FROM MOBILE FORAGERS TO COMPLEX SOCIETIES 7 IN SOUTHWEST ASIA Trevor Watkins, University of Edinburgh

Terminologies in Southwest Asia 199 KEY SITE Jerf el Ahmar: A Village 212 Landscapes and Environments of Southwest Asia: Defining the “Core Area” 199 A Cascade of Rapid Change: The Later Aceramic Neolithic (8800–6500 BCE) 214 A Crescendo of Change (20,000–8800 BCE) 201 KEY SITE KEY CONTROVERSY Göbekli Tepe: Religious Structures Explaining the 203 at a “Central Place” 216

KEY THEME: CLIMATE CHANGE KEY SITE Environmental Shocks in Southwest Asia 204 Çatalhöyük 220

KEY SITE KEY THEME: DOMESTICATION Ohalo II: Epipaleolithic Lifeways in the 205 A Story of Unintended Consequences 224

KEY SITE Transformation, Dispersal, and Expansion Abu Hureyra: The Transition from (6500–6000 BCE) 225 Foraging to Farming 208 KEY SITE Sabi Abyad I 226

Summary and Conclusions 228

Further Reading and Suggested Websites 229

A cluster of skulls, retrieved from burials at , northern , with facial features modeled in painted clay, and eyes closed as if in sleep.

198

198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 198 P.198 B 26/10/2017 16:23 n Chapter 6 we reviewed the profound transformation of is known as the Epipaleolithic in Southwest Asia. Radiocarbon Iclimate and environment that accompanied the melting of dating shows that it lasted about thirteen millennia (23,000– the ice sheets, and the development of in different 9600 BCE). The beginning of the Neolithic conveniently coincides regions of the world during the milder Holocene period. with the beginning of the Holocene period (at about 9600 BCE). In this chapter we turn to the very first human societies to The transition from the Neolithic into the following have become settled, living in large-scale communities, sup- period can be roughly set at 6000 BCE. When the Neolithic was ported by farming: those of Southwest Asia. Subsequent chapters first defined in the nineteenth century, it was the last part of will discuss the origins and spread of farming elsewhere in the Stone Age, differentiated by the presence of . When the world—in East Asia (Chapter 8), the , , and archaeologists began investigating the long stratigraphies of such (Chapters 10–12). Neolithic sites as in the Levant, it came as a surprise that the greater part of that deep stratigraphic sequence produced no The of Southwest Asia involves a process of transforma- pottery. So the terms Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN), or aceramic tion that led from the classic mobile forager bands before 25,000 Neolithic, were invented. Here the term aceramic Neolithic is years ago, through the end of the Pleistocene, or , preferred; and the aceramic Neolithic is subdivided into two sub- period, to a time in the early Holocene, the Neolithic, when there periods, an early (PPNA, 9600–8800 BCE), and a later aceramic were densely populated settlements of and herders across Neolithic (PPNB, 8800–6500 BCE). The last few centuries of the much of Southwest Asia. The account of this transformation can Neolithic are known as the PN, or pottery Neolithic. be divided into three parts of unequal length. The first part covers almost 15,000 years, during which people changed from living in small mobile bands to relatively large, permanently settled Landscapes and Environments of communities. In parallel with the radical changes in settlement, Southwest Asia: Defining the “Core Area” they made equally radical changes in their subsistence. At the Within Southwest Asia [7.1, p. 201] there is a great variety of end of this first part, there were permanent communities settled landscapes and climatic regimes, and—as we can see in today’s around a “core area” of Southwest Asia, and, at least in some Middle East—extraordinary contrasts in population density. parts, they had begun to cultivate crops of and pulses. Almost seventy years ago, the American prehistoric archaeologist The second part of the transformation happened at a much Robert Braidwood set out to find sites where he could investigate faster tempo, over a much shorter span of time. It was a cascade the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. He defined of cultural, social, and economic changes, as the domestication the zone where he could expect to find the archaeological sites that of , , and followed the development of would document the process by mapping where the “raw mater- agriculture, and mixed farming economies became established. ials” of the Neolithic Revolution, the wild plants and animals Population density accelerated, and settlements increased in size. that were first domesticated, would have been found in the early At the end of this period, there were dramatic social, economic, Holocene period. Gordon Childe, who had no direct knowledge and cultural changes as the populations of the largest settlements of the region, had suggested that his Neolithic Revolution took declined catastrophically. place in the , more particularly at either tip of In the third part, a new kind of settlement pattern was estab- the crescent, in the Nile Valley and Delta, and in the delta of the lished, and settlements of farmers appeared in parts of Southwest and Rivers in what is today southern Iraq (see Asia beyond the “core area.” The transition from the second to the box: Explaining the Neolithic Revolution, p. 203). Braidwood’s third part poses an unresolved question: Was the spreading out multidisciplinary team reasoned that the wild cereals and pulses, of smaller farming communities across a wider landscape simply together with the wild sheep and , would have been found a better solution to living as farming communities, or was there in the Levantine Mediterranean woodlands, around the foothills a “push factor” in the shape of a period of rapid climate change of the Taurus Mountains across Southeast Turkey, Northeast and aridification at the end of the seventh millennium BCE? Syria, and in the hill country along the modern frontier between Iraq and . Braidwood called this arc “the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent.” Around that arc there is sufficient rainfall Terminologies in Southwest Asia to sustain open woodland of oak and pistachio, with plenty of There is a veritable dictionary of technical terms—for diagnostic space for wild and , a variety of pulses—, beans, types of artifact, for stratigraphic phases, periods, and cultural , and chickpeas—and a range of and various nuts. groups—but, for our purposes in this chapter, they have been These hilly flanks constitute the “core area” of transformation whittled down to a minimum. Following the that occurred from the end of the Paleolithic, but, as we now period (45,000–25,000 years ago), the last part of the Paleolithic know, parts of central also belong in the “core area.”

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BCE BCE

20,000 19,000 18,000 17,000 16,000 15,000 14,000 13,000 12,000 11,000 10,000 9,000 8,000 7,000 6,000

Epipaleolithic Aceramic Neolithic Ceramic Neolithic

Last Glacial Recovery Younger Dryas Recovery and Early Holocene Optimum Maximum

Rapid Climate Change Event

SOUTH LEVANT (, PALESTINE, JORDAN)

Grinding and pounding equipment becomes common Natufian, PPNA, PPNB Harvesting and storing of cereals and pulses Broad-spectrum hunting and fishing El Wad, Eynan WF16 (Wadi Feynan 16) Toward sedentary villages Hilazon Tachtit Jericho Ohalo II ’Ain Ghazal

NORTH LEVANT, SOUTHEAST TURKEY, AND CYPRUS

Abu Hureyra I Abu Hureyra II

Akrotiri- Jerf el Ahmar Aetokremnos Dja’de

Çayönü Tepe

Göbekli Tepe

Nevalı Çori

ZAGROS, NORTHEAST IRAQ, AND WESTERN IRAN

Zarzian

Shanidar

CENTRAL ANATOLIA

Pınarbas‚ı Pınarbas‚ı

Burial within the settlement and retrieval of skulls Harvesting and storing of cereals and pulses begins Broad-spectrum hunting and fishing begins Communal buildings Toward sedentary villages

Skull Curation and Caching

Copper

Period People Event Occasional Site occurrence

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 200 P.200 B 26/10/2017 16:24 7.1 Southwest Asia. Map Black Sea showing major physical features and sites discussed U T R K E in the text. Y Göbekli Tepe Çatalhöyük Ca Nevalı Çori spia ● ● Çayönü S n ● ● ea Ta Shanidar u ns ● Tell Sabi ● rus ntai Mou T ● Abyad i g Zawi Chemi Eu r ph i ra s ● t US es YPR Abu ● C● Zeribar M Akrotiri Hureyra ed iter rane an Se Z a ● Eynan ag Mo ro un s ● Ohalo II ta Kebara ● in ● s ● ‘Ain Ghazal Jericho

● WF16 (Wadi Feynan 16) N

e l 0 500 km i N 0 300 miles

Changing Climate and Environments Clare and Weninger 2015). In the concluding discussion of this We think of the transformation as a drama taking place on the chapter, we need to consider how these climatic fluctuations varied landscapes of Southwest Asia, but, over the time span affected living conditions, and what part climatic and environ- of more than 20,000 years, there were significant changes in mental pressures played in the transformation process. climate (see box: Environmental Shocks in Southwest Asia, p. 204), environments, and the natural distribution of key plant BCE and animal species [7.2, p. 202]. For our purposes in this chapter, A Crescendo of Change (20,000–8800 ) the beginning of the human story coincides with the Last Glacial The story of this major transformation in how people lived their Maximum, the last major cold phase of the Pleistocene period. For lives begins at the boundary between the Upper Paleolithic and such regions as Southwest Asia, and around the Mediterranean, the Epipaleolithic periods. This section takes that story through temperatures would have been several degrees lower during the the approximately eleven millennia of the Epipaleolithic, and Last Glacial Maximum, but there were no spreading glaciers over 1,000 years into the Neolithic. By contrast with the pre- and ice sheets. Such a colder phase would have had a significant ceding Paleolithic, over this period the pace of cultural, social, impact in the valleys of the great mountain chains of the Taurus and economic change quickens very notably. People changed and the Zagros, and on the high plateaux of Central Anatolia from living in small, mobile forager bands to living together in and Iran. The Mediterranean coastlands of the Levant were the substantially larger numbers in permanent settlements. They least affected parts of Southwest Asia. began by putting more and more emphasis on harvesting and Following the recovery from the Last Glacial Maximum, there storing the of a large range of plant species. As the period was a relatively short but quite sharp return to colder conditions, progressed, they began to concentrate on the most productive known as the Younger Dryas phase, between about 10,800 and crops: the cereals and pulses. In the last part of this period, at 9600 BCE. The Younger Dryas coincides with the last millennium least in some parts of the core area, they had begun to cultivate of the Epipaleolithic period, and its environmental impact has two or three types of , and some pulses. In the next section, been much debated. Evidence for the amount of water flowing as people became more and more reliant on mixed farming, in the Jordan Valley and into the Dead Sea suggests that the the cultural, social, and economic changes came thick and fast. Younger Dryas phase had very little impact there. There was a rapid recovery at the beginning of the Holocene, coinciding The Epipaleolithic in the Levant (c. 20,000–9600 BCE) with the flourishing of the early aceramic Neolithic period. But, The most widely researched regions of Epipaleolithic Southwest coinciding with the third part of the story, there was a period of Asia are the South Levant, specifically Jordan, the Palestinian several centuries when the climate in Southwest Asia became territories, and Israel, and, to a lesser extent, parts of western both cooler and drier. That period of “rapid climate change” Syria. Through the 10,000 years of the Epipaleolithic period, coincides with major changes in the archaeological record (e.g., the pace of cultural change quickened perceptibly. In the early

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Abu Hureyra ● ● Abu Hureyra ● ● Eu Zeribar Eu Zeribar phra phra te te s s

T T i ig gr Huleh ris Huleh is ● ● a b

Forest and fairly Woodland (oak, terebinth) and open Woodland (terebinth, Areas supporting dense woodland areas dominated by annual grasses almond) steppe extensive stands of wild and ryes Steppe, dominated by wormwoods, perennial chenopods and tussock grasses

Abu Hureyra Abu Hureyra ● ● ● ● Eu Zeribar Eu Zeribar phra phra te te s s

T T ig ig Huleh ris Huleh ris ● ● c d

Areas dominated by trees, mostly probably growing as 7.2 a–d The environmental setting. A sequence of maps based on thin scatters only three sources of environmental data: Lake Huleh, the site of Abu Hureyra, and Lake Zeribar, in a high intermontane valley in the Partial die-back zone, with isolated pockets of trees with Zagros Mountains. a, the Last Glacial Maximum (c. 21–15,500 BCE) wild cereals and legumes the woodland zone maps the restricted zone where wild cereals and pulses would be found; b, recovery of the open woodland Total arboreal die-back zone, characterized by dead (and thus cereals, and pulses) by around 14,000 BCE; c, the cooler, trees, with some terebinth and caper bushes in wadis drier Younger Dryas phase may have seen a return to Last Glacial Maximum conditions in some regions (c. 10,800 BCE), and d, the recovery in the early Holocene (from 9600 BCE).

