Domesticating Space

Home , Granary, Gravettian, Hammerstone, Kharaysin, Neolithic architecture, Ohalo II

Domesticating Space

Construction, Community, and Cosmology in the Late Prehistoric Near East

edited by

E. B. Banning and Michael Chazan

Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Environment 6, 2006

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Contents

Acknowledgements …………………………...... …….. 4

E.B. Banning and Michael Chazan: Structuring interactions, structuring ideas: Domestication of space in the prehistoric Near East ………………………… 5

Trevor Watkins: Architecture and the symbolic construction of new worlds ….. 15

Dani Nadel: Residence ownership and continuity: From the Early Epipalaeolithic unto the Neolithic ………………………………………………. 25

Nicolas Samuelian, Hamudi Khalaily, and François R. Valla: Final Natufian architecture at ‘Eynan (‘Ain Mallaha): Approaching the diversity behind uniformity ……………………………………………………...……………….. 35

Stefan Karol Kozlowski: The hunter-gatherer “villages” of the PPNA/EPPNB 43

Seiji Kadowaki: Ground-stone tools and implications for the use of space and social relations at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla, a PPNB settlement in southern Jordan 53

Hans Georg K. Gebel: The domestication of vertical space: The case of steep- slope LPPNB architecture in southern Jordan ………………………………….. 65

Marc Verhoeven: Megasites in the Jordanian Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: Evidence for ‘Proto-Urbanism’? ……………………………………………..…. 75

Zeidan A. Kafafi: Domestic activities at the Neolithic site, ‘Ain Ghazal ………. 81

Marion Cutting: Traditional architecture and social organisation: The agglomerated buildings of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in Neolithic Central Anatolia 91

Yosef Garfinkel: The social organization at Neolithic Sha‘ar Hagolan: The nuclear family, the extended family, and the community …………………. 103

3 Acknowledgements We are extremely grateful to the Connaught Fund and Halbert Exchange Program, both at the University of Toronto, and thank Ralph and Roslyn Halbert, and the Halbert Exchange Program’s director and administrator, Janice Stein and Joshua Goldstein. Publication of this volume would not have been possible without their support, as well as the efforts of Michael Gregg, who helped with page layout and editing, and Carla Parslow, who took care of all the organizational details surrounding the Domesticating Space conference on which the book is based. Michele de Gruchy assisted with checking and correcting bibliographies, and Raina Stebelsky illustrated the Gobekli Tepe monuments for Trevor Watkins’s paper. We also thank all those who presented papers at the conference in November 2002 and those who submitted papers for this volume. PB

4 Structuring interactions, structuring ideas: Domestication of space in the prehistoric Near East

E. B. Banning and Michael Chazan University of Toronto

The Neolithic was not only the era of reaching a new consensus on the social the domestication of plants and animals. context of architecture, the conference During and even before the Neolithic, and this volume raise pressing and inhabitants of the Near East increas- unexpected questions. ingly took control over their space, Two main orientations for research The new empirical data building for the first time substantial on early architecture emerge in these structures clustered in what appear to papers. The first is to consider architec- are impressive and have been base camps, if not villages. If, ture as a constructed landscape within as archaeologists typically assume, most both functional and symbolic realms. force a fundamental of these structures were houses, this was This orientation has been pursued vig- a domestication in a quite literal sense. orously by archaeologists working on reexamination of ideas As Wilson (1988) points out, it also fun- the Neolithic of Europe (e.g., Bailey damentally altered human relationships 1990; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1999; about the earliest and perceptions in ways that we could Tilley 2003), in part because the sheer consider “domestication of the human strangeness of many of the architec- architecture in species.” tural remains there, such as tumuli and The papers gathered here are rel- henges, demands such an approach. the Near East. evant to the novel spatial, ideological, The detailed archaeological evidence and social relationships that this kind presented here, especially in Nadel’s However, the social of domestication not only allowed but paper, draws out aspects of the early encouraged. Some of them were origi- architecture of the Near East that we and ideological aspects nally presented at a conference on the cannot easily reconcile with a strictly theme, Domesticating Space, that took functional interpretation. Yet, in gen- of built spaces remain, place in Toronto from 19-20 November eral, work on the symbolic or cosmo- 2002. The goal of this meeting was to logical aspects of early Near Eastern for the most part, bring together archaeologists actively architecture is underdeveloped, and has engaged in excavating Near Eastern concentrated on structures that excava- elusive. sites with early architectural remains tors have interpreted as “shrines” or to explore the social and conceptual “temples,” arguably through the lens of contexts that underlay these construc- later biblical or Mesopotamian sources. tions. Our sense at the time was that the Perhaps the spectacular new discoveries architectural and spatial component of at sites such as Göbekli Tepe (Schmidt the origins of agricultural societies in the 1998; 2000; 2002) will begin to attract Near East was due for reexamination. the kind of research already seen for While empirical data from excavations Neolithic Europe. Already the monu- has piled up, interpretation of these dis- mental wall and tower at Jericho are coveries in terms of Neolithic people’s beginning to find appreciation for their lived experiences has lagged behind. symbolic qualities (Naveh 2003; Ronen In a way, the results of the confer- and Adler 2001). In addition, perhaps ence and the current publication have sites other than Çatal Höyük (Hodder frustrated our expectations. The new 1990: 3-19; 1996; 2000; Matthews 2005) empirical data are impressive and force will provide rich sources for symbolic a fundamental reexamination of ideas interpretation, particularly with detailed about the earliest architecture in the attention to periodic renewal and Near East. However, the social and ide- replacement of artistic elaboration of ological aspects of built spaces remain, architecture. Mindful of Wilson’s (1988) for the most part, elusive. Rather than emphasis on the fundamental rethink- 5 PB

