Jerf el Ahmar ("Red Cliff") Pit Houses

Located 121 km ( 75 mi) from Aleppo in northern Syria, this site is one of the world's oldest settlements, dating to ca. 9,600 BCE. Archaeologists excavating the site found terracotta plaquettes bearing symbols etched five millenia before the appearance of writing. Grains of wheat were found indicating the development of agricultural cultivation. A round room in an open space in the center of a house cluster is sunken 2 m (6.5ft.) below grade and was found to contain a bench around the perimeter walls suggestive of ritual community activity. also found was another round with interior low walls, one of which has a round doorway, and perimeter platforms, suggesting ritual activity. The site contains about a dozen village layers, one on top of the other, in a transition from PPNA-to-PPNB phases with occupation between 9600 and 8500 BCE. With the discovery of setting stones at right angles, houses evolved from round to rectangular. Some of the village layers incorporate civic open spaces showing evidence of an early attempt at town planning.

Elevation is c. 320 m (1040 ft.) above sea level.

Construction: dry stone walls with mud mortar; it is speculated that clay and reed roofing was placed over a wooden support structure.

Sources of data for CG model:
1.Stordeur, Danielle, and Willcox, George, 2015; Chapter 10, Jerf al-Ahmar, in Kanjou, Youssef and Tsuneki, Akira, editors; 2016; A History of Syria in One Hundred Sites, Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK.
http://g.willcox.pagesperso-orange.fr/archaeobotanical%20images/PDF/Stordeur%20Willcox%202016%202.pdf
2. Banning, E. B. 2003; Housing Neolithic Farmers, Near Eastern Archaeology, Mar-Jun 2003; ProQuest.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266393614_Housing_Neolithic_Farmers