excavations of cave sites it was the appearance of microliths— of the precisely shaped microliths that they made were prob- tiny, skillfully shaped flints made on bladelets, miniature blades ably used in twos and threes to form the points and barbs of only 25–50 mm (1–2 in.) in length—that distinguished the arrowheads (see 7.3, for example, p. 206). Their use of bows and Epipaleolithic from the preceding Upper Paleolithic period. arrows signals that there were changes in hunting strategies. Chipped stone specialists have recognized regional variations in And this was confirmed in the assemblages of animal bones the way that contemporary groups developed their own preferred found on sites in the South Levant: the ratio of bones from large forms of microlith. herd species, such as wild cattle (always quite rare), red deer, It is already clear at the beginning of the period that hunter- and fallow deer, decreases relative to the increasing numbers of gatherer groups in the South Levant were living significantly small animals, such as tortoise, hare, fox, and birds (Stiner 2001; different lives from their Upper Paleolithic predecessors. Many Stiner et al. 2000). The major source of was the hunting

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Explaining the Neolithic Revolution

rchaeologists from the beginning have conditions reduced the availability of the symbolism in material representation and A sought to explain the process of the wild cereals and pulses on which people in symbolic rituals. Researchers today come Neolithic transformation on the basis of the had come to rely. from many disciplinary backgrounds, but information and conceptual frameworks Since the middle of the twentieth century, all would agree that the transformation available to them. Gordon Childe modeled more information has been accumulated, process was more complex than simply a his prehistoric Neolithic Revolution on the more sophisticated methods of investiga- series of economic adaptations to external historical analogy of a (Marxism-inspired) tion and analysis have been developed, environmental pressures. Human commu- socio-economic industrial revolution and new techniques of investigation, nities changed most aspects of their way of (Childe 1936; Childe 1942). In the 1960s, such as stable strontium, calcium, and life, their niche, making individually small leading processualist archaeologists argued nitrogen isotope analysis on human and innovations here or there, or adjusting to for an ecological–evolutionary underpin- animal teeth and bones, have been applied. many kinds of pressures. Over a period ning. For example, Flannery (1969) argued Perhaps more significantly, different theor- of some 15,000 years, human society, its that the process began in the Epipaleolithic etical perspectives have been proposed. cultural modes, as well as the technology period as an adaptation to the environ- The debate has been widened by two influ- and economics of subsistence, were trans- mental pressure of population growth as ential thinkers and authors in particular, Ian formed at a pace, and to a degree, without people began to live more sedentary lives. Hodder (1990) and (1994, precedent in all the tens and hundreds of His “broad spectrum revolution” involved 2000). Ian Hodder was already one of the millennia of previous human existence. the broadening of the spectrum of hunted leading theoretical archaeologists of the More and better information has shown and trapped species and the harvesting of 1970s and 1980s, before he became directly that some ideas and theories needed to storable plant foods, leading to the further engaged from the early 1990s in a twenty- be revised, upgraded, or abandoned. New intensification of productivity by cultivat- five-year programme of field research at the theoretical frameworks for archaeological ing crops and herding selected species of famous site of Çatalhöyük. Both Hodder explanation have been proposed, and this domesticated animals. Somewhat later, and Cauvin reject the ecological–evolu- field of research has become an arena for the identification of the Younger Dryas tionary, processualist approach. They have debate on how best to frame accounts of phase provided an alternative kind of encouraged us to focus on the great cultural prehistoric processes. external pressure as worsening climatic and social changes, and the very evident

of gazelle, which are lean and agile animals, about the size of preservation conditions at the site of Ohalo II, dating to the sheep or goats. These ratios between larger and smaller animals very beginning of the Epipaleolithic period (see box: Ohalo II: continue to change through the Epipaleolithic period, signifying Epipaleolithic Lifeways in the Levant, p. 205), document a small greater reliance on a broad spectrum of mainly small species. community who were harvesting seeds from more than one These changes may have been needed as large species became hundred species of large-seeded grasses, cereals (wild wheat and depleted in the area around their more permanent settlements. barley), and pulses. The important point to note about the trend Birds and small mammals, such as hares and foxes, reproduce toward using such species is that they were harvested annually quickly and can more readily withstand hunting pressure. and were then storable food resources. The French anthropolo- There were other changes in parallel with the changing gist Alain Testart (1982) made the point that hunter-gatherers balance in hunted animal species. We have indirect evidence who engage in storing food resources (an investment in delayed of the use of plant foods in the form of heavy grinding stones, return) are more like farmers than the mobile foraging bands who mortars, and pestles. Some examples of pounding and grinding rely on immediate return resources. Their stored food resources equipment for processing hard, dry seeds are present on sites meant that groups could stay in one place for periods of time, of the preceding Upper Paleolithic period, but their frequency while they processed and consumed their stored harvests. The increases with the beginning of the Epipaleolithic period, and increasing use of stored plant foods fitted together with the their numbers continue to increase throughout the Epipaleolithic increasing concentration on the small animals and birds that and into the early aceramic Neolithic periods. The remarkable could be hunted and trapped around the place where the group

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Environmental Shocks in Southwest Asia

ithin the time range of this chapter flanks” zone, impacting the increasing diffi- with the end of the aceramic Neolithic, the Wthere were three periods of rapid culties of the late Epipaleolithic community implosion of the South Levantine “mega climate cooling. The first was the Last at Abu Hureyra, in some other places, the sites” and the dispersal of population into Glacial Maximum (LGM), between about cooler temperatures meant that less mois- smaller settlements, and the switch to 21,000 and 15,500 BCE, in Southwest Asia ture was lost through solar evaporation. wide-ranging pastoralist economies in the coinciding with the earliest part of the In Southeast Turkey, where the Younger ceramic Neolithic. The large communities Epipaleolithic period. The second was Dryas was thought to have caused the loss of the late aceramic Neolithic, dependent the Younger Dryas in the last millennium of wild grasses and cereals, we now know on intensive mixed farming, may indeed of the Pleistocene, and the third was of permanent settlements, which were have been pushed over the edge by the between 6600 and 6000 BCE in the East established at the height of the Younger onset of the rapid climate change event, Mediterranean. These periods involved Dryas period. This reminds us that climatic resolving the social pressures by forming returns to glacial conditions, but affected changes have diverse effects. new, smaller communities, and the eco- different regions in different ways. While varied, the effects of these periods nomic pressures by revised, flexible farming For example, while the Younger Dryas of cooling had huge consequences for and pastoralist strategies. was thought to have caused a serious envi- human life. The rapid climate change ronmental deterioration all around the “hilly between 6600 and 6000 BCE coincided

had chosen to settle. A well-chosen location at the interface of The Natufians in the Late Epipaleolithic Levant complementary ecological zones meant that different resources Within the Epipaleolithic in the South Levant, the Natufian could be accessed from a single location. culture of the last three millennia of the period, between 13,000 Through the Epipaleolithic there was a distinct trend toward and 9600 BCE, represents something of a step change, and not seasonal settlement and latterly toward sedentism. In the early only because it has received a quite disproportionate amount part of the period there are several large sites, which were prob- of research attention (see the two substantial, multi-authored ably seasonal aggregation sites where groups from around volumes Bar-Yosef & Valla 1991; Bar-Yosef & Valla 2013). the region came together for a time. Some of these sites have Natufians began to live in permanent settlements before the developed a stratified deposit of more than 1 m (3 ft.) thickness, wholesale development of agriculture, although they invested with traces of stone foundations for round huts. Kharaneh IV, more in the processing of stored cereals and pulses. They are well in an oasis area of pools and wetlands in the north of Jordan, known for their sickle blades, used to cut cereal stems, and for for example, became a low mound covering 2.2 ha (5.4 acres), being at the cusp between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. its surface covered with millions of discarded flints (Maher The Natufian occupations of cave sites that had already been et al. 2016; Maher et al. 2012; Ramsey et al. 2016; Richter et al. in use for many tens of thousands of years show a significant 2013). Preliminary indications suggest that it was occupied over difference from those early Paleolithic occupations. The cave of long seasons. The phytolith evidence (phytoliths are the silica el Wad, in a dry valley in the Mount Carmel hills in the north skeletons of plant leaves and stems) shows that people were of Israel, is a good example (Weinstein-Evron et al. 2013). It exploiting wetland, steppe, parkland grasses, and woodland was occupied throughout the Natufian period, but the Natufian resources. Two or three of these large aggregation sites have also occupation is different from earlier Paleolithic cave sites in produced ceremonial burials. We should think of these sites as that the group was larger and needed more space than the cave supporting a variety of social and symbolic activities that held the could offer. There are remains of terracing of the slope outside wider community together. And the groups who came together the cave, and small, circular, stone-built huts with paved floors at such aggregation sites as Kharaneh IV were also engaged in both inside and out. There were also two series of burials at el social relationships with other, more distant groups, as is dem- Wad. In the early excavations at the site in the 1920s, Dorothy onstrated by the frequency of finds of marine shell beads from Garrod found both single and multiple burials (Garrod and Bate both the Mediterranean, around 200 km (125 miles) away, and 1937). Some of the bodies were found to have been wearing the Red Sea, around 400 km (250 miles) away. elaborate head coverings, cloaks, or other clothes onto which

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Ohalo II: Epipaleolithic Lifeways in the Levant

he site of Ohalo II in northern Israel, The single burial was that of a male, autumn, and the evidence of the cementum Tdated around 20,000 BCE, provides 35–40 years old, 1.73 m (5 ft. 8 in.) tall. growth in the gazelle teeth, together with a remarkable snapshot of lifeways in the His head was supported on three stones, indications from the bird bones, suggest Levant during the Last Glacial Maximum, at and the legs were tightly folded at the year-round occupation. the very beginning of Epipaleolithic (Nadel knees, the heels against the buttocks. Close and Hershkovitz 1991; Nadel and Werker to the head was a small implement made Overview 1999). This small settlement, with micro- from a gazelle’s limb bone, which had been At Ohalo II, then, we have evidence for the lithic chipped-stone tools of the earliest decorated with many close incisions. There exploitation of a broad spectrum of plants Epipaleolithic, Kebaran type, was estab- are signs that this person suffered physical and animals, the extensive use of storable lished on the marls of the retreating Lake disabilities in the latter years of his life. plant foods, and the year-round occupation Lisan (the inland sea that once filled the rift of a settlement. The starch traces found on valley that now contains the , Evidence for Diet and Economy the surfaces of grinding stones confirm that the Jordan Valley, and the Dead Sea). It was Some of the organic materials used at they were indeed used in the preparation of discovered in 1989, when the Sea of Galilee Ohalo II have survived through waterlog- hard-seeded plant foods. Wear traces on fell to an extremely low level; it is usually ging. Tens of thousands of seeds and the molar teeth of two individuals confirm submerged under 2 m (6.6 ft.) of water, and have been recovered, revealing that more that stone-ground hard seeds formed part is only occasionally available for excavation. than one hundred plant species were in use. of their diet. Ohalo II is not typical of its The site contains a tight cluster of The people of Ohalo II gathered acorns, period, for other Kebaran sites are reported huts built of wood and brush, a number wheat, and barley, together with a to be palimpsests of repeated, short occu- of external hearths and fire pits, an area range of legumes and many other plants. pations by mobile hunter-gatherer bands. where domestic waste was deposited, and The diversity of plant and animal remains But Ohalo II does show that some groups a single grave. The huts were oval in plan, shows that people were collecting foods were already tending toward sedentism and 3–4 m (10–13 ft.) across. They had all been across the full range of altitude, from the year-round exploitation of an ecologi- burned, the collapsed remains sealing the the valley bottom to more than 1,000 m cally diverse home territory. There is even material that was on the floor when the hut (3,300 ft.) above sea level, and across the a suggestion, based on the presence of was abandoned. One of the huts has been full spectrum of ecological zones acces- “weed” species, that this small community examined in detail. Its wall was formed of sible from the site. Gazelle were hunted had begun to engage in some cultivation of thick branches of oak, tamarisk, and willow in numbers, and fish from the lake were crops (Snir et al. 2015). set about 20 cm (8 in.) into the ground. also important. Other mammals that were On the floor the excavators encountered exploited include fallow deer, fox, and hare, a wealth of finds, including chipped stone, and plenty of birds. The plant remains indi- animal bone, and preserved seeds and cate that people were present to harvest plant fruits. them through the spring, summer, and

were sewn hundreds of small, cylindrical Dentalium seashells. the skull from the buried body. At Hilazon Tachtit, another Shells, pierced animal teeth, and bird bones were also found as cave site in Israel, a number of burials accumulated in the late parts of bracelets, armlets, belts, or necklaces. Recent excavations Natufian period at a place where there had been Paleolithic occu- and research have shown that Garrod’s cluster of burials belong pation many millennia earlier, but where no Natufian group had early in the Natufian period. The excavations have found a second lived. One of the burials, that of an elderly, disabled woman, is cluster of later Natufian burials outside the cave. remarkable (Grosman et al. 2008). She was buried at one side Similar cemeteries have been found at several other Natufian of a burial pit that was much larger than usual, and around her base-camp type settlements. A few burials have been found to lack were laid at least fifty complete tortoise shells, the foreleg of a the skull, and the careful observations made during excavation , a wing bone of a golden eagle, the tail bones of a wild indicate that the grave had been reopened in order to remove cow, the pelvis of a leopard, and the skulls of two martens, as well