5 ing of space that the earliest settlements writing would later be. In this and other involved, we should expect symbolic papers (Watkins 1990; 2004), he tries to Beginning with delineation of spaces, along the lines identify early signs of ‘us’, in contradis- that Nadel suggests, to have been com- tinction to preceding hunter-gatherers, a Kenyon’s discovery of mon in Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic prehistoric ‘other’. sites. Neolithic houses and settlements the tower of Jericho, were probably steeped in symbolism. The ‘Otherness’ of Early Architecture The second orientation involves Taken together, however, most of the there has been renewed effort to understand the nature contributions to this volume make a of authority and social organization in strong case that we also need to pay a strong tendency to these early settlements. If we thought close attention to the ‘otherness’ of that this was a simple problem, we have early architectural remains in the Near try to assimilate early been proven wrong. There remains a East. Beginning with Kenyon’s discov- need to figure out how to identify evi- ery of the tower of Jericho, there has architectural remains dence of authority in the archaeological been a strong tendency to try to assimi- record. It is striking that, after almost late early architectural remains into the into the longue durée a century of research, we can say little longue durée of the Near East, as early with certainty about the nature, or even representatives of the agricultural vil- of the Near East, existence, of conflict and authority dur- lage societies that have existed in the ing the fundamental shift from hunter- region over the last few millennia. The as early gatherer to agricultural societies in the romance of this vision is captured in this Near East. The lack of clear evidence volume by Garfinkel, when he writes representatives of the has led to the prevailing assumption about the women of Neolithic Sha‘ar that Neolithic villages were either fairly Hagolan going down to the river with agricultural village egalitarian (e.g., Goring-Morris 2000: jars on their heads, and by Kafafi, when 106; Simmons 2000: 214; but see Bar- he envisions the people of Neolithic societies that have Yosef 2001), or showed the beginnings ‘Ain Ghazal sitting in the shade, playing of ranking with an increasingly fictive Manqala. existed in the region egalitarian ethic (e.g., Kuijt 1996; 2000a), While the desirability of such efforts but these assumptions have left others to people the artifacts and walls of over the last wondering how their inhabitants man- archaeological sites is beyond question, aged dispute resolution if the villages there is also a real danger of what Wobst few millennia. were even a substantial fraction of the describes as the tyranny of ethnography, size that some have estimated (but see missing the reality of the archaeological Verhoeven, this volume). This problem record by viewing it through ethno- has led to a focus on mechanisms that graphic glasses. In the Near East, the may have levelled economic differences danger is two-fold. On the one hand, or increased community cohesion (e.g., as Verhoeven discusses in his paper on Byrd 1994; Kuijt 1996; 2000b). Neolithic site size, some of the use of An apt introduction to the volume is ethnographic analogy by Near Eastern Trevor Watkins’s paper, which, much in archaeologists, as in other regions, is the spirit of Wilson’s (1988) Domestication selective or simplistic. In the Near East, of the Human Species, emphasizes what a furthermore, archaeology largely devel- major change to human thinking and oped as an extension of biblical studies. behaviour settlement in villages and Consequently, one must be wary, not houses must have been. He tries to only of the use of ethnographic anal- identify early signs of “us”, in contra- ogy, but also of the use of biblical anal- distinction to preceding hunter-gather- ogy and an attempt to see in distant ers. Wilson had already pointed out prehistoric societies the origins of the how we might expect the erection of peasant villages described in the Old somewhat permanent, artificial spatial and New Testaments and in the rich boundaries to have affected people’s textual legacies of ancient Egypt and perceptions of and relationships with Mesopotamia. one another. Watkins goes on to empha- The defense against both the tyr- size important cognitive aspects of this anny of ethnography and the romance change. Here, he points out ways in of biblical studies is close attention to which the built environment can codify the archaeological record. The papers information, constituting a vehicle of assembled here exemplify such a care- symbolic storage just as important as ful attention to the archaeological record

6 and, taken together, they shake the ers confound simple interpretation. sense of familiarity with which early In these structures, hearths and basins architecture in the Near East is usu- are crowded into the floor space leaving The papers assembled ally treated. What emerges is a series of little obvious space for occupation. By fundamental questions that offer new extracting patterns in the spatial organi- here exemplify such a perspectives on the emergence of archi- zation of “minor structures” and “major tecture, with its potential for demarcat- buildings,” Samuelian et al. attempt to careful attention to the ing space. discern functional meanings for these A number of articles point to aspects differentiated spaces, as they might archaeological record of early architectural remains that do have been used in the everyday lives not fit well with our ideas of houses and of the site’s inhabitants. Their analysis and, taken together, villages. In his paper on the Kebaran shows that buildings varied in their site of Ohalo II, Nadel presents fine- function, and sometimes changed func- they shake the sense of grained evidence for the symbolic use tion over time, and careful examination of space in the early huts found on the of features indicates that they were familiarity with which site. Why, he asks, were stones carefully not randomly distributed but rather placed below the floors of the huts? were organized along two primary axes. early architecture in Why were huts built repeatedly in the The interpretation of the architectural same spot with one floor directly overly- remains found at Mallaha are further the Near East is ing another? Nadel’s careful examina- complicated when the location of burial tion of the archaeological record leads is taken into consideration. For exam- usually treated. him to examine early huts as the con- ple, when structure 203, which had struction of a landscape that is at once been crowded with basins and hearths, What emerges is a functional and symbolic. Surprisingly entered a new phase of occupation with he reaches these conclusions from the few installations, thus possibly becom- series of fundamental excavation of the earliest known archi- ing a ‘house’, a corpse was deposited on tectural remains in the region. This the floor in a box. While Ohalo appears questions that offer demonstrates that human attempts to to provide an example of distinct spaces wield control over space preceded the that preserved their meaning over time, new perspectives on Neolithic by a much larger interval ‘Eynan, with at least as much differen- than previously suspected. Not only do tiation of space, instead shows that the the emergence of the hut structures at Ohalo represent meaning of spaces was mutable, more human attempts to demarcate living flexible. architecture, spaces with walls some 20,000 years Stefan Kozlowski continues the ago, but repeated use of the same spaces attack on our expectations by com- with its potential for and the patterned placement of certain paring PPNA “villages” to Mesolithic classes of artifact strongly suggest that hunter-gatherer settlements in Europe. demarcating space. symbolic manipulation of space was also As Kozlowski points out, we now know operative at this time. that the PPNA is a period of settled Some of the same themes are picked hunter-gatherers, not of early agricultur- up in Samuelian et al.’s examination of alists. He challenges the predominant the Final Natufian structures recovered interpretation of PPNA settlements as in recent excavations at ‘Eynan, or ‘Ain villages or proto-villages, contributing Mallaha. This site has attracted interest a counterpoint to the sometimes tele- from archaeologists interested in the ological accounts that have followed beginnings of village life since Flannery Flannery’s (1972) lead in interpreting (1972) interpreted a group of huts there changes in house form and community as evidence for Natufian social arrange- spatial organization. He analyses the ments. It is important to point out that differences and common characteristics the data discussed in Samuelian et al.’s of a large suite of sites across the Near paper were only visible because of the East, all of which have round or oval extraordinary level of care taken in the structures, in the attempt to discern excavation of these structures. In many which, if any, might properly be called cases, the remains of structures consist villages, rather than something like of only a single course of stones and an “base camps.” Kozlowski finds many associated earth floor. While some of the similarities between the PPNA and the structures at Mallaha might fit with our European Mesolithic, but there are still expectations of a house, with some open aspects of PPNA sites that are distinct space and a few small installations, oth- and require explanation. The first is the

