The scenes feature an array of animals surrounded by a
plethora of human hunters, in contrast to the relative absence
of humans in Paleolithic animal scenes.
The humans form groups and are in fact displayed in a variety
of poses and actions, blending the scene narratively.

15. Deer hunt, detail of a wall painting from level III, Çatal Höyük, Turkey,
ca. 6000 BCE. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara.
Rhinoceros, wounded man, and disemboweled bison, painting in the well
of the cave at Lascaux, France, ca. 15,000–13,000 BCE.

16. Hunters attacking an aurochs. In situ wall-painting from Çatalhöyük, now on display in the Museum of
Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara, Turkey. Credit: Photograph by Ian Todd, © Çatalhöyük Research Project
(CC BY-NC).
The painters at Çatal Höyük first
applied a layer of dry white plaster
before applying their pigments.

17. Europe
The passage to the Neolithic period was delayed in Europe
compared to the Middle/Near East.
Starting from approximately 4,000 BCE, we have the
emergence of imposing stone monuments in Europe.
For the constructions of these monuments, European
populations used massive rough-cut stones as building
material (as high as 17 feet and weighing as much as 50
tons): Megalithic architecture.
Main chamber with corbeled dome of the passage
grave, Newgrange, Ireland, ca. 3200–2500 BCE.

18. Newgrange, Ireland (3,200-2,500 BCE)
Main chamber with corbeled dome of the passage
grave, Newgrange, Ireland, ca. 3200–2500 BCE.
One of the oldest funerary monuments in Europe.
Passage tomb: tomb with a long stone corridor leading to a burial
chamber beneath a great tumulus (earthen burial mound).

19. Tumulus, Newgrange, Ireland, ca. 3200–2500 BCE.
Tumulus, Dissignac (west of Saint-Nazaire), France, ca. 4,000 BCE

20. Tumulus, Newgrange, Ireland, ca. 3200–2500 BCE.
Tumulus: 280 feet in diameter and 44 feet tall.
Its passageway is 62 feet long.
The primitive dome over the main chamber is an early
examples of corbeled vaulting (vault supported by
projections jutting out from a wall).

21. Aerial view of the ruins of Hagar Qim
(looking east), Malta,
ca. 3200–2500 BCE.
Hagar Qim, Malta, ca. 3200-2500 BCE
Religious shrine (based on the discovery of altars in
the site).
Construction of temple by pilling the stone blocks
in courses (stacked horizontal rows).
Combination of rectilinear and curved forms (see
apses; i.e., semi-circular recesses).
Doorways employ the post-and-lintel system.

22. Stonehenge, Salisbury, England
Stonehenge (looking north), Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England,
ca. 2550–1600 BCE. Circle 97′ in diameter; trilithons 24′ high.

23. Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, ca. 2550–1600 BCE. Circle 97′ in diameter;
trilithons 24′ high.
Henge: arrangement of megalithic stones in a
circle, often surrounded by a ditch.
Complex of rough-cut sarsen (a form of
sandstone) stones and smaller “bluestones”
(various volcanic rocks).
Built in several stages over several hundred
years.

24. Stonehenge: Restored plan. Dr. Stukely’s drawing; the
shaded stones were the ones remaining in the early 1840s
when this plan was prepared.
Aerial view of Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England,
ca. 2550–1600 BCE.