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 205 P.205 B 26/09/2017 11:13 as a complete human foot. The fill of the grave above the body at a site in North Syria shows that it includes seeds of weed included a mass of animal bone, mostly of gazelle, that seems to species along with cereals and pulses that were by implication represent the remains of feasting events that had accompanied being cultivated (Tanno et al. 2013). and followed the burial rituals. The excavators suggest that the In parallel with the intensification in the productivity of wild burial was special because the lady was a shaman. crops, the analysis of the animal bones from el Wad shows a A very obvious class of artifact has been found at all the distinct change from earlier Epipaleolithic sites. As the group larger, and some of the smaller, Natufian sites; these are mortars living there was permanently resident, their hunting and trapping and pestles. Heavy ground-stone equipment for the pounding of animals for meat were necessarily focused on the immediate and grinding of hard seeds was present at some sites from the catchment area: while they still relied on the hunting of gazelle, beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, and earlier Epipaleolithic they invested much more than their predecessors in snakes, sites have produced rather more examples. But the numbers lizards, tortoises, and birds. of such implements on Natufian sites represent a big step up In order to sustain their permanently settled communities, in their use. There are small, cup-shaped mortars in the rock Natufian groups were adept at locating their settlements within surface, large, boulder mortars, and beautifully shaped, smaller the landscape so that several different and complementary mortars made from black basalt. In parallel with the increase in ecological zones were accessible. The site of Eynan in the far the frequency of pounding and grinding equipment, there is a north of Israel illustrates this very well. The village settlement marked increase in the frequency of sickle flints (small blades was established in the open, and its stone-built, circular houses with characteristic silica gloss) [7.3, 7.4]. The implication is that were built and rebuilt throughout the three millennia of the late these late Epipaleolithic groups invested more in the processing Epipaleolithic period (Valla 1991) [7.5]. The settlement was located of stored cereals and pulses. A recent study of Natufian sickle at the foot of the hills surrounding the Huleh Basin, which at flints (Ibáñez et al. 2014) has concluded that, unlike earlier sickle that time had a shallow lake at its center. The Eynan community flints, which were used to harvest wild cereals, and unlike late could fish in the lake, take amphibians and waterfowl from its aceramic Neolithic sickle flints, when fully domesticated crops margins, and hunt and gather around the Huleh Basin and up were the norm, Natufian sickle flints had harvested wild cereals into the hills above the site. that were being cultivated. Direct evidence of plant remains is Whether open sites, such as Eynan, or cave-mouth settle- rare on Natufian period sites, but the analysis of plant remains ments, such as el Wad, Natufian sites represent a step change that were carbonized when a Natufian period structure was burnt in the size and permanence of the groups that lived in them, in

7.3 Microliths are tiny, carefully shaped tools, made on bladelets 7.4 Natufian stone implements. Artifact Cluster 11, from Phase 1 struck from small cores. These examples are all from the southern of the Natufian site of , including a fine basalt Levant; a, b, c, and d were probably parts of arrowheads in the mortar and two pestles, one of which is carefully shaped. early Epipaleolithic, while e is a lunate, characteristic of the Natufian, the late Epipaleolithic of the region.

0 2 cm

0 1 in.

a b c

d e

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 206 P.206 B 26/09/2017 11:13 Epipaleolithic sequence. (It is worth remembering that it was on the basis of his work on Zarzian sites in Southwest Iran that Flannery proposed his broad spectrum revolution theory.) Two sites excavated in the 1950s in a valley in the mountains of Northeast Iraq are tantalizing pointers to the presence of sedentary hunter-gatherer communities depending on stored harvests and a broad-spectrum hunting strategy around the end of the Epipaleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic. The first is in Shanidar Cave, which contains a stratum dated to the final Epipaleolithic that is unlike earlier Paleolithic levels. It has produced ground-stone implements, small mammal bones, fish and shellfish, cobbled stone floors, and a number of burials. The second site, a nearby small open site of Zawi Chemi, gave evidence of a sequence of circular, stone-built houses, burials within the settlement, and the use of personal ornament. More than 200 ground-stone implements were recorded, indicating the intensive processing of hard seeds, such as grasses, cereals, or pulses. The animal bones from this late Epipaleolithic settle- ment showed the intensive exploitation of wild sheep. In Southeast Turkey we have very little knowledge of the Epipaleolithic period in general. There are two sites in the upper drainage of the Tigris in Southeast Turkey, and two 7.5 Eynan. Structure 131 was an open, D-shaped structure with on the Euphrates in North Syria, that bridge the end of the a complex timber roof. All sorts of materials were found on the Epipaleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic periods. But floor, but as if deliberately deposited when the building was all four were founded within a few centuries of the end of the buried, rather than as a result of everyday use. Epipaleolithic period; two of them were relatively short-lived, but the other two continued to flourish in the early Neolithic the intensification of the use of cereals and pulses, and in their period. The best documented of these transitional sites is Abu attention to ritual and symbolism. The Natufian sites show an Hureyra in North Syria (see box: Abu Hureyra: The Transition important transformation, where people are beginning to develop from Foraging to Farming, p. 208), which was excavated in plant cultivation alongside increased sedentism and the use of the early 1970s as part of a salvage project in the a rich material culture to distinguish their dead. Euphrates Valley (Moore et al. 2000). The first settlers had to contend with the onset of the Younger Dryas on their somewhat The Epipaleolithic beyond the South Levant marginal environment, by extending the range of plant species For the South Levant we have the benefit of almost a century that they exploited, and by beginning to cultivate wild . In the of research. There has been more field research in recent years end, shortly before the end of the Younger Dryas phase, they in western Syria and Southeast Turkey, largely in response to abandoned their village and moved away. Ironically, the location the threats posed by dam schemes on the Rivers Euphrates and was resettled later in the Neolithic and became a very large and Tigris. Dorothy Garrod, who is best known for her pioneering successful community, which supported itself with agriculture excavation of the Paleolithic cave sites of Mount Carmel in what and herds of sheep and goat. is now northern Israel, also ventured into the Zagros Mountain Further west, we have only tantalizing and isolated glimpses valleys of Northeast Iraq. Her expeditions identified a cultural of the presence of Epipaleolithic groups. At Pınarbas¸ı in Central sequence that broadly parallels that of the Levant; following a Anatolia, a small sounding below the Neolithic levels found classic Upper Paleolithic, there is an Epipaleolithic, typified by an Epipaleolithic occupation with burials the bodies of which its microlithic chipped stone industry, which was named the were accompanied by red ocher, tortoise carapaces, and many Zarzian, after the cave site Zarzi. The climate in the Zagros dentalium shell decorations, closely reminiscent of—and con- Mountain region during the Last Glacial Maximum cold phase temporary with—Natufian burials in South Levant (Baird 2012). was harsh, and it seems that the region was scarcely populated In Cyprus, the earliest evidence for human occupation dates for several thousand years. We have some radiocarbon dates to the Epipaleolithic–Neolithic boundary around 10,000 BCE, at for the Zarzian from more recently excavated sites, which show the rock-shelter site of Akrotiri-Aetokremnos on the south coast it covers almost as long a time range as the South Levantine of the island (Simmons 1999). Above a layer of dense bones

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Abu Hureyra: The Transition from Foraging to Farming

cherished aim of archaeologists of round houses sunk into the ground, their it was indeed being cultivated—Colledge A studying the origins of agriculture thatched roofs supported on wooden poles. and Conolly 2010.) Nevertheless, the in Southwest Asia has been to excavate a The villagers hunted gazelle, a few wild community’s efforts were not enough: the site where the transition from foraging to cattle, sheep, and a now-extinct species settlement was abandoned before the end farming could be directly observed. Abu of zebra-sized ass (Equus hemionus). They of the Younger Dryas, and rye, whether wild Hureyra, a prehistoric settlement on a gathered a great range of plants from a or domesticated, never became a signifi- bluff at the edge of the Euphrates Valley in variety of different ecological zones, includ- cant crop in Southwest Asia. The site of Abu northern Syria, seemed to be just such a ing wild cereals and grasses. The location Hureyra, however, was reoccupied several site [7.6]. Surface traces of the prehistoric of the settlement was well chosen to allow centuries later, c. 8800 BCE, in the later settlement were discovered in the open the exploitation of the complementary aceramic Neolithic period. spaces of the modern village at the begin- resources of the river, floodplain, seasonal ning of the 1970s during survey work ahead watercourse valleys in the semi-arid zone, The Aceramic Neolithic Settlement of the damming and subsequent flooding and the moist steppe. The aceramic Neolithic settlement rapidly of that length of the valley. The Neolithic The small village was established grew to become a large village, the remains specialist Andrew Moore recognized the about 1,000 years before the end of the of which were found wherever the archaeol- potential for obtaining information on Epipaleolithic period, c. 11,000 BCE, just ogists dug around the modern houses and the beginnings of cultivation and herding, before the Younger Dryas cold phase. It was village cemetery. Since the houses of the and put together a young, multidisciplinary situated at a critically marginal location, prehistoric settlement were more closely team. Only two seasons of salvage exca- and the effect of the cooler, drier climate spaced than those of the modern village, we vation were possible before the site was is evident in the plant foods collected. As can infer that the population was substan- drowned, but intensive wet sieving and cereals and such trees as plum and almond tial, probably numbering in the thousands, flotation produced tons of floral and faunal began to decline, people extended the range making Abu Hureyra one of the largest data that fueled a quarter of a century of of small-seeded grasses and other plants settlements of the aceramic Neolithic investigation and research on the environ- that were gathered. These were harder to period. It was also long-lived, having been ment, the plant foods, and the exploitation collect, required more processing, and were abandoned early in the ceramic Neolithic of animals (Moore et al. 2000). less nutritious. As conditions continued to period, when pottery was coming into use, deteriorate, the inhabitants turned to the and thus stretching over some 2,000 years. The Epipaleolithic Settlement intensive cultivation of wild rye, a cereal that The mud- buildings of Abu Hureyra The remains of a small Epipaleolithic set- could tolerate the harsh conditions. (This were rectangular and seem to have con- tlement were found under the center of claim for the early domestication of wild rye sisted of storage rooms at ground-floor the later aceramic Neolithic village of Abu was contentious, and was widely doubted; level, with living accommodation on an Hureyra. This earlier settlement consisted but further research has concluded that upper floor. The ground-floor rooms were cells (walled spaces without doorways), and must have been reached from above by trap doors and ladders. These upper stories were more lightly built. As buildings became decrepit and were replaced time and again, the whole settlement gradually accumulated several meters of stratified building remains and occupation debris [7.7].

7.6 The site of Abu Hureyra. The Neolithic settlement covered a limestone promontory jutting into the floodplain of the Euphrates (in the foreground).