7 tremendous depth of deposits found of architecture, and systematic under- on some PPNA sites and another is the representation of open spaces, at these density of structures. He casts doubt on sites. We might extend Verhoeven’s the prevailing view by showing that a argument by pointing out the assump- large number of the “villages” are more tion, inherent in most of the attempts To some extent, similar in many respects to Gravettian to estimate Neolithic community sizes, settlements and even Mesolithic “base that the fairly high population densities early architectural camps” in Europe than to Near Eastern and fairly crowded built environments “villages,” and prompts us to think care- of Bronze Age and later Near Eastern remains of the fully about what we really mean by such towns are appropriate analogues for terms as “village” and “sedentism.” Neolithic situations. Verhoeven instead NearEast Hans Georg Gebel’s paper concen- suggests that Neolithic sites may indeed trates on the domestication of one have had much more open space than have been used dimension of space that archaeologists later Near Eastern villages did. usually overlook: the vertical dimen- as a proxy for sion. It would be tempting to view the Built Environment and Social Change development of multi-storey structures To some extent, the early architectural social organization, as a response to crowding (cf. Kuijt remains of the Near East have been 2000; Steadman 2000) or simply an used as a proxy for social organization, despite recognition early manifestation of some kind of despite recognition that there is no incipient urbanism. However, this paper simple equivalence between the struc- that there is no simple shows hints that something rather dif- ture of built space and social structure ferent was going on in some PPNB sites (Wilk 1990). Particularly important has equivalence between the in southern Jordan. Somewhat as has been archaeological research into the been reported for pueblo sites in the emergence of nuclear and extended structure of built space American Southwest (Cameron 1966; households within the context of the Kidder 1958), upper storeys appear to beginnings and entrenchment of agri- and social structure have been added at the same time as cultural economies. lower storeys (or “basements”) were Many of the papers collected here abandoned and filled with rubble, the explore the relationship between built usable rooms sequentially rising over environment and the social changes time. that took place over the millennia when Marc Verhoeven provides a very village life and food production took focused critique of the models for esti- root and prospered. In this they follow mating population size for the PPNB in the shadow of Flannery’s (1972) early of Jordan. Since archaeologists have attempt to use mainly architectural evi- used these models to draw far-reach- dence to understand social changes at the ing conclusions about the social effects end of the Pleistocene and in the early of crowding (e.g., Kuijt 2000a; Gebel, Holocene. A brief review of Flannery’s this volume), the ecological effects of work in this regard is warranted, with population concentration (papers in emphasis on his Near Eastern, rather Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson 1992), than Mesoamerican, examples. and the role of central places (papers in In his ground-breaking original paper, Bienert et al. 2005), any weakness in the Flannery (1972) proposes the hypothesis models warrants careful consideration. that the shift from the Natufian to the Verhoeven argues that existing models’ early Neolithic involved a major social key assumptions lack empirical support. transformation. Although Flannery He suggests that it is likely that these associated this shift with the change sites were not occupied year-round from rounded to rectilinear buildings across their entire surface. As a result, (with admitted exceptions), his argu- views of the PPNB that are based on ment draws on several sources of evi- the reconstruction of large population dence, including number and size of centers are open to question. One might structures, position of granaries, and add that the excavators of some large patterns in the distribution of artifacts PPNB sites quite reasonably used vis- that might indicate activity areas. He ible traces of architecture, such as walls argues that hut size in the Natufian and in road cuts, to guide their placement PPNA is consistent with occupation by of excavation areas. However, this has only one or two people, and interprets led to biased estimates of the density groups of such huts as analogous to hut

8 compounds in several African societies. The social units associated with such compounds would be “groups of related polygynous males, each accompanied by one to three females and their children” (Flannery 1972: 33), and storage for each compound is shared. The rectangular houses of PPNB, each rather larger than all but the largest Natufian buildings, would be large enough to accommodate a nuclear family and, perhaps more importantly, the distribution of storage facilities suggests that each small household controlled its own production, distribution, and consumption. However, in Flannery’s papers and Fig. 1.: The “basic unit of production [was] not most that have followed in this vein, Plans of a subject to the same kind of obligatory we must be mindful of problems that Batammaliba house sharing as [in] the compound” (Flannery inevitably affect our identification of (a) (after Blier 1987) 1972: 39). “households” and other social units and a fictitious rect- In revisiting this topic, Flannery in archaeological residues. As we have angular structure (b) (2002) updates some of the data and already seen in discussion of Samuelian with the same spatial points out a number of improvements to et al.’s paper, it is not at all obvious, structure (c) his original paper, while also extending in many instances, what is or is not a his argument to the origins of extended “house”. We cannot assume that early households. Quite rightly, for example, constructed space constituted houses. he recognizes that the compounds of Nor is it obvious, especially where African horticulturists and herders are architecture is agglomerative, where the probably not the best analogues for boundaries between houses or house- Epipalaeolithic hut groupings. In fact, holds should lie. Different rooms of a one might add that polygynous com- single structure can belong to differ- pound units tend to be most common ent households, while individual house- among societies in which the agricultural holds can own space in several different labour of women and children is valued structures (e.g., Banning and Byrd 1987; (Murdock 1957; Clignet 1970; van den Byrd 2000: 65; Horne 1980; Stone 1981; Berghe 1979: 65-67), and not common Wilk and Netting 1984; Wilk and Rathje at all among hunter-gatherers. He also 1982: 620). places greater emphasis on the differ- How we deal with this problem inevi- ence between the pooling and spread- tably affects our interpretation of pre- ing of risks and resources in compounds historic social units. Depending on how or extended families, and the restriction we look at space, we might interpret a of sharing in nuclear families. grouping of huts around a common space

