The Ghassulian was an archaeological stage dating to the Middle Chalcolithic Period in southern Palestine (c. 3800–c. 3350 BC). Its type-site, Tulaylat al-Ghassul, is located in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea in modern Jordan and was excavated in the nineteen thirties. The Ghassulian stage was characterized by small hamlet settlements of mixed farming peoples, and migrated southwards from Syria into Palestine. Houses were trapezoid-shaped and built mud-brick, covered with remarkable polychrome wall paintings. Their pottery was highly elaborate, including footed bowls and horn-shaped drinking goblets, indicating the cultivation of wine. Several samples display the use of sculptural decoration or of a reserved slip (a clay and water coating partially wiped away while still wet). The Ghassulians were a Chalcolithic culture as they also smelted copper.

Funerary customs show evidence that they buried their dead in stone dolmens.

Ghassulian culture has been identified at numerous other places in southern Palestine, especially in the region of Beersheba. The Ghassulian culture correlates closely with the Amratian of Egypt and may have had trading affinities (e.g., the distinctive churns, or “bird vases”) with early Minoan culture in Crete.

Origins

Ghassulian replaced the Minhata and Yarmoukian culture, and seems to have developed in part from a fusion of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Amuq Valley, with Minhata and nomadic pastoralists of the circum Arabian nomadic pastoral complex. The Ghassulian phase seems to have been formative for the Syro-Palestinian Canaanite civilization - in which a chalcolithic structure pioneered a Mediterranean mixed economy, involving the intensive subsistence production of horticultural fruit and vegetables, extensive farming of grains and cereals, transhumanse and nomadic pastoral systems of animal husbandry, and commercial production (as in Crete) of wine and olives. Canaanite can describe anything pertaining to Canaan: in particular, its languages and inhabitants. ... The Minoans were an ancient pre-Hellenic civilization on what is now Crete (in the Mediterranean), during the Bronze Age, prior to classical Greek culture. ...