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 208 P.208 B 26/09/2017 11:13 of pygmy hippopotamus, there is another layer in which there are hearths, some chipped stone tools, and, among the animal bones, a handful of bones of wild boar. Whether the first human arrivals were responsible for the pygmy hippopotamus bones, as the excavator believed, has been challenged. The archaeozoolo- gist Jean-Denis Vigne and his collaborators (2009) could find no sign of butchery on the hippo bones, and they believe that the island species was probably already extinct when a human group arrived to occupy the rock shelter. The bones of wild boar that were identified by Vigne, however, are believed to be a humanly introduced species. We seem to have evidence, therefore, around or before 10,000 BCE, for the arrival on the island of hunter-gatherers who had brought a breeding stock of 7.7 At the bottom of Trench E, the excavators dug a wild species in order to make up for the island’s impoverished through more than 1 m (3 ft.) of Epipaleolithic fauna. And that suggests that these were not short visits, but occupation to reveal the circular depressions where some of the earliest houses were dug down that there was an organized colonization of the island, making into the natural subsoil. The black holes are the it economically habitable for hunter-gatherers. cavities left where wooden roof-supporting posts This first example of making a suitable environment was had decayed. In the upper part of the trench, there followed in the tenth and later millennia of the Neolithic by the is part of a rectangular mud-brick house of the aceramic Neolithic period. introduction of very early cultivated cereals and other animal species that were not native to the island, such as sheep and goat, and later, cattle, , and even fallow deer (Vigne et al. The first inhabitants of the aceramic 2012). Epipaleolithic sites outside South Levant, therefore, offer Neolithic settlement brought with them another picture of transition, this time in more marginal envi- domesticated wheat, barley, and pulses. They ronments. In Abu Hureyra, occupants began to cultivate wild relied for much of their meat on the hunting rye to supplement their diets during the onset of the Younger of gazelle (and smaller amounts of wild ass Dryas, while in the mountains of Northeast Iraq the peoples of and cattle), much as their Epipaleolithic Zawi Chemi were processing hard seeds and living in circular, predecessors had done (Legge and Rowley- stone-built houses. Finally, this was also a time of exploration Conwy 1987). There were also relatively small and expansion, as the island of Cyprus was first occupied by numbers of sheep bones, representing a hunter-gatherer communities. population in the early stages of domestica- tion. The sheep were morphologically wild, The Early Aceramic Neolithic: A Burst of New, but the age and sex profiles suggest that the Permanent Settlements population was being managed. Then, quite From the beginning of the Neolithic period (i.e., from 9600 BCE), suddenly, the high percentage of gazelle there were significant changes. While chipped-stone specialists bones drops to a very low figure, while the chart a smooth but rapid process of change through the transition small numbers of sheep rise sharply to from Epipaleolithic to early aceramic Neolithic [7.8, p. 210], this is become the dominant component among the not mirrored by the settlements, which show no such continuity. animal bones. Sheep herding became a major There is an almost complete disruption of settlement location; element in the economy, and the hunting of in the South Levant, no settlement site of the early aceramic gazelle in particular became an activity of Neolithic was occupied in the previous late Epipaleolithic period. minor economic significance. At Tell es-Sultan, the settlement mound that represents ancient This range of information provided by Jericho [7.9, p. 210], the many centuries of aceramic Neolithic Abu Hureyra gives a unique insight into occupation were preceded by a brief Epipaleolithic phase, but the changes affecting a community at the there was a gap of several millennia between the two occupa- transition from foraging to farming. The tions. At Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in North Syria, the excavations reveal that the process was not Epipaleolithic occupation came to an end just before the end sudden, but a more gradual shift extending of the Epipaleolithic period, and the aceramic Neolithic period over several centuries. settlement, which flourished and grew through the rest of the aceramic Neolithic, was founded after a gap of some centuries.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 209 P.209 B 26/09/2017 11:13 explored, we can see that the settlement was organized to a plan, with communal buildings and activity areas at their center, and a defined zone for rubbish and waste disposal [7.10–7.12, p. 211]. When in the 1950s Kathleen Kenyon excavated deep below the walled city of ancient Jericho, she found that the long-lived aceramic Neolithic settlement had had a massive wall and a rock-cut ditch enclosing much the same area as the Bronze Age city walls. At one point, on the inside of the wall, there was a huge, solid, cylindrical stone tower, whose purpose is impossible to define. Around its base there was a cluster of large, doorless cells, which perhaps were some sort of communal storage facility. One of the earliest of the sequence of large, circular, subter- ranean, communal buildings at Jerf el Ahmar was designed to include large storage cells, from which the excavators recovered some traces of cereals in one cell and lentils in another. There are small, circular structures that have been interpreted as com- munal storage cells at Wadi Feynan 16 and other settlements in southern Jordan (Kuijt & Finlayson 2009; Mithen et al. 2011). Life in these early aceramic Neolithic settlements seems to have been lived communally, as had been the way for countless 7.8 Projectile points of the early aceramic Neolithic. These one- millennia for mobile forager bands. As well as the storage of piece arrowheads replaced the microlithic technology of the Epipaleolithic. The points of the later aceramic Neolithic are harvested crops, there is evidence that the laborious and time- generally much larger, and indicate a switch from bow and arrow consuming tasks of grinding and pounding cereals, and even of to thrown spears. the preparation and cooking of food, was carried out by groups of people in public areas, or, in the case of Jerf el Ahmar, in The number of sites of the early aceramic Neolithic, their size, communal kitchen buildings. Jerf el Ahmar was not unique and the solidity of their architecture point to continued growth in in possessing large, subterranean, communal buildings at the general population density throughout the hilly flanks zone, and heart of the community; at two other contemporary settlements to a significant increase in the size of co-resident communities. on the same stretch of the River Euphrates there were similar, At some sites, such as Jerf el Ahmar in North Syria (see box: but not identical, structures. Jerf el Ahmar: A Neolithic Village, p. 212) and Wadi Feynan 16, The most striking discovery of the last twenty-five years must in the south of Jordan, where a large enough area has been be the site of Göbekli Tepe (see box: Göbekli Tepe: Religious

7.9 The early aceramic Neolithic tower at Jericho. The tower was built of solid stone set in mud mortar and was attached to the inside of the wall of the settlement, rather than the outside, as would be expected if it had a defensive role.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 210 P.210 B 26/09/2017 11:13 7.10 (Right) Wadi Feynan 16. Plan of the excavations at WF16, with Structure O75 dominating the north of the area. The other structures, also semi-subterranean, cluster closely around it (the smaller, circular structure at the right of the plan belongs to an overlying building of a later period.) The excavators find it difficult to identify any of these small buildings as regular houses, and it is Structure O75 hard to imagine how people got around the settlement and accessed the various structures.

Structures at a “Central Place,” p. 216; Schmidt 2012). Its massive, circular, subterranean enclosures repeat the pattern of the com- munal buildings of the settlements in the Euphrates Valley. Some of the motifs and symbols that appear in raised relief on the huge, T-shaped monoliths in the enclosures are repeated N in clusters incised on small, flat stone plaques—small enough to fit in the palm of your hand—that have been found at Jerf el Ahmar and other settlement sites in the region. Göbekli Tepe 0 5 m does not share the characteristics of the settlements of this early 0 15 ft. aceramic Neolithic period; indeed, its location on the crest of a limestone mountain ridge is quite unsuited to permanent settle- N ment. As the late Klaus Schmidt, the first excavator of the site, 5 m has argued, it seems to have been the central place of a “league” of communities settled in the region of Southeast Turkey and North Syria, a place where they came together to create their monuments, and to celebrate with feasting (including, perhaps, some drinking of alcohol) (Dietrich et al. 2012). The existence of a non-textual sign system shared by com- munities in North Syria and Southeast Turkey underlines the significance of sharing ideas, beliefs, and practices that were probably the main function of the networks of exchange that can be identified by means of the objects and materials found far from their source. Networks of social exchange are known from

7.11 (Above) Wadi Feynan 16. The floor and both the vertical and horizontal surfaces of the “bench” had been replastered several times. One vertical face is decorated with parallel, zigzag lines. In the foreground is one of the “gullies”; it has a small cavity close to the bench, where a wooden post must have stood.

7.12 (Left) Wadi Feynan 16. Structure O75, with Structure O100 inserted into it in the foreground. The deep, plaster-lined “trough” (with sections cut through it) runs across the main axis of the structure. The “gullies” linking the trough to the perimeter are picked out by shadows. The main “bench” feature runs around the left side.

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Jerf el Ahmar: A Neolithic Village

ow were early Neolithic villages in Over the many centuries that the settle- An Enigmatic Communal Building HSouthwest Asia organized? What did ment was occupied, it was rebuilt a number There was an open central area whenever their houses look like? And did they have of times. Each time it was rebuilt it followed the village was rebuilt. The best-preserved other buildings, such as shrines or storage a similar general plan, although the center example is the second in the series. The facilities? For an answer to these ques- of the plan shifted from time to time. The central area contained a massive, circu- tions we can look to Jerf el Ahmar, a small location that was chosen for the village was lar, subterranean structure, 8–9 m (26–30 village in North Syria on the west bank a low, rounded hill at the edge of the flood- ft.) in diameter, much larger than any of of the Euphrates, occupied during the plain. In order to cope with the slopes of the individual houses; the floor level of early aceramic Neolithic period (9600– the hill, the villagers built a series of terrace this building was fully 2 m (6.6 ft.) below 8800 BCE), filling the gap in the occupation walls, and their houses sat on two or three the ground level [7.13]. Two-thirds of the of Abu Hureyra (see box: Abu Hureyra: terraces. There was an overall plan to the building was divided by mud-brick walls The Transition from Foraging to Farming, village, and the implication of the repeti- into large, doorless cells. The cells stored p. 208). tions of this general plan is that, even if lentils and barley, with some traces of rye, The site was found in the late 1980s the ordinary houses were the work of their too. Their capacity was so large that the and excavated through the 1990s ahead owners, the overall layout, the construc- building probably served as a communal of the completion of a dam that has now tion of the terraces, and the building of the storage facility, shared by the whole village. drowned a stretch of the Euphrates Valley central buildings were carried out by all the The excavators believe that the building (Stordeur 2000; Stordeur et al. 2000; villagers together. combined communal storage with being Willcox and Stordeur 2012; Stordeur 2015). a special place for community ceremonies. Throughout its existence, the inhabitants’ subsistence needs were supplied by hunted wild animals and by cereals and pulses. The 7.13 This large subterranean structure existed at the center of the earliest village archaeobotanist George Willcox found that at the site of Jerf el Ahmar and was originally roofed. At the end of its life, the roof was dismantled and the supporting posts were pulled out. the size of the grains was progressively increasing throughout the settlement’s occupation, indicating that these early cultivated crops were on their way toward becoming the domesticated forms. Because Jerf el Ahmar was not occu- pied after the aceramic Neolithic, Danielle Stordeur was able to explore the settle- ment extensively, seeing how the buildings related to one another. Houses of the early village, dating to the first centuries of the early aceramic Neolithic period, had quite diverse plans. Some were simple, small, circular structures built from cut lumps of soft limestone and mud mortar. If more space were needed, another circular struc- ture was stuck against the first.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 212 P.212 B 26/09/2017 11:13 7.14 (Left) Several buildings cluster around the large, communal storage structure, with its circular roof close to ground level and its trapdoor access. These buildings are larger than the ordinary houses, and they are aligned to relate to the subterranean storage structure. They are equipped with multiple sets of querns, basins, kneading slabs, and ovens.

7.15 (Below) A room in one of the communal kitchen buildings beside the communal storage structure. In the foreground there are large limestone basins; in the middle of the room are three grinding slabs in stone settings; against the rear wall are two large, flat limestone slabs (more than 60 cm (24 in.) in diameter), the surfaces of which were polished smooth by kneading. A large oven was built against the outside wall of the kitchen, supplemented by a small hearth, perhaps for keeping food warm, against an internal wall.