9 as a compound in which each hut is asso- that coresidence is an important char- ciated with a different adult household acteristic of households, but sociolo- member, as in some of the cases that gists, social anthropologists, and social Flannery cited in his 1972 paper. Or we historians have often found it necessary might interpret it as a house with sev- to omit coresidence from their defini- eral rooms (huts), occupied by a nuclear tions, or at least qualify it, in order family (e.g., Batammaliba houses, Blier to deal with households that partici- 1987). In terms of the organization of pate in migratory labour or mercantile space, it should not matter whether the activities (e.g., Sanjek 1982). The medi- rooms of a house are rounded (huts) or aeval European mercantile “house”, rectangular (figure 1). Creative respons- especially the Italian famiglia, included es to this problem range from careful relatives and even non-relatives eco- attention to renovations, door blockings, nomically tied to the household head; and networks of interconnected rooms indeed the “company” was the group (Banning and Byrd 1987; Dean 1969), that broke bread together (Latin cum to redundancies and other patterns in pane, Braudel 1986: 436; Origo 1963: the distribution of artifacts, features and 109, 181). One has to ask whether we facilities (Garfinkel and Kadowaki, this can take coresidence for granted when volume). we are dealing with prehistoric societies Like their predecessors in other pub- whose members only recently adopted lications, many of the papers in this a sedentary way of life, or, for all we volume face this problem of identifying know, were not completely sedentary socially relevant units, such as families, after all. One definition that archae- households, or even co-resident groups, ologists often cite defines households on the basis of architectural traces. as task-oriented, coresident groups that Some focus on small, isolated structures share in production, reproduction, and that might reasonably correspond with consumption (Netting 1982; Netting et houses and households, while others al. 1984). In an influential article, Wilke deal with buildings or groups of huts and Rathje (1982) define the household in which household boundaries (if that as the social group that shares in pro- is even an appropriate term) are not duction, distribution, consumption, and particularly clear. Marion Cutting (p. reproduction, and transmits rights from 91), for example, takes the safer route generation to generation. Archaeologists of using rooms and buildings as her who have tried to apply this defini- analytical units, thus avoiding the need tion to prehistoric cases have tended to to identify household boundaries while assume, for example, that storage facili- nonetheless admitting the likelihood of ties, much as in Flannery (1972), are “individual household units that were clues to distribution, while ovens and closely associated with particular build- hearths are clues to consumption. Yet ings”. She also notes (p. 98) that, at other archaeologists clearly are using a Asikli Höyük, domestic groups each quite different definition when they appear to have required use of multiple cite buildings with multiple hearths and buildings. Seiji Kadowaki (p. 53) takes ovens as evidence for “multifamily” or a different approach by attempting to “extended housholds” (e.g., Flannery identify redundancies in activity areas 2002: 424, 426; Garfinkel, this volume). and disposal areas that might reflect At the least, such variations suggest household units. With our ethnographic that the reality of social change was lenses and, indeed, with the biases we more complex than simple dichotomies bring from our own culture, it is tempt- can express; perhaps some multifam- ing to equate free-standing buildings ily Neolithic domestic groups shared with households, yet, as these papers in the distribution and storage of food, indicate, we must be wary of this equa- yet prepared and consumed food in tion. distinct, nuclear-family settings. In this Other problems stem from varia- vein, Flannery (2002: 427) refers to “an tion in the way we define the term, extended household of perhaps three “household”, itself. This is a problem- related nuclear families, each of which atic term even for social scientists who ground its own grain and cooked its own are able to observe domestic situations gruel or bread, but also shared storage

directly. Many archaeologists2 assume and work space with coresidents”. 10 11

10 As an example of how uncertain the identification of prehistoric households and their boundaries can be, let us return to the example of Hassuna (Lloyd and Safar 1945), as cited in Flannery (2002). Flannery interprets the excavated architecture of levels IV and V as each representing the house of an extended household. To support this hypothesis, he is able to cite the presence of several storage silos that, taken together, could store enough food for several nuclear families, and duplication of hearths and ovens, which suggests “the presence of several kitchens” (Flannery 2002:427). He also reconstructs fairly large numbers of coresidents for these buildings. But how certain can we be that the residents of these structures constituted households, or even coresidental groups? One way to define the boundaries between households in such situations, itself admittedly uncertain, is to examine the bonding and abutting of walls and the interconnection of rooms (e.g., Dean 1969). This method can suffer from incomplete publication of evidence and from poor preservation of doorways, but can still be helpful where, as at Hassuna, walls and doorways are fairly well preserved. Principally on the basis of room is critical to have some idea how many interconnections, we could conceivably people (or, perhaps, how many adults) Fig. 2: hypothesize three residential units (and there were in the coresident group or Partially reconstructed plan parts of others) in level IV (figure 2) and the economic group that shared in pro- of domestic architecture in four units in level V. We note that each duction, distribution, consumption, and Hassuna IV of these hypothesized units, where suf- transmission of intergenerational rights. (after Lloyd and Safar 1945). ficiently exposed, has a courtyard, one or Many authors have made use of Narroll’s Reconstructed walls are two ovens and hearths, and its own stor- (1962) formula relating the roofed area grey, proposed residential age facilities. Although this reconstruc- within settlements to settlement popu- or household units are tion is no more certain than the one lation sizes (roughly 10m2 roofed area distinguished by shading. that Flannery offers (and, in fact, does per person), or modifications to this not necessarily contradict the interpre- formula (Casselberry 1974; LeBlanc O: ovens tation of extended families), we see 1971; cf. Kramer 1982: 162; Sumner H: hearths no strong reason for assuming that all 1979; Watson 1982: 35). Yet they have M: milling stones the storage facilities in these structures sometimes attempted to apply these were shared by a single household. formulae to estimate the number of It would seem serendipitous indeed people inhabiting specific structures or if Safar and Lloyd’s excavation area even rooms, overlooking the fact that exposed just the right area to corre- the formulae were explicitly designed spond with a household in either level, to estimate the populations of whole let alone both. settlements. The ethnographic sample It is also necessary to reflect on the that Narroll employed provided statis- methods that Flannery, and other oth- tics on total roofed area of all domes- ers who followed in his footsteps, have tic structures in a settlement, includ- used to estimate the number of people ing their storage, ritual, entertainment, who inhabited these structures. If we and work spaces, and not only sleeping are to distinguish nuclear from extend- quarters. Consequently, applying the ed-family households, for example, it formula to an individual living room is 10 11

11 likely to underestimate the number of ity areas related to food preparation, tool people who could have slept or worked manufacture and maintenance, pigment There is a constant in it, quite aside from the large statisti- preparation, and other activities and cal errors on Narroll’s regression and examines their patterning in space. He danger of falling into skewness in the distribution (Kolb 1985; finds that some kinds of spaces, often Wiesner 1982). That is not to say that containing hearths, were used for mul- the trap of expecting there is no way to estimate the num- tiple activities, while other, small spaces ber of people who might have made were used for specific purposes, such the empirical evidence use of such a room (Cook and Heizer as storage of ground-stone tools. He 1968; Horne 1994: 150-54; Jacobs 1979; goes on to find recurrent associations to speak for itself. Sumner 1979: 169-170; Wiesner 1974; of such spaces, which he interprets as 1982), only that Narroll’s formula, and corresponding with cooperative social Architecture will remain ones like it, are not the appropriate way groups, perhaps households. to do this. We also need to mindful of Zeidan Kafafi provides an overview a collection of walls and the effects of household wealth, mobil- of the changing location of activities at ity, landholding, and other factors on the site of ‘Ain Ghazal. In this paper, he spaces unless it is house size (Kramer 1979: 158). uses changes in the location of storage, Consequently, Flannery’s (1972) food preparation, and industrial activi- animated by questions assignment of one or two adults to each ties to get at changes in social organiza- larger hut in a compound must find tion from the Middle PPNB through about social structure, its support, not in Narroll’s formula, Pottery Neolithic at ‘Ain Ghazal. but either in analogy to the recent hut Marion Cutting compares the architec- cognitive worlds, and compounds he cites or to some differ- ture of Asikli Höyük and Çatalhöyük and ent ethnographically-based formula. In manages to provide a linkage between domains of interaction fact, structures of 10 m2 or a little larger animal exploitation and architecture. can and often do house nuclear families, She argues that the small architectural while, as we already saw above, huts units at Asikli Höyük might reflect an of 10 m2 can also be interpreted sim- agricultural society without domesti- ply as rooms that, in association with cated animals. At Çatalhöyük, aban- storage and other rooms or huts, were donment of the previous agglomerated part of larger domestic units, with total architecture coincides with the addition areas of perhaps 25-30 m2. In any case, of cattle to the previously herded sheep there is not as great a difference in size and goats. Like Kafafi, Cutting points between the larger huts of the Natufian to the relationship between wealth and and PPNA and the typical “houses” of architecture, Çatalhöyük showing evi- Middle PPNB as Flannery’s analysis dence for the intergenerational trans- implies (Banning 1996; Byrd 2000: 72, mission of wealth differences. In light 83-85). In fact, the Natufian even boasts of comments above, it is interesting to some structures that are much larger examine the implications of Cutting’s than a typical PPNB house (e.g., struc- research for the assumption of household ture 51 at ‘Ain Mallaha/’Eynan is 64 m2 boundaries in what are, after all, quintes- in area; Perrot 1966). This has led some sential examples of agglomerative archi- to conclude that nuclear-family house- tecture. She identifies 26 “buildings” holds probably “characterize domestic at Asikli Höyük and 39 “buildings” at dwellings throughout this time frame in Çatalhöyük, following Düring (2001: 5) the southern Levant” (Byrd 2000: 83, in defining a building as all the spaces but see comments above and Samuelian covered by a single roof. et al., this volume). However, since the roof here is never Seiji Kadowaki’s paper exemplifies intact, the buildings actually appear to one approach to the use of built space be spaces (sometimes interconnected) that helps us grapple with such prob- within a continuously walled (i.e., not lems. He focusses on the uses of dis- abutting) enclosure. Different buildings tinct spaces and how these changed do not share walls, although their outer over time, this time in the context of a walls are often pressed closely together. Middle PPNB site, ‘Ain Abu Nekheila, Having defined the buildings, Cutting in the more desertic southern range compares their areas, degree of partition of the PPNB. With emphasis on site- into rooms, distributions of hearths and formation processes and ground-stone ovens at the two sites. Somewhat as with tools in these spaces, he identifies activ- Kadowaki’s paper, she notes repetition 12 13

12 of spatial arrangements at Çatalhöyük edge and increasing theoretical refine- that might indicate households or other ment in the study of the emergence domestic units. Furthermore, she notes of agriculture. The discoveries of the that these units seem to persist over past decade, both from new excavations stratigraphic levels, suggesting intergen- and methodological advances, many of erational transmission of property rights. which are discussed here, challenge At the earlier site of Asikli Höyük, how- easy theoretical generalizations. At the ever, buildings appear to have varied same time, there is a constant danger in function, and some small buildings of falling into the trap of expecting the are clearly not houses. This is remi- empirical evidence to speak for itself. niscent of Samuelian et al.’s results for Architecture will remain a collection of the Final Natufian at ‘Eynan, as well as walls and spaces unless it is animated by ethnographic examples of households questions about social structure, cogni- spread over two or more “buildings”, tive worlds, and domains of interaction. and cautions us not to be too quick in We a grateful to the authors who con- identifying architectural structures with tributed to this volume, as well as to the households. participants in the Toronto conference, Yosef Garfinkel focusses the dis- for rising to the challenge of combining cussion on the world of the Pottery empirical rigor with a lively engagement Neolithic. At least at Sha‘ar Hagolan, with theoretical issues surrounding the the situation appears to fit rather well domestication of space. our ethnographic expectations of what In closing, it is a pleasure to recognize a village should look like. At this site, the support of the Halbert Exchange structures and storage facilities are built Program at the University of Toronto, around a central courtyard. These court- the Halbert family, and the program’s yard buildings are built along roads director and administrator, Janice Stein that appear to run through the village. and Joshua Goldstein. The generos- Garfinkel reconstructs the courtyard ity and vision of the Halbert Exchange buildings as the homes of extended kin Program has allowed us to go beyond groups, which he interprets as units in the initial mandate to include scholars a hierarchical sociopolitical structure. in the conference without regard for However, even at this site, the nature modern political boundaries. In a time of the authority that allowed for the of intense regional conflict it is liber- maintenance of the streets, which, he ating to sit and consider how people argues, lie outside the household realm, experienced this landscape thousands remains unclear. of years ago. It is our belief that the kind of intellectual exchange that took Conclusions place in Toronto and is now embodied The contributions brought together in in this book makes a small but critical this book all represent elements of works contribution to modern transformations in progress. We are struck by the inter- that we hope will lead from conflict to play between gains in empirical knowl- cooperation.