Around the subterranean circular struc- ture, there are rectangular, multi-roomed buildings that are larger and a good deal more formal than the ordinary houses [7.14, 7.15]. They contain heavy quernstones set into the floor. If there was communal storage of cereals, it seems that there was also communal milling of the grain in prep- aration for cooking. There were large fire places in spaces among the small houses, suggesting that groups of households cooked together. Among the small objects found within the settlement were two flat stone plaques that have motifs or signs incised on both surfaces [7.16]. We now know of similar plaques, and identical signs, from a number of contemporary sites in North Syria, and two examples from Göbekli Tepe. 7.16 Small enough to fit in the It is thought that these signs may have palm of the hand, one of the stone been a non-textual prototype of written plaques with incised signs on each communication (similar to mathematical face. Snakes with triangular heads resemble snakes carved in relief on symbols; representing ideas, rather than monoliths at Göbekli Tepe. There is specific words). also a schematic quadruped with a long tail.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 213 P.213 B 26/09/2017 11:13 the Upper Paleolithic, and pieces of central Anatolian obsidian, A Cascade of Rapid Change: a black volcanic glass that can be chipped like flint, were already The Later Aceramic Neolithic (8800–6500 BCE) reaching sites in Israel in the Epipaleolithic period. The exchange Once we cross from the earlier into the later aceramic Neolithic networks continued to intensify, reaching a peak of intensity (the two periods often referred to as PPNA and PPNB), the tempo and extent in the later aceramic Neolithic period (see below). of demographic, social, cultural, and economic change increases sharply. At the beginning of the later aceramic Neolithic, the Pre-Domestic Cultivation earlier centuries and millennia of pre-domestic cultivation begin In this earlier part of the aceramic Neolithic period, we have to produce what botanists can recognize as the changes in shape, more information about subsistence strategies and the culti- size, and structure that mark the domesticated forms of wheat vation of wild cereals and pulses. Working on the carbonized and barley. Over the following 1,000 or 1,500 years, communi- plant remains from Jerf el Ahmar, George Willcox found that ties continue to intensify their agricultural efforts. Shortly after cereal grains increased in number in his samples through time, the beginning of this later aceramic Neolithic period, zoologists suggesting that cereals increased in importance (Willcox and identify the earliest examples of domesticated sheep and goat Stordeur 2012). He also noted that the size of the grains gradu- across the northern and eastern parts of the arc of the hilly flanks ally increased with time, evidence that some form of cultivation zone [7.18, 7.19]. The first domesticated pig and domesticated was practised (although, at the end of the occupation, the grains cattle have been identified almost as early. As with plants, so were still smaller than the domesticated form). All around the with animal domestication: as more information has been gath- arc of the hilly flanks zone, communities were focusing their ered from all over the hilly flanks zone, it has become clear that efforts on a smaller range of more productive species, especially domestication of sheep, goat, cattle, and pig occurred more or less the cereals , emmer, and barley [7.17], and such simultaneously in different parts of the region (Arbuckle 2014). legumes as lentils, peas, beans, and chickpeas. It is now becom- The point in time when domestication can be recognized, ing clear that there were different specializations in different however, tells us only that communities were controlling the regions, depending on the local availability of species. breeding of their animals. At this stage, they continued to hunt, Communities in the upper Tigris basin in Southeast Turkey but over the following centuries they gradually came to rely more and in North Iraq used only small amounts of barley, relying on their flocks and herds, and less and less on hunting (Conolly et rather on a range of legumes, such as lentils and vetches. In a al. 2011). It is only from about 7500 BCE that communities seem short round-up article, Willcox (2013) has identified five regions to have been more or less completely reliant on a developed and around the hilly flanks zone, in each of which cultivation of a effective mixed farming economy. Different crops were grown somewhat different suite of crops had begun in this period. In in different regions, and there were local or regional herding addition, cultivation of cereals and pulses began only a little later, traditions. While sheep and goat became the norm throughout and before the end of the early aceramic Neolithic, in Central the region, there were regional differences that meant that there Anatolia and in Cyprus. were more goats than sheep in one part, and more sheep than goats in another part. Cattle were kept in Southeast Turkey and North Syria, but were not significant in many other parts of the region. Indeed, at Çatalhöyük, the community preferred to retain their traditional and deeply embedded practices of hunting wild cattle, feasting on the meat (one kill might provide several hundred kilograms of meat), and setting the massive spreads of Early Late wild bull horns in their houses until around 6500 BCE, when they turned to herding domesticated cattle. The presence or absence of 90 – domesticated pig at later aceramic Neolithic settlements follows no observable pattern; just as earlier communities had hunted or not hunted wild boar, some of the farming communities kept 60 – pigs, while others simply refrained from pork.

ubiquity % ubiquity 30 – 7.17 Trend toward cultivation. Jerf el Ahmar was occupied during the early aceramic Neolithic, and over the centuries the ubiquity of einkorn wheat, barley, and bitter vetch seeds 0 – increased, which researchers interpret as suggesting a trend Einkorn base Barley grain Barley base Bitter vetch toward cultivation.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 214 P.214 B 26/09/2017 11:13 B lack Settlements and Communities Sea C a s p In line with the increasing efficiency of farming, population levels ia n S increased steeply over the later aceramic Neolithic. Once again, e a it is in South Levant that we have the best evidence, accumu- lated over many years of fieldwork. The number of settlements increased, and the average size of settlements grew sharply. In

Medi the last millennium of the aceramic Neolithic period, a number terra nea n Sea of settlements, mostly east of the Jordan Valley, grew rapidly N Area of to be more than 10 ha (25 acres) in area. The best-documented domestication Wild example is ‘Ain Ghazal, where the growth of population is esti- 0 350 km range mated to have been faster than can be accounted for without assuming that many people were arriving from elsewhere. At 0 200 miles the same time, other long-lived settlements west of the Jordan seem to have been abandoned one by one. Comparing the set- 7.18, 7.19 The domestication of sheep. Wild sheep were widely tlements of the early with the later aceramic Neolithic, it is clear distributed in mountainous, hilly, and piedmont landscapes in final that the density of buildings increased greatly (Kuijt 2000). In Pleistocene times, as shown by the more extensive outline on the an early aceramic Neolithic settlement, there was more open map (above). The area of southeast Turkey and north Syria within which sheep were probably first domesticated is enclosed by a tint space between buildings than roofed space; in many of the outline. Wild sheep (below) and wild goat appear very similar, later aceramic Neolithic settlements, there was very little open because the fleece that we associate with sheep has been bred space between buildings, which were packed closely together into the domesticated species relatively recently. (see 7.26, for example). Such a settlement as Jerf el Ahmar (see box: Jerf el Ahmar: A Neolithic Village, p. 212) may have had a population of one hundred or so—three or four times larger than the typical mobile forager band—while a settlement of the later aceramic Neolithic might have housed several thousand inhabitants, some fifty times greater than the earliest aceramic Neolithic settlements. Within those settlements, houses were generally larger than in the preceding period, rectilinear in plan, and often with internal subdivisions into rooms with different uses. They were built in distinct local or regional styles. In South Levant, for example, the mud-brick houses in a settlement (as at ‘Ain Ghazal or Jericho) might conform to “pier house” design (Byrd and Banning 1988), a rectangular footprint within which access was through an ante- In Central Anatolia, beyond the arc of the hilly flanks zone, room into a square living room. The two rooms were separated the impressive mound of As¸ıklı Höyük stands beside the river by mud-brick piers projecting from the side walls. The interior Melendiz in Cappadocia. It was first settled around 9000 BCE, in walls and floors were finished with lime plaster, which required the early aceramic Neolithic, and grew to be a large community the burning of limestone to produce the lime. The floor plaster of several thousand people in the early part of the late aceramic was often colored with a red ocher wash. And the whole process Neolithic (Özbas¸aran 2012). From the start the community was of plastering the interior was often repeated and repeated. harvesting wild cereals. The presence of sheep dung within the At such settlements as Çayönü Tepesi and Nevalı Çori in settlement from the earliest levels, and its use in mud Southeast Turkey there was a quite different tradition of large and mortar, tell us that sheep were managed (Stiner et al. 2014). houses. What survives is the stone and mud footings, which form Over the centuries of the settlement’s life, cultivation and herding a narrow rectangle, as much as 10 m (33 ft.) in length. At Çayönü developed into mixed farming. The importance of As¸ıklı Höyük the excavators found that the pattern of internal subdividing is that it shows us that the “core area” was not confined to the walls changed two or three times over the centuries (Schirmer hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent, but included parts of Central 1990); at one time, the internal walls formed a grid of box-like Anatolia. cells (called cell-plan houses), while at another time there was a series of closely spaced cross walls (grill-plan houses). What we are seeing is a substructure that supported a raised living floor; the substructure lacks any doorways, and these spaces, which

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Göbekli Tepe: Religious Structures at a “Central Place”

öbekli Tepe sits on a bare limestone To date, five large circular enclosures have ceremonies of many communities across Gridge northeast of Urfa, in Southeast been almost completely excavated, and the wider region. The tall, T-shaped mon- Turkey [7.20]. It commands an extraordi- several more structures partially explored. oliths are not unique to Göbekli Tepe. nary panorama: south toward the rolling Geophysical survey indicates that as many Similar monoliths were found in a special- Mesopotamian plains, east to the broad, as 15 more large circular enclosures exist purpose, rectangular subterranean building fertile basin at the headwaters of the elsewhere around the site. at Nevalı Çori. Some of the Göbekli Tepe , and northeast toward the monoliths, like the smaller Nevalı Çori basalt plateau that is Karaca Dagˇ, where The Enclosures and Monoliths pillars, have arms shown in low relief; the einkorn wheat still grows wild. But although The cluster of four large enclosures the exca- arms are bent at the elbows, and the fin- the 300-m (1,000-ft.)-diameter mound is vation of which is almost complete (A, B, C, gertips of the hands meet on the figures’ formed of at least 15 m (48 ft.) of cultural and D) seems to have been constructed in “stomach.” The monoliths were conceived debris of human origin, it is not a normal a deeply excavated hollow at the southern as human in form, but, most significantly, settlement mound. side of the mound. Each is a circular shape their “heads” lack any human feature: they What the excavators have found are 20–30 m (66–100 ft.) in diameter and 3 m are inscrutable figures from another world. large ceremonial buildings and extraordi- (10 ft.) deep, formed by a high stone retain- Many of the monoliths carry raised-relief nary sculptured monoliths (Schmidt 2011, ing wall. Around the base of the retaining depictions of wild animals (lions, bulls, wild 2012; Peters and Schmidt 2004). The cul- wall, a stone “bench” was built. Two of the boar, foxes), birds (cranes, storks, swans), tural debris and the radiocarbon dates fix enclosures (C and D) have been excavated snakes, spiders, and scorpions. the site in the early aceramic Neolithic and to reveal a floor made by smoothing the rock The four large enclosures that have been just into the beginning of the later ace- surface of the hill top. Two stone pedestals almost fully excavated can be seen to have ramic Neolithic. Whoever built and used were formed in the rock floor, and a pair concentric rings of walls, and some of the these structures, and sculpted the vividly of limestone monoliths was set upright in outer rings have some radially set mono- decorated monoliths, lived by hunting wild them; 10 or 12 more monoliths were set liths [7.23]. The excavators are inclined animals, but we know that wild cereals radially in the circular wall and the stone to believe that these enclosures were were being cultivated in the region around bench. The central monoliths are taller than reshaped, each time being made into a Göbekli Tepe. The people who came to the peripheral stones; the pair in Enclosure smaller diameter structure. They also think build the structures and carve and erect the D are the tallest, and still stand 5.5 m (18 ft.) that the enclosures were roofed. None of monoliths probably came from the region. tall [7.21, 7.22a, b]. them has any means of access at ground The symbolism of the architecture and of There is food waste (animal bones) and level, but they have found huge stone the carved motifs at Göbekli Tepe finds lots of chipped stone, but little or no sign “portal” stones with rectangular openings, echoes at settlement sites in Southeast of everyday domestic occupation at or which they think may have been set into the Turkey and in North Syria, as, for example, near Göbekli Tepe. Schmidt believed that flat roofs of the enclosures. at Jerf el Ahmar. the site served as a “central place” for the Unanswered Questions Whether the enclosures were roofed or open to the sky, there is something of a paradox: the excavation of the cavity to accommodate an enclosure, the quarrying

7.20 The large mound of Göbekli Tepe sits on top of a hill northeast of Urfa in southeast Turkey, making it a landmark clearly visible from the surrounding plains. No signs of domestic occupation have yet been discovered, and it seems it was a ritual center rather than a settlement site.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 216 P.216 B 26/09/2017 11:13 7.21, 7.22a, b The enclosures contain pairs of T-shaped central monoliths of limestone, decorated with low-relief carvings with various motifs (left). The narrow side of Pillar 18 (right), from Enclosure D, is carved with hands (below), revealing that these stones are highly schematized human forms, and the edge is in fact the front, with the top of the T-shape a head (the wooden brace is for temporary stabilization). Below the hands, a belt with a clasp encircles the body and a fox skin is suspended below.

and carving of the monoliths, the erec- 7.23 (Below) Enclosure D, the largest of a cluster of four, still under excavation. The pair of tion of the stones, and the building of the pillars in the center are 5.5 m (18 ft.) tall. A dozen slightly smaller relief-decorated monoliths are set in the perimeter wall. Around the foot of the wall is a stone-flagged bench. massive enclosure walls imply a very large labor force (which would have needed a considerable support force of people bringing water and food supplies); but the interior space in the enclosures could accommodate only a very small number of people. If the enclosures were indeed roofed, whatever the small number of people inside the enclosure were doing would have been well insulated from the rest of the people. There are many ques- tions still to be answered. For example, what do the T-monoliths represent; are they gods, or ancestors, or a council of elders? Why are so many of the small sculptures broken human heads? The site was long-lived: the radiocarbon dates for the construction of Enclosures A, B, C, and D spread over 9500 to 8800 BCE, but the later structures, on the top of the mound, are still to be dated, and their func- tion remains to be investigated.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 217 P.217 B 26/09/2017 11:13 were probably used for storage, and occasionally for burials, Çori, which stood on a terrace beside a stream that flowed into the were presumably accessed from above. Euphrates, not far to the northwest of Göbekli Tepe (Hauptmann In general, houses in later aceramic Neolithic settlements 2011). The Nevalı Çori special purpose building [7.24] was a close show strong evidence of having been constantly and carefully relative to the Göbekli Tepe circular enclosures, but dated a maintained and renewed. In a number of settlements it can few centuries later. It had a pair of central T-shaped monolithic be seen that the buildings were two stories high (e.g., at Abu pillars, but they were smaller; like the Göbekli Tepe enclosures, Hureyra; see box: Abu Hureyra: The Transition from Foraging to it had a stone “bench” around the walls, but it was rectangular in Farming, p. 208), and that the ground floor or semi-basement was shape, its plastered floor set two or three steps below the outside dedicated to storage space. In this regard, there is a clear contrast ground level. And, set into the bench, very much like Göbekli with the ideal of communal living and the sharing economy of Tepe, there were more stone monoliths. hunter-gatherers that characterized a number of communities Another site with communal special purpose buildings is in the early aceramic Neolithic. In the later aceramic Neolithic, Çayönü Tepesi in Southeast Turkey (Erim-Özdogan 2011). The we increasingly see the management of the farming economy settlement was located on a terrace overlooking a small river, and at household level. It may seem paradoxical that the practice the houses were built at right angles to the river. They formed of hunting large game continued, which is best documented an arc that left a large, open, public space at the center of the at Çatalhöyük (see box: Çatalhöyük, p. 220). While storage of settlement. The excavators found three buildings in the central everyday farmed produce occupied a separate storage room “plaza,” and several tall standing stones. All the special buildings within the household, the hunting of wild cattle, and the feasting were different, and all quite unlike the domestic structures. They that followed the hunt, served to celebrate the bonds that held probably did not all exist at the same time, but their relation- households together (Bogaard et al. 2009). ship to each other and to the stratified remains of the houses has proved difficult to establish. The first of the three, called the Special Buildings for Special Purposes “skull building,” was repeatedly modified and rebuilt (Croucher The massive circular enclosures at Göbekli Tepe belong in the 2003). Under one end of the building were three square, stone- early aceramic Neolithic. Near the top of the mound there is a built cells full of human bones. One contained a heap of human cluster of much smaller, rectangular buildings that date to the skulls—hence the building’s nickname—and analysis has shown beginning of the later aceramic Neolithic. One of them has been that non-human blood was poured over them. Another of the fully excavated. Its floor was somewhat lower than the outside public buildings was almost square; it was built with a terrazzo ground level, and it had a pair of T-shaped monoliths that are floor (made of small pieces of stone set into plaster) below ground smaller versions of the huge stones in the circular enclosures. level and had two tall stone monoliths set upright in the floor It is strikingly like a special building at the settlement of Nevalı (very like the semi-subterranean building at Nevalı Çori).

7.24 Nevalı Çori. The stone walls of the almost square central building at Nevalı Çori are revetments, for the plaster floor was well below ground level. Behind the revetment walls (to the top and to the right) are traces of similar walls for an earlier, larger version of the building. The surviving pillar is partnered by a gaping hole where another pillar once stood. At intervals in the stone bench around the building there were other stone pillars, but they were broken when the building was destroyed, leaving only stumps.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 218 P.218 B 26/09/2017 11:13 A number of other settlement sites in different parts of Southwest Asia that date to the later aceramic Neolithic period have small buildings that have been interpreted as dedicated to rituals. While they are distinctly different from the normal domestic buildings, it remains impossible to say what rituals were pursued, by whom they were conducted (as these buildings were all rather small), and for what purposes.

Ritual Cycles of Burial, Skull Retrieval, and Curation In the 1950s, Kathleen Kenyon found the first modeled skulls in her excavations at Tell es-Sultan, ancient Jericho. Since then archaeologists have been fascinated by the burials that have been found in among the houses of many later aceramic Neolithic settlements. Careful excavation began to show that many of the burial pits had been reopened, and the cranium, or the complete 7.25 Skull caching. A cluster of plastered skulls found at Tell Aswad, skull and jawbone, had been removed. The retrieval of skulls northern Syria. At the end of their life cycles as detached and modeled skulls, these heads were made the primary deposit in was matched by the discovery of small clutches of skulls buried a new burial place in an area of settlement cleared for the purpose. together. And, very occasionally, skulls have been found with facial features modeled in clay, and sometimes also colored. At no settlement were there enough burials to account for the whole In the hills in northern Israel, there is a unique site, Kfar population. Males and females of all ages, including children, HaHoresh, which seems to have been a place for a complex of can be identified, but we have no idea why certain people were ritual activities associated with the burial of the dead (Goring- given special treatment. Ian Kuijt (2008) has teased apart the Morris 2000). It was not a settlement, but rather it seems to have sequential cycles of ritual that would have accompanied the dif- been a place that was used by surrounding communities. They ferent stages, reflecting on their role in the social construction buried many bodies; some were complete, articulated bodies, of identity and memory. and others were collections of bones brought from old burials As more settlements of the later aceramic Neolithic have elsewhere. They made rectangular plaster floors, which were been investigated, we have learned that there was not one single like the floors of their houses, and a number of the burials were canon of ritual practices. While most settlements have revealed in pits below these floors. And they also lit fires, roasted meat, burials under house floors or between the houses, and in many feasted, and ceremonially buried the remains of their feasting in cases the skulls are missing from some or most burials, the pits. There are examples of human skulls with the facial features particular ritual practices vary from one settlement to another. modeled in lime plaster. One skull was found in a grave pit in At Tell Haloula, a settlement beside the Euphrates in North company with a headless gazelle skeleton. In another pit the Syria, for example, the bodies of the dead were bundled into excavators found what looked at first sight like the skeleton of a tightly crouched position and placed sitting up in narrow a quadruped animal, but when they were examined, the bones cylindrical pits below the plaster floors of houses (Guerrero et proved to be human bones that had been arranged in the ground al. 2009). At Tell Aswad, near in southern Syria, the to resemble an animal. Another pit contained the skeleton of a bodies were placed in a fetal position on the floor against the single individual, but the fill of the pit included numerous bones wall of the house, sometimes within the house and sometimes that represented several wild cattle. We cannot tell if these bones on the outside. The bodies were then covered with clay and were the remains of a succession of feasts that were in some way the conspicuous lump was finished with a plaster surface. But dedicated to the person whose body lay at the bottom of the pit, or at Tell Aswad there was a further twist in the story (Stordeur if they document a truly massive celebration in which hundreds 2003; Stordeur and Khawam 2006). After disposing of some of of people must have participated. The frequency of intramural the dead against the walls of houses for some time, the custom burials and of the rituals concerned with skull retrieval, curation, suddenly changed: at the edge of the settlement the excavators and occasional modeling of the facial features increased in the found two wide scoops, into each of which a clutch of carefully later aceramic Neolithic, just as the scale of the communities modeled and painted skulls was first placed [7.25]. Following that lived such densely packed lives increased. these foundation events, bodies were shallowly buried in the scoop, one after another, apparently in quite rapid succession. And, to start the next cycle, almost all of the skeletons had been revisited in order to remove the skull.

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Çatalhöyük

atalhöyük is one of the largest The rivers that once fed the former lake was packed tight with housing; there must ÇNeolithic settlements in Southwest have formed alluvial fans around the have been almost 10,000 people in the new Asia. This extraordinary site was dis- margins of the plain, and Çatalhöyük was super-community. covered in 1958 by British archaeologist established in the middle of the largest of James Mellaart, who between 1961 and those fans. Braided streams provided the Architecture and Art 1965 showed that Çatalhöyük was both essential water, and the combination of The architecture of the settlement is strik- very large (13 ha, or 32 acres) and very long- alluvial soils, reed marshes, and seasonal ingly unusual. Houses were built like lived (with 21 m, or about 69 ft., of stratified swamps made the location potentially very rectangular boxes pushed together, the occupation debris), and spectacular in its productive. four walls of one touching the walls of the decorated architecture and many subfloor Archaeological survey has shown that four adjacent houses. There are almost no burials (Mellaart 1967). Mellaart’s dramatic there is a scatter of settlements earlier lanes or other approaches at ground level descriptions and vivid interpretation of the than Çatalhöyük, and a few more dating [7.26]. Rather, the flat rooftops served as site caught the popular imagination and to the period after the Neolithic mound the means of circulation and access. Each made the images of Çatalhöyük famous was abandoned, but no other site of the house consisted of a rectangular main worldwide. He believed that Çatalhöyük same date as Çatalhöyük on the alluvial room, usually with a secondary, smaller anticipated Mesopotamian urban civiliza- fan. It seems that Çatalhöyük represents room opening off it, used for storage [7.27]. tion by several thousand years; he thought the coming together of a number of pre- The walls and floors were repeatedly plas- that the site had been a cult center for the existing communities at a new location tered with a mud plaster made from the worship of a great mother goddess, pre- beside the main stream running across white marl of the Pleistocene lake bed. figuring the ecstatic Anatolian cult of the the fan. The whole area of the settlement Floors were often painted red, and red paint goddess Cybele, famous in Roman times. In 1993, Ian Hodder resumed work at the site with a twenty-five-year research plan and a determination to make Çatalhöyük accessible and comprehensible to the thou- sands who visit it. We are now seeing the fruits of that intensive program (Hodder 2006, 2014). The settlement was founded around 7100 BCE, toward the end of the aceramic Neolithic period, when several small communities living in the area came 7.26 Mellaart’s original together. It developed in size, density, and excavations were in the elaboration over the centuries until, around southwest part of the east mound of Çatalhöyük (there is 6500 BCE, there were dramatic changes. For also a smaller, later, Chalcolithic the last five centuries of its life, until about period mound immediately to 6000 BCE, there was a much reduced popu- the west). It is Neolithic from lation, living in simpler, spaced out houses. top to bottom, with a depth of more than 17 m (56 ft.) of 0 10 m accumulated building debris Location 0 30 ft. extendng over 13 ha (32 acres). The Konya Plain is the dry bed of a huge When the new research project Pleistocene lake, lying in the middle of the Dark gray and explored another area near the Anatolian Plateau at an elevation of just black ash north end of the site (left), they N found similar architecture—the over 1,000 m (3,300 ft.). The area has the Historic period rectangular houses built against lowest rainfall in Turkey, only 200–250 mm walls each other, with few lanes or (8–10 in.) annually, marginal for dry farming. alleys for ground-level access.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 220 P.220 B 26/09/2017 11:13 7.27 A typical house interior. When houses needed to be replaced, The main room was entered by the precious wooden roof support posts a ladder from a trapdoor in the and main beams were withdrawn, and the roof. A smaller room, accessed by a low doorway from the main mud roof was collapsed. The upper part of room, was used for storage. the walls was thrown down into the inte- Under the trapdoor and ladder, rior until the area was level; the new house there was a clay oven and could then be built with its walls sitting on an open hearth for cooking. The floor of the main room was the top of the stumps of the old. All the arranged in a series of plastered debris had to be disposed of within the platforms at different levels. walls of the old house, and some of the houses were two stories tall. Once the mass of mud from the roof and the bricks from the walls had been thrown down, the buried wall stumps of the old house might still be more than 2 m (6.6 ft.) tall. Sometimes, people lived in the house. A clay oven was when a house fell out of use, the roof would usually sited below the access ladder and be removed so that neighboring house- was also used to paint patterns, motifs, or the hatch in the roof. Most of the activi- holds could use the considerable space whole scenes on the walls. The floor of the ties associated with food preparation and for disposing of refuse. main room had a series of low platforms of other everyday tasks were concentrated at Any of the accumulated coats of white- different heights around a square central that side of the room. The opposite side of wash on the interior walls of a house might area [7.28]. the room was kept clean, and that is where have been decorated with red designs. Just as house interiors were elaborate elaborate wall decoration and subfloor Some of the surviving wall paintings consist and stereotyped, so were the ways that burials would be found. of geometric patterns, while others are

7.28 Part of the main living area of a house. To the right, a diagonal scar in the wall plaster marks where the ladder was fixed that gave access from the flat roof. The cooking fire and oven were placed in that corner of the house to allow the smoke to escape through the trapdoor in the roof. One corner of the room is fitted with the horn-cores of two wild bulls; and there is also an animal head sculpted on the wall above.