12 13

13 References Hodder, I., ed. 1996. On the Surface: Çatalhöyük 1993-95. Perrot, J. 1966. Le gisement natoufien de Mallaha McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research/ (Eynan), Israël. L’Anthropologie 70: 437-483. British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Monograph 22. Ronen, A., and Adler, D. 2001. The walls of Jericho Bailey, D. W. 1990. The living house: Signifying con- 2000. Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: were magical. Archaeology, Ethnology and tinuity. In R. Samson (ed.), The Social Archaeology of The Example at Çatal Höyük. McDonald Institute Anthropology of Eurasia 2(6): 97-103. Houses, 19-48. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University for Archaeological Research/British Institute of Rollefson, G. O., and I. Köhler-Rollefson. 1992. Press. Archaeology at Ankara Monograph 28. Early Neolithic exploitation patterns in the Levant Banning, E. B., 1996. Houses, compounds, and mansions Horne, L. 1980. Village morphology: The distribution of Cultural impact on the environment. Population and in the prehistoric Near East. In G. Coupland and E. structures and activities in Turan villages. Expedition Environment 13: 243-254. B. Banning (eds.), People Who Lived in Big Houses, 22, 18-23. Sanjek, R. 1982. The organization of households in 165-185. Madison, WI: Prehistory Press. 1994. Village Spaces: Settlement and Society in Adabaka: toward a wider comparative perspective. Banning, E. B., and B. F. Byrd 1987. Houses and Northeastern Iran. Washington: Smithsonian Comparative Studies in Society and History 24: 131- the changing residential unit: Domestic architec- Institution Press. 147. ture at PPNB ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan. Proceedings of the Jacobs, L. 1979. Tell-I Nun: Archaeological implica Schmidt, K. 1998. Beyond daily bread: Evidence of early Prehistoric Society 53: 309-325. tions of a village in transition. In C. Kramer (ed.), Neolithic ritual from Göbekli Tepe. Neo-Lithics Bar-Yosef, O. 2001. From sedentary foragers to village Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnology for 2000. Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey: A prelimi hierarchies: The emergence of social institutions. In Archaeology, 175-191. New York: Columbia University nary report on the 1995-1999 excavations. Paléorient W. G. Runciman (ed.), The Origin of Human Social Press. 26: 45-54. Institutions, 1-38. Proceedings of the British Academy Kolb, C. C. 1985. Demographic estimates in archaeology: 2002. The 2002 excavations at Göbekli Tepe (south 110. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Contributions for ethnoarchaeology on Mesoamerican eastern Turkey): Impressions from an enigmatic site. Bienert, H.-D., H. G. K. Gebel, and R. Neef (eds.). 2005. peasants. Current Anthropology 26: 581-599. Neo-Lithics Central Settlements in Neolithic Jordan. Proceedings Kramer, C. 1979. An archaeological view of a contempo Simmons, A. 2000. Villages on the edge: Regional settle of the Symposium Held in Petra, July 1997. rary Kurdish village: domestic architecture, household ment change and the end of the Levantine Pre- SENEPSE 5. Berlin: ex oriente. size, and wealth. In C. Kramer (ed.), Pottery Neolithic. In I. Kuijt (ed.), Life in Neolithic Blanton, R. E. 1994. Houses and Households: A Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnology for Farming Commiunities: Social Organization, Identity, Comparative Study. New York: Plenum Publishers. Archaeology, 139-163. New York: Columbia University and Differentiation, 211-230. New York: Kluwer 1995. The cultural foundations of inequality in house- Press. Academic/Plenum Publishers. holds. In T. E. Price and G. Feinman (eds.), Village Ethnoarchaeology. New York: Academic Press. Steadman, S. R. 2000. Spatial patterning and social Foundations of Social Inequality, 105-128. New York: Kuijt, I. 1996. Negotiating equality through ritual: A complexity on prehistoric Anatolian tell sites: Models Plenum Publishers. consideration of Late Natufian and Pre-Pottery for mounds. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology Blier, S. 1987. The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology Neolithic A period mortuary practices. Journal of 19: 164-199. and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Anthropological Archaeology 15: 313-336. Stone, E. C. 1981. Texts, architecture and ethnographic Expression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2000a. People and space in early agricultural vil analogy: Patterns of residence in Old Babylonian Braudel, F. 1986. The Wheels of Commerce. Civilization lages: Exploring daily lives, community size and Nippur. Iraq 43: 19-33. & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, vol. 2. New York: architecture in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Journal Sumner, W. 1979. Estimating population by analogy: Harper & Row. of Anthropological Archaeology 19:75-102. An example. In C. Kramer (ed.), Ethnoarchaeology: Byrd, B. F. 1994. Public and private, domestic and corpo- 2000b. Keeping the peace: Ritual, skull caching, and Implications of Ethnology for Archaeology, 164-174. rate: The emergence of the Southwest Asian village. community integration in the Levantine Neolithic. In New York: Columbia University Press. American Antiquity 49: 639-666. I. Kuijt (ed.), Life in Neolithic Farming Thomas, J. 1999. Understanding the Neolithic. London: 2000. Households in transition: Neolithic social Commiunities: Social Organization, Identity, and Routledge. organization withing Southwest Asia. In I. Kuijt (ed.), Differentiation, 137-164. New York: Kluwer Tilley, C. 2003. An Ethnography of the Neolithic: Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Academic/Plenum Publishers. Early Prehistoric Societies in Southern Scandinavia. Organization, Identity, and Differentiation, 63-98. 2000. (ed.) Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation. van den Berghe, P. L. 1979. Human Family Systems, An Casselberry, S. 1974. Further refinement of formulae New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Evolutionary View. Elsevier, New York. for determining population from floor area. World LeBlanc, S. 1971. An addition to Narroll’s suggested floor Watkins, T. 1990. The origins of house and home. World Archaeology 6: 118-122. area and settlement population relationship. American Archaeology 21: 336-347. Clignet, R. 1970. Many wives, many powers: authority Antiquity 36: 210-211. 2004. Building houses, framing concepts, constructing and power in polygynous families. Evanston, Illinois: Lloyd, S. and F. Safar 1945. Tell Hassuna. Journal of worlds. Paléorient 30: 5-23. Northwestern University Press. Near Eastern Studies 4: 255-289. Watson, P. J. 1982. Archaeological Ethnography Cook, S. F., and R. F. Heizer 1968. Relationship among Matthews, W. 2005. Micromorphological and in Western Iran. Viking Fund Publications in houses, settlement areas, and population in aboriginal microstratigraphic traces of uses and concepts of Anthropology 57. Tucson: Wenner-Gren Foundation California. In K. C. Chang (ed.), Settlement space. In I. Hodder (ed.), Inhabiting Çatalhöyük: for Anthropological Research. Archaeology, 79-116. Palo Alto: National Press Books. Reports from the 1995-1999 Seasons. McDonald Wiesner, P. 1974. A functional estimator of population Dean, J. 1969. Chronological Analysis of Tsegi Phase Institute of Archaeological Research/British Institute from floor area. American Antiquity 39: 343-350. Sites in Northeastern Arizona. Papers of the of Archaeology at Ankara Monographs. 1982. Beyond willow smoke and dog’s tails: A com- Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research 3. Tucson: Murdock, G. P. 1957. World ethnograpfhic sample. ment on Binford’s analysis of hunter-gatherer settle- University of Arizona Press. American Anthropologist 59: 664-687. ment systems. American Antiquity 47: 171-177. Flannery, K. V. 1972. The origins of the village as a Narroll, R. 1962. Floor area and settlement population. Wilk, R. R. 1990. The built environment and consumer settlement type in Mesoamerica and the Near East: American Antiquity 27: 587-588. decisions. In S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture A comparative study. In P. J. Uckoi, R. Tringham, and Naveh, D. 2003. PPNA Jericho: A sociopolitical perspec and the Use of Space, 34-42. Cambridge: Cambridge G. W. Dimbleby (eds.), Man, Settlement and tive. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13: 83-96. University Press. Urbanism, 22-53. London: Duckworth. Netting, R. M. 1982. Some home truths on household Wilk, R. R., and R. Netting 1984. Households: Changing 2002. The origins of the village revisted: From nuclear size and wealth. American Behavioral Scientist 25: forms and functions. In R. Netting, R. Wilk, and E. to extended households. American Antiquity 67: 417- 641-662. Arnould (eds.), Households: Comparative and 433. Netting, R. M., R. R. Wilk, and E. J. Arnould 1984. Historical Studies of the Domestic Group, 1-28. Goody, J. (ed.) 1958. The Developmental Cycle in Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of Berkeley: University of California Press. Domestic Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University the Domestic Group. Berkeley: University of Wilk, R. R., and W. Rathje 1932. Household archaeology. Press. California Press. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 617-640. Hodder, I. 1990. The Domestication of Europe: Origo, I. 1963. The Merchant of Prato. Daily Life in a Wilson, P. J. 1988. The Domestication of the Human Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Medieval Italian City. Harmondsworth: Penguin Species. New Haven: Yale University Press. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Books.