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Çatalhöyük CONTINUED

figurative [7.29, 7.39]. The scenes depicted most burials were concentrated tended to include one with human figures engaged in be larger than average, and had the most a variety of activities, all centered around a elaborate symbolism. They tended to be colossal wild bull. Another painting shows rebuilt again and again in exactly the same schematically represented human figures spot, retaining their concentration of sym- lacking heads, surrounded by vultures. In bolic activities. Hodder has called them addition to paintings, a number of houses “history-houses.” had three-dimensional sculptures attached to the walls. These might take the form of a Economy bull’s head, modeled in mud plaster around The community relied on the farming the actual cranium and horns of a bull. of domesticated crops of cereals and There are also sculpted goats’ heads, and it is inconceivable that a family group living legumes, and the herding of large flocks of large, leopard-like felines. Finally, there are in a single-roomed house could have suf- sheep. The rich alluvium of the fan would examples of human figures schematically fered on average one death per year. Some seem to have been ideal for productive represented in female form. Over the cen- houses seem to have been special, and to farming, but environmental research has turies, the settlement grew in size and the have attracted many burials, perhaps func- shown that the locality of the settlement buildings became more elaborately deco- tioning as the focal household in a lineage, was prone to seasonal flooding. At some rated, reaching a climax around 6500 BCE. or something similar. Ian Hodder and his times of year the flocks of sheep must team have found that the buildings where have been taken away to graze beyond the Burials Mellaart found many burials below the plastered platforms of the houses, and the renewed excavations under Ian Hodder have shown that, while some houses have no burials, others may have as many as sixty-eight bodies buried under the floor (including infants interred during the con- struction of the house). Given the life of a mud-brick house at perhaps seventy years,

7.29 (Above) Detail from a painted plaster wall panel in a house, Çatalhöyük, Turkey. The scene shows many human figures around a massive wild bull. Here a man, painted in brick red, runs or dances. He carries a bow and wears a strange (leopardskin?) costume around his waist.

7.30 (Right) The tightly contracted burial of a young female beneath the floor of a house at Çatalhöyük. Some time after the initial burial, the grave was re-opened and the complete cranium and mandible were removed (scattering a couple of the cervical vertebrae, at top left). Just visible below her ribs are the tiny ribs of the full-term foetus that she was carrying when she died.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 222 P.222 B 26/09/2017 11:13 Regional and Supra-Regional Networks of Sharing and Exchange Each settlement represented an autonomous community, respon- sible for its own affairs; but all these settled communities were locked into local and regional networks, exchanging goods and alluvial fan. Exploitation of resources over a materials, and sharing innovations and ideas (Watkins 2008). wide area is just one more of the peculiari- Social exchange networks had operated long before the Neolithic, ties of Çatalhöyük. Its chipped stone was but the extent and the intensity of networking at local and regional almost entirely made from obsidian, a vol- scales grew through the Epipaleolithic and the Neolithic to reach canic glass, the geological origin of which an unprecedented peak in the later aceramic Neolithic period. The was in the mountains of Cappadocia, about first studies of Neolithic networking were carried out on obsidian, 125 km (78 miles) away. The timbers used a black volcanic glass that can be worked like flint (Renfrew and in the houses were pines and slow-growing Dixon 1968; Renfrew and Dixon 1976). Almost all of the obsid- junipers brought from the mountains to the ian found on early Neolithic sites proved to come either from south and west. The people of Çatalhöyük two sources in Central Turkey, or two sources in the far east of also acquired venison from deer, which Turkey. While settlements within 200–300 km (125–185 miles) would have been found only in the forested of the sources could supply themselves with the material and mountains. use obsidian for their everyday chipped stone tools, settlements further from the sources relied on contacts from whom they Climax and Resolution could obtain obsidian in exchange for something else. Renfrew Around 6500 BCE, when the settlement was found that amounts of obsidian on sites declined sharply with most densely occupied with a population of distance, until, at the southern extremes—in southern Israel and between 5,000 and 10,000, and the houses Jordan, or in Southwest Iran, around 900 km (560 miles) from were most densely filled with frequently the sources—only one piece of chipped stone in a hundred, or repainted decoration, three-dimensional one in a thousand, was obsidian. Clearly, the tiny amounts of the installations, and subfloor burials, things material that were obtained in these exchanges were not essential suddenly changed. Many people left raw materials, but were the medium of social exchanges. There Çatalhöyük and established new, smaller were other sorts of materials that were exchanged extensively, settlements elsewhere in the alluvial fan such as marine shells from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and beyond. The people who remained beads of malachite (a vivid green copper oxide), other greenstone built their houses with space all around beads, and marble bracelets. them. They had begun to manage domes- Renfrew suggested that the decline in amounts of obsid- ticated cattle, and they gave up the old ian with distance was the result of a simple “down-the-line” traditions of hunting wild cattle, feasting, exchange system in which each settlement kept some of the and installing the skulls and horns in their obsidian that they obtained from the next settlement up the houses. There was much less decoration line, and exchanged the rest with the next settlement down the painted on the wall plaster, and many fewer line. Recent simulation studies by a Spanish group have shown burials under the floors. Had the old way that that simple model does not work. The only way to make of life, in which there were so many rules an exchange network function over such extreme distances governing behavior and so many elaborate was to allow that some people in some communities traveled rituals, so much time and labor invested in to exchange with partners in communities living some distance the houses, finally reached breaking point? away, bypassing their near neighbor communities (Ibañez et Was dispersal into smaller communities al. 2015; Ortega et al. 2014). This is called a “small-world,” or the solution? “distant link,” network; while most communities exchanged with their nearest neighbor communities, a small number of participating communities had direct links with distant partners, which became “hubs.” Why was it so important for someone in a community somewhere in the Levant, or in Southeast Turkey, or in the valleys of the Zagros Mountains in western Iran, to have a small blade of obsidian, or some seashells, or a greenstone bead? In

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A Story of Unintended Consequences

ince the 1950s a great deal of research processing of a whole range of small- For us, it is natural to look back at the S has been devoted to investigating the seeded grasses, as well as wild cereals beginnings of farming, and see how beginnings of farming and the origins of [7.31]. Recently, botanists have claimed mixed farming supported great popula- agriculture in Southwest Asia. For a long to identify “weeds” typical of cultivated tion growth and the rapid expansion of time, the focus was on determining the crops among the carbonized seeds at farming populations in all directions. But moment when the first domestication of Ohalo II, dating around 20,000 BCE. In the the Epipaleolithic communities who began plants and animals could be identified, late Epipaleolithic and the early aceramic to harvest plants for storage, and to hunt but domestication is a process, and not an Neolithic there are multiple lines of evi- and trap small animals, birds, and rep- event. For reference, the earliest signs of dence from different sites that a form of tiles in greater numbers had no vision of domesticated cereals date early in the later “pre-domestication cultivation” was taking developing farming economies as their ulti- aceramic Neolithic, around 8600 BCE or a place throughout the Levant. mate objective. Cultivation of plants, their little later. The earliest evidence of domes- The story does not end with domestica- domestication, and the development of ticated sheep and goat follows a little later, tion. In many places, people continued to effective agriculture on the one hand, and by 8500 BCE. hunt even though they had domesticated the management of wild animal popula- We are now seeing that the domestica- sheep and goat. In general, it was only tions, the domestication of some species, tion process was only part of the story. around 7500 BCE that efficient and effective and reliance on their flocks and herds on There was a long period through the mixed farming strategies became fully and the other, were long un-directed processes Epipaleolithic of Southwest Asia when widely established. Southwest Asia there- made up of many small steps along mean- some communities were investing time fore offers us an example of the blurred line dering pathways; the ultimate arrival at and labor in the harvesting, storing, and between farmers and hunter-gatherers. effective mixed farming economies was neither planned nor foreseen. Ear Spikelet Spikelet

Ear Ripe spikelets Ripe remain in spikelets ear shatter 7.31 Wild and cultivated barley. The differences and drop are slight, and the difficulty of identification is as they ripen compounded by the fact that the archaeobotanist Ear sees only fragments, never the complete ear, and shatters the carbonized fragments have been distorted only by being burned. The domesticated grains are when a little fatter, and the rachis (the piece that threshed connects the grain to the ear) of the wild form is usually complete, while the tough rachis of the Wild barley Cultivated barley domesticated species has to be broken by threshing.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 224 P.224 B 26/09/2017 11:13 part, possession of such exotic things showed that the owners thousand people, shrank as the pottery Neolithic was begin- belonged in the prestigious network of far-flung contacts; at the ning and was soon abandoned completely. The same is true of same time, these special things of exotic materials ensured the Çayönü in Southeast Turkey, which had been in existence for good social relations that were enjoyed between those who had almost two millennia. exchanged them with one another. Such networks of social rela- The implosion of population at the South Levantine mega-sites tions enabled the sharing of knowledge and the transmission of corresponds to the appearance of small settlements dispersed innovations. For communities to be able to feel that they were across a much wider range of landscapes. In the Mediterranean part of a large networked super-community it was necessary to woodland zone, villagers depended on mixed farming; further emphasize what they had in common. Watkins (2008; in press) east, for example at ‘Ain Ghazal, small communities consisted has argued that communities benefited from their investment of some families who practiced some agriculture combined with in networked super-communities because networking facili- the herding of sheep and goats, while other families spent part tated the rapid spread of useful innovations, and ensured that of the year in the village, but most of the year were reliant on communities recognized each other as partners rather than as transhumant pastoralism. Recently, we have begun to learn of strangers and rivals. new groups who colonized the arid interior, capitalizing on the Some items, such as pieces of Anatolian obsidian at settle- meager rainfall to support limited cultivation, combined with ments in the far south of the Levant, were special because they pastoralism (Rollefson 2011; Rollefson et al. 2014). were exotic. Others, for example the green malachite beads (malachite is a naturally occurring oxide of copper) made in Central and West Anatolia a wadi in southern Jordan, because they were very rare. From At Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, around 6500 BCE, the intense early in the aceramic Neolithic period, small tools and beads of occupation of the site suddenly changed (see box: Çatalhöyük, worked copper began to be made. The first ones to be recognized p. 220). Many people left and set up small settlements around came from Çayönü in Southeast Turkey, which is close to one the Konya plain, and those that remained lived in spaced out, of the largest natural deposits of copper anywhere in Southwest independent houses with large storage spaces and much less Asia. But other examples of small copper objects have since attention to subfloor burial and elaborate symbolic installations. been found at sites in central Anatolia, including As¸ıklı Höyük As settlements spread around Çatalhöyük, new and Çatalhöyük, where there are no local copper sources, and settlements also began to appear in Southwest Anatolia, and, at settlements in the Euphrates Valley in North Syria, and at a little later, in Northwest Anatolia and into European Turkey one of the earliest settlements on the alluvial Deh Luran plain (Marciniak and Czerniak 2007). The earliest settlements on the in Southwest Iran. Bright, shiny pieces of hot-worked copper west coast of Turkey, however, appear a little earlier than the were another kind of rare and exotic material that was fed into inland settlements, at the same time that Neolithic settlements the extensive social exchange networks. appeared on the Aegean islands. This suggests that there was a maritime expansion of colonists originating from the northeast Transformation, Dispersal, and Expansion corner of the Mediterranean, which arrived in the Aegean before the land-based westward expansion of farming settlements BCE (6500–6000 ) reached the coast (Horejs et al. 2015). The Levant When sites in the piedmont and the Tigris and Euphrates The climax of the aceramic Neolithic was short-lived. Settlements drainages in Southeast Turkey, such as Çayönü, were abandoned, in the Mediterranean woodland zone west of the Jordan Valley across North Syria east of the Euphrates and North Iraq both east began to be abandoned before the end of the aceramic Neolithic, and west of the Tigris, a rash of settlements sprang up, situated leaving a hiatus of several centuries before small, late Neolithic, firmly in the narrow strip of green land south of the hills and pottery-using settlements appeared. In the highlands east of the north of the arid interior. Many of these new settlements were Jordan Valley, a string of settlements (‘Ain Ghazal is the best- of modest size, but others, such as (see box: Tell documented example) grew rapidly as they accumulated people Sabi Abyad I, p. 226), were large and long-lived. There were also who presumably had left settlements further west. They exceed a number of small settlements that seem to have been of only 10 ha (25 acres) in extent, and have been called “mega-sites,” short duration, and to have consisted of only a few rather scat- their populations growing to several thousand people each. tered houses. If some of the population of Tell Sabi Abyad were But the mega-sites were a short-lived phenomenon: by 6500 primarily herders of sheep and goats, using that village as their BCE or soon after, they too were abandoned, or reduced to small permanent base, but spending parts of the year elsewhere while villages of scattered houses. Further north, Abu Hureyra (see grazing their flocks in the marginal lands between the green, box: Abu Hureyra: The Transition from Foraging to Farming, rain-fed strip and the arid interior, these short-lived, small sites p. 208), which had grown to be a farming community of several may have been their seasonal homes. In Central ,