14 PB

14 Architecture and the symbolic construction of new worlds

Trevor Watkins University of Edinburgh

A significant change occurred at the beginning of the Neolithic in southwest Asia as far as architecture is concerned. By contrast with preceding periods, communities engaged in a great deal of effort and concern for the architecture of houses, communal buildings, and the organization of whole settlements. There were undoubtedly important social factors at work in the new, permanent, sedentary village communities that emerged in the Epi-palaeolithic period, but there were more significant cognitive and cultural developments that enabled people to develop new frameworks of symbolic representation that were worked out in concrete terms in buildings, their fittings, their use, and the planning of settlements. I propose that systems of non-linguistic, external symbolic representation and storage were devised around the beginning of the Neolithic period, several thousand years before the first proto-scripts. In southwest Asia, there was a fortuitous coincidence of the beginnings of sedentism and permanent villages on the one hand and the co-evolution of cognitive and cultural faculties for external symbolic storage on the other hand. Architecture and the built environment, as we know, frame and help to form our perceptions. They form “theatres of memory”, the arena within which social and other relations beginning of the Neolithic in south-west Figure 1: are played out. And the settlements of Asia, Cauvin argued, presents quite dif- Sculpted monoliths suc- the earliest Neolithic in south-west Asia ferently from the immediately preceding from Göbekli Tepe have show how, for the first time in human Epipalaeolithic. For him, it was “la révo- led to the interpretation history, people were discovering this lution des symboles au Néolithique”, and of the site as a cult centre power to form, conceptualise and sym- the dominant symbols were of a female related to the economic bolise their living environment. Living divinity and divine male principle. Each geographer’s notion of a in a built environment for the first time year since Cauvin first published these “central place”. constituted inhabiting symbolic worlds ideas, and particularly each year since Illustration by Raina of their own construction, opening the his death in 2001, we have seen the dis- Stebelsky way to the formation of new, larger, covery of more and more sites with rich richer social worlds. sculptural imagery, and we can now see that there is more symbolic representa- “La révolution tion than just the figuring of a male and des symboles au Néolithique” female pair of divinities. And more and My starting point is with the work of more of this rich repertoire of imagery is Jacques Cauvin (1994; revised and contained within monumental architec- updated English edition 2001). The tural contexts. I want to develop a theory PB 15

15 concerning the use of architecture in Building design, settlement planning the early Neolithic, whether for single While there are interesting signs in buildings or for structuring whole set- Period 1 of what was to come, as Cauvin Living in tlements. I want to develop the thesis has argued, from the beginning of the that the realization of the potential Neolithic, Period 2, equivalent to the a built environment of architecture for constituting and PPNA of the Levantine region, there embodying cultural ideas that framed was an explosion of symbolic activity. for the first time the way that people lived was a phe- Communities of the earliest Neolithic nomenon that makes the people of the show a great deal of cultural concern constituted inhabiting earliest Neolithic in an important sense with the architecture of buildings and the first people to be substantially like the organization of whole settlements. symbolic worlds of ourselves. It needs to be made clear at This was slowly driven into my con- the outset that I am not trying to claim sciousness through the experience of their own construction, that culture in the Neolithic period was excavating Qermez Dere in north Iraq categorically different from culture in in the late 1980s (Watkins et al. 1991; opening the way to the preceding Epipalaeolithic period. Watkins et al. 1995; Watkins 1990, 1992, The evolution of human cognition and 1996). The small settlement at Qermez the formation of new, its employment of culture was a grad- Dere had been laid out in two contrasting ual process, but, around the beginning halves that performed complementary larger, richer of the Holocene period, the evolution- functions. Part way through its life, the ary process passed through a critically village was re-formed, but once again in social worlds. important threshold in the emergence two complementary halves. This time, of fully symbolic culture, opening the the southern half of the site was used for way to a rapid florescence of richly houses that were dug into what had been symbolic cultural worlds. a dumping area for all sorts of debris and First, let’s be clear on the sequence waste in the earlier stage of the history of and the chronology. From the transi- the village. The buildings were extraor- tion between the Upper Palaeolithic dinary for the care with which they were and the Epipalaeolithic periods built and the persistent maintenance (around 20,000 years ago, and before and renovation that was lavished on Period 0 in the system developed by them. One house, which we carefully Jacques Cauvin and his colleagues at disassembled over several seasons of the Maison de l’Orient in Lyon), some investigation, had been rebuilt at least hunter-gatherer societies had begun three times. And each phase showed to develop new settlement and sub- repeated replastering and modification sistence strategies. These involved of the internal details. Impressed by increased reliance on stored harvests the expensively repeated rebuildings, of pulses, cereals and other grasses. elaborate care expended in their main- Greater reliance on stored harvests tenance, and the pairs of nonstructural implied longer periods of residence in pillar-like features that each contained, I one base-camp. Arguably from the very suggested that these houses were more earliest Epipalaeolithic (for example, than shelters from the elements; rather, at Ohalo II – Nadel, & Hershkovitz they reminded me of the ways in which 1991; Nadel, this volume; Nadel & we in our cultural traditions have made Werker 1999; Kislev, Nadel, & Carmi our houses into “homes” (Watkins 1990). 1992), some hunter-gatherer communi- “Home”, I should not have to remind ties were resident at a single location you, is a cultural or social construct – an within an immediately accessible ter- allusion to the work of the American ritory of diverse ecological zones that philosopher John Searle (1995), and his offered richly varied food resources. By discussion of the construction of social the last phase of the Epipalaeolithic, reality. Period 1, equivalent to the Natufian in Much more dramatic is the site of Jerf Israel, Jordan and Syria, it is possible to al-Ahmar, on the Euphrates in north point to a number of communities that Syria (Stordeur 1998a; 1998b; 1999; 2000; had become fully or effectively seden- Stordeur & Jammous 1995; Stordeur et tary, living in permanent village com- al. 1996; Stordeur et al. 1997; Stordeur munities and permanent built environ- et al. 2000). The site belongs to Period ments, employing the proto-types of 2, the earliest aceramic Neolithic period, symbolic architecture. coming to an end at the transition to 16 17