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Tell Sabi Abyad I

ell Sabi Abyad I is one of four tells (arti- were occupied in the late Neolithic period, The Burnt Village Tficial mounds) strung out like beads on around 6000 BCE. At first sight, they are like The most extensive exploration of the late a necklace beside the River Balikh in North dozens of similar mounds in the Balikh Neolithic settlement was focused on the Syria (Akkermans 2013). The headwaters Valley, and hundreds of mounds across southeast quarter of the mound. An exten- of the Balikh are in Southeast Turkey, the North Mesopotamian plain. But Tell sive complex of mud-brick buildings has north of Göbekli Tepe, and the river flows Sabi Abyad is not what one would expect been excavated, exposing a quite unex- south across the Syria–Turkey border, of a simple farming village. pected scenario, nothing like a simple through the green, east–west belt of North Tell Sabi Abyad I, the largest of the collection of farming families’ houses Mesopotamia, and on through the semi- mounds, was first occupied somewhat (Akkermans and Verhoeven 1995). There arid lands to join the Euphrates at the city earlier, around 7000 BCE, in the late ace- were several large building complexes, each of Raqqa. Tell I is the largest of the four ramic Neolithic period. Although it looks consisting of rows of small, square, cell- mounds, covering around 5 ha (12 acres), like a single, large, flat-topped mound, the like rooms. There were some small, very and standing at least 10 m (33 ft.) above the excavations have revealed that the village low openings, which connect two rooms, level of the plain (and there are a further consisted of four clusters of buildings. but some of the cells had no ground-level 4 m (13 ft.) buried by the rising level of Long after it was abandoned, soon after doorways or crawl holes, and there is not a the surrounding plain) [7.32]. A Dutch 6000 BCE, in the twelfth and eleventh cen- single doorway leading into the buildings team from Leiden has worked at Tell Sabi turies BCE, the eroded mound was used to from outside. For the most part, access to Abyad since 1986, carefully combining wide accommodate the fortified administrative these rooms would have been from the flat exposures of selected phases with in-depth and military headquarters of an Assyrian roof or a second floor. In addition to the exploration of the long stratigraphy. provincial governor. unexpected buildings, the excavators were The four mounds of Tell Sabi Abyad rep- surprised to find that the whole complex resent a cluster of villages and hamlets that had been devastated by a conflagration that 0 50 m N seems to have been no accident [7.33, 7.34].

0 150 ft. Stamps and Sealings Although very few things were found on the floors of these buildings, there was an extraordinary number and diversity of Burnt Building V6 things found in the debris of the collapse, including many hundreds of pots, stone vessels, flint and obsidian tools, ground- stone tools, clay figurines, beads, and hundreds of clay sealings with stamp seal impressions [7.35]. Altogether, more than eighty different stamps could be identified, leaving their recognizable marks in the clay

7.32 The most prominent feature at Tell Sabi Abyad I is the square moated Assyrian Burnt Village administrative complex that reused the eroded Neolithic settlement mound. The Neolithic “burnt village” (7.34) was found in the southeast quarter of the site, and the “burnt building V6” (7.33) was found in a Bronze Age architecture Excavated Bronze Age moat small excavation area in the northeast quarter Neolithic architecture Reconstructed Bronze Age moat of the site.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 226 P.226 B 26/09/2017 11:13 7.33 (Right) The “burnt building V6” dates around 6050 BCE, a little earlier than the “burnt village.” It is c. 10 × 7 m (33 × 23 ft.) and is T-shaped in plan, with three narrow, parallel rooms and another long, narrow room at right angles. There are no doorways, and these storage rooms must have been reached from the floor above. All sorts of tools and equipment had been left in the building when it was burnt, including many stamp-seal impressions.

7.34 (Below right) The area called the “burnt village” is radiocarbon dated around 6000 BCE. The rectilinear buildings were well built of mud-brick, which burned to a bright orange when the whole area seems to have been deliberately fired. Strangely, the buildings still contained many hundreds of objects, including ceramics, stone vessels, flint and obsidian implements, ground-stone tools, figurines, personal ornaments, and clay sealings.

that had been used to cover a vessel, or to cover the knot on a cord around the top of a sack, on the lid of a basket, or to form the stopper on a tall storage pot. All of the sealings had been broken and discarded.

A Community of Farmers and Pastoralists In the later urban of southern Mesopotamia, cylinder seals were used to set the authority of the seal holder on the closed door of a temple storeroom, or to N identify the sender of a document or traded goods. But here there were many stamps 0 10 m that identified many people. Analysis 0 30 ft. showed that all of the clay sealings were 7.35 (Left) Clay sealings of local clay; they had not come to the site (the impressions left by on traded goods. The Dutch team interpret small stone stamp seals) the stamps and sealings in the context of from the “burnt village.” a community half of whom were farmers Lumps of clay were used to who were resident year round, and half were seal all sorts of containers, and the clay was then herders of sheep and goats, using the set- stamped with a seal that tlement as their base, but away with their denoted the owner. When flocks for periods of time. They therefore the container was reopened, suggest that the pastoralists stored their the clay seal was broken. Hundreds of fragments of goods in communal storage buildings, broken clay sealings were identified by their personal stamp sealings found, many of them with (Akkermans and Duistermaat 1997). stamp seal impressions.

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 227 P.227 B 26/09/2017 11:13 the first farming settlements appeared at this time; as people been proposed and argued about (see Chapter 6). The Neolithic spread to the alluvial soils of the Tigris and its tributaries, they of Southwest Asia continues to serve as the proving ground for became the first communities dependent on extensive irrigation, testing theories about how the complexity of cultural, social, the digging of canals, and the management of groundwater. demographic, and economic change can be explored and under- stood. Flannery’s broad spectrum revolution theory (Flannery What Was the Cause of Dispersal and Expansion? 1969) proposed a positive feedback loop in the Epipaleolithic Throughout Southwest Asia there were major changes that saw period. Changes in subsistence strategy (increasing reliance on the dispersal of population and the replacement of the large, small game and stored harvests) were connected to changes in densely populated late aceramic Neolithic settlements by new, settlement strategy (reducing mobility, increase toward seden- smaller communities with different strategies of farming and tism). More food and the ability to stay in one place allowed for herding. Were the stresses of living by farming while living the raising of more offspring. This led to an increase in popula- together in large numbers simply unsustainable in the long tion, which in turn demanded an increase in food supply and term? There would have grown up levels of inequality arising motivated innovations in intensified food production. from differences in land productivity and differences in access In the 1990s two authors in particular (Cauvin 1994; Cauvin (some families would have had to cope with farming land that 2000; Hodder 1990) turned their backs on environmental– was several kilometres from the settlement); and such economic ecological explanations; Cauvin simply dismissed them as differences would have been magnified as land and resources environmental determinism. In different ways they argued were inherited down the generations (see, e.g., Smith et al. that Neolithic communities framed new ways of thinking of 2010). For societies that valued their egalitarian community life, their world and structuring their place in it. The whole story dispersal into smaller communities might have been a solution. is not told simply in terms of population and environmental Or were the dispersals driven by environmental degradation and pressures and changing subsistence and settlement strategies. soil erosion brought about by over-extraction of timber and over- Living in permanent village communities required new kinds of grazing by goats and sheep, as has been argued for ‘Ain Ghazal social organization that we can as yet only dimly perceive. The (Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson 1989)? Or was this a series of archaeological record reveals a remarkable burst of symbolic regional responses to climate change and environmental pres- representation, in the form of architecture statuary, sculpture sures? There was a documented rapid climate change event, (e.g., Göbekli Tepe), and painting (e.g., Çatalhöyük). Human beginning around 6500 BCE and worsening between 6200 and burials within settlements and the retention of detached skulls 6000 BCE, which coincides with these dispersals and changes indicate important symbolic activities, and in a number of set- in settlement and subsistence strategies. New research in the tlements we can recognize buildings that were created for the Dead Sea area combined with intensive examination of the ‘Ain enactment of communal rituals. Ghazal evidence indicates that there was significant aridification Recently, some authors from different disciplinary back- in the region (Zielhofer et al. 2012). These questions are still grounds, such as Melinda Zeder, have pointed out that economic being debated, as research continues. diversification and intensification can occur without environ- mental, climatic, or population pressures. Zeder argues that communities deliberately engaged in “ecosystem engineering,” Summary and Conclusions which increased resource productivity and enabled the popula- This chapter began by asking where and when within Southwest tion to increase (Zeder 2012). In other words, larger population Asia the Neolithic transformation was generated. The rest of the numbers made for a better and more secure cultural environment chapter has described something of how the Neolithic transfor- (cf. Henrich 2015; Sterelny 2011; Sterelny and Watkins 2015). mation unfolded. Setting the “Neolithic Revolution” in the context of human evo- Long ago, the American archaeologist Robert Braidwood lution, the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin posed the question why: Why did people who had lived suc- Dunbar argues that the massive changes encompassed in the term cessfully for hundreds of thousands of years in small, mobile, “Neolithic Revolution” occurred at the time when communities hunter-gatherer bands turn to “village-farming,” cultivating evolved the cultural and cognitive skills that enabled them to crops, herding animals, and living in permanent settlements resolve the social stresses of living together in large permanent of mud-brick houses. In particular, Braidwood asked why this communities, opening the way for ever larger communities and transformation happened then, around the beginning of the eventually the rise of city states and kingdoms (Dunbar 2014; Holocene, and why not earlier. Since the 1950s more and more see also Gamble et al. 2014). people have focused their research on this period in Southwest The question of how remains energetically debated, as archae- Asia; new methods of recovering and analysing data have prolifer- ologists work to reconcile ecological, economic, social, cultural, ated, and, at a different level, new ways of explaining events have and symbolic processes into one narrative. The chapters that

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198-229_HP4E_chap-7_rf.indd 228 26/09/2017 11:13 follow describe the transition from hunting and gathering to Further Reading and Suggested Websites farming in the other key regions of the world. These conver- Bar-Yosef, O. and Valla, F. R. (eds.). 1991. The Natufian Culture sions to agriculture depended on a different range of plant and in the Levant. International Monographs in , animal species in each of the regions where they occurred, and Archaeological Series 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. must therefore be considered as independent of each other. A series of important papers on many different aspects of the most studied final Epipaleolithic culture, thought by many to be Nevertheless, there are striking parallels among the early farming the pivotal culture for the period. communities of these different regions, in particular the close Cauvin, J. 2000. The Birth of the Gods and the Beginnings of association between sedentary settlement, rapidly increasing Agriculture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. An original population, and food production. By the late aceramic Neolithic, approach to the topic by the charismatic and innovative French communities seem to have experienced severe stress, as some prehistoric archaeologist Jacques Cauvin, translated from the settlements were abandoned as people shifted to nomadic pas- French by T. Watkins. toralism, and others to a combination of limited cultivation and Hodder, I. 2006. Çatalhöyük: The Leopard’s Tale—Revealing the seasonal nomadic pastoralism. Still others colonized new ter- Mysteries of Turkey’s Ancient Town. London and New York: Thames & Hudson. Ian Hodder’s personal and compelling ritories. They were realizing the potential portability of a mixed account, after thirteen years’ work at the site, of the settlement farming economy and, ultimately, its potential to fuel major and the complex society that inhabited it. colonizing movements. After 6000 BCE these early farming Kuijt, I. (ed.). 2000. Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: villages became larger and more complex and spread onto the Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation. New York: lowland plains of southern Mesopotamia, leading to the rise of Kluwer Academic. A collection of contributions focusing on the the first cities. This next stage in the Southwest Asian story is social and cultural transformations that characterize the early the subject of Chapter 13. Neolithic period. Moore, A. M. T., Hillman, G. C., and Legge, A. J. 2001. Village on the Euphrates. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Report on Abu Hureyra, the best-studied and thus the most important single site that we have for understanding the beginnings of plant domestication and the switch from hunting to herding. Watkins, T. 2010. New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia. Antiquity 84(325), 621–34. A short article that puts the changes in subsistence strategies and the adoption of mixed farming into the context of the social and cultural processes of the Epipaleolithic and early Neolithic, in particular the formation and growth of large, permanently co-resident communities. Zeder, M. A. 2011. The origins of agriculture in the Near East. Current 52 (S4), S221–S335. One of a series of papers in this special issue of Cultural Anthropology from a symposium on the beginnings of agriculture worldwide. www.catalhoyuk.com/ Website of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, with information about the project and all aspects of the research being carried out. https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com is a blog written by members of the Göbekli Tepe research team, with short pieces about various aspects of the research, and excellent color pictures. The official website for Göbekli Tepe is http://www.dainst.org/ projekt/-/project-display/21890. The text is in German, but work is in progress to develop the site. www.socantscot.org/article.asp?aid=1084 Trevor Watkins’s Rhind Lecture series, given in April 2009, “New light on the dawn: a new perspective on the Neolithic revolution”; available in audio and video.

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