16 Period 3, the beginning of the so-called was found only as the waters rose into PPNB of the Levant. Early in the his- the excavations. It, too, had a kerb of tory of the village, there existed a large, great limestone slabs, each with a frieze Structured settlements fully subterranean building (EA 30) in an of pendant triangles along its top edge. open space at the centre of the village. One of the slabs was also carved with and central, The floor of the structure was more than an additional design that seems to have 2 m below the surface, and the elliptical been a schematic representation of a communal buildings building ranged between 6.8 and 7.4 m headless human body. And that slab was across. Stordeur describes it as “commu- flanked by two, tall stelae topped with are not confined nautaire”, a communal or public build- vulture-like heads and a “collar” of pen- ing, and argues that it was “polyvalent”, dant triangles at the “neck”. to Syria. A cluster of or multi-functional. Stordeur believes And very recently, excavation of anoth- that it was at the same time a communal er early aceramic Neolithic site on the remarkable sites in food storage facility and a building with Euphrates in north Syria, upstream from religious functions, where meetings and Jerf al-Ahmar, Tell ‘Abr 3, has begun southeast Turkey has rituals may have taken place. At the end to reveal a further example of a cen- of its life, it was emptied, a human head tral, communal, circular building (Yartah been brought into the was placed in it, and in the central area 2004). The communal building at Tell a decapitated body was spread-eagled. ‘Abr, of which only a fragment survived, limelight in recent years. And then the structure was destroyed was between 10 and 12 m in diameter, by fire, its burning roof collapsing on the more than 1.5 m below ground level decapitated body. Finally, the structure (but, allowing for the above-ground wall, was obliterated as the cavity left by its about 2 m from floor to roof), and it had destruction was filled with more than been burnt as part of its abandonment. 300 m3 of soil. Stordeur (2000: 31, 32, Like Building EA30 at Jerf al-Ahmar, 36) has compared this building with a the Tell ‘Abr building had a “bench” very similar building at Tell Mureybet, around the interior, fronted by a “kerb” “maison 47”, of very similar date. At of large, limestone slabs. At the front of the very end of the excavations, as the the kerb, there was a circle of wooden waters were rising, a second, similar, cel- posts that had supported a roof structure, lular building (EA 7) was found, dating collapsed and burnt mud from which was later in the stratigraphic sequence of the found on the floor. Several slabs carved eastern part of the settlement. It seems with simple, linear geometric designs or to have been the replacement for EA schematically drawn animals were found 30. Two human skulls had been depos- set on edge between the posts and in ited in a recess at the base of one of the front of the kerb. post-holes for the posts that supported Structured settlements and central, its roof, a foundation deposit that mir- communal buildings are not confined rored the skull and corpse that had been to Syria. A cluster of remarkable sites in placed in EA 30 at the end of its life. southeast Turkey has been brought into In the western part of the settlement, the limelight in recent years. Although at a later date again, another large sub- Robert Braidwood and Halet Çambel terranean building was constructed (EA began the excavations at Çayönü Tepesi 53) on the same general scale as the in the 1960s, the extraordinary, non- earlier buildings, but internally quite domestic buildings in the centre of the different. Like EA 30, it was a complex settlement only began to be brought into construction with a double skin of walls, focus in the 1990s (Özdogan 1995; 1999; the inner of which included a number Özdogan & Özdogan 1990). Another of vertical timber posts. The circular small settlement, Nevalı Çori, was exca- interior had a bench running around the vated before being drowned by the lake wall, and the bench had a kerb formed behind a major dam. It had monumen- of large limestone slabs, decorated with tal domestic architecture like Çayönü a frieze of pendant triangles in relief. Tepesı, but attention has focused on Six large roof support posts of fir (Abies), the subterranean cult-building at the which must have been brought from centre of the settlement (Hauptmann some distance, were set in post-holes 1993, 1999). The most remarkable of at regular intervals in the kerb. Finally, all the sites, however, is Göbekli Tepe Stordeur (2000: 40 & fig. 11) mentions (Schmidt 1998; 2001; 2003; 2004; 2005a; briefly another, similar structure that 2005b). 16 17

17 nean structures just below the surface of the mound. The latest structures, dating to the later aceramic Neolithic, similar in date, therefore, to the Nevalı Çori and Çayönü Tepesı structures, contain the smallest monoliths with the least amount of figurative decoration. The earlier structures are larger, sub-circular, and contain more monoliths that are themselves much larger (up to 5 m tall) and more elaborately carved. In each enclosure, there is an opposed pair of T-shaped limestone monoliths, and the places where they were quarried can be seen on the eroded limestone surfaces all around the mound itself. In the earlier structures, more of the monoliths Göbekli Tepe is a mound about 300 m were erected around the perimeter of Figure 2: in diameter and more than 15 m high, the enclosure, set at right angles to The raised reliefs of situated on a prominent ridge in the the retaining wall with their bases in a the Steinzeit-Tempel limestone hills that overlook the plain of stone-built bench (fig.2). Some of the (stone age ‘temple’) Harran, near Urfa. It is not a settlement early structures can be seen to have been at Göbekli Tepe are mound in the normal sense, for it has rebuilt. Their second form was erected almost entirely of wild (so far) produced no domestic houses within the earlier retaining wall, the (and dangerous) animals, or anything that resembles the normal space between the old and the new walls large birds, snakes, lizards, stratigraphic accumulation of surfaces being filled with broken stone debris. and scorpions. and occupation debris. The matrix of the Some of the T-shaped monoliths seem to mound seems to be a vast accumulation have been re-sited, their sculptured ani- Illustration by of deliberately deposited broken stone mals partly or completely hidden where Raina Stebelsky debris with an admixture of occupa- they have been built into (or perhaps tion debris, including large amounts of embodied within) a retaining wall. As at chipped stone, considerable amounts Nevalı Çori, there are other sculptured of animal bone and a small amount of stones that have been found where they carbonised plant materials. Since the were dumped. The T-shaped monoliths mound is composed of a great amount were intended to be anthropomorphic, of domestic refuse, but is not a settle- as they share the same features as those ment site itself, it would be natural to from Nevalı Çori, and one or two have look for settlement around the mound. arms and hands carved in very low relief. All around the mound there are features The raised relief sculpted onto the sur- cut into the bedrock, such as posthole faces of the monoliths is almost entirely patterns, cisterns (?), large cylindrical of wild (and dangerous) animals, large features and quarries from which stone birds, snakes, lizards, and scorpions. monoliths have been cut, and dense How Göbekli Tepe is related to the carpets of chipped stone. But these fea- communities that built it and made its tures do not constitute a settlement, sculpted monoliths is as yet unknown. and extensive survey work has found Schmidt (2003; 2005a; 2005b) has begun none closer than about 15 km, under the to think of the site as a cult centre that centre of the old city of Urfa (Yeni Yol is in some sense related to the economic - Bucak & Schmidt 2003; Çelik 2000a). geographer’s notion of a “central place”. The mound seems to be full of subter- He has also introduced to his discussion ranean structures, excavated to depths reference to the thinking of the influ- between 2 and 5 m into the matrix, and ential urban theorist Lewis Mumford formed by massive, dry-stone retaining (1961), who speculated that the original walls. Every structure so far excavated cities arose where a permanent settle- has been found to have been deliberate- ment was established around a central ly and completely refilled with the stony shrine. While we have so few cult cen- matrix material at the end of its “life”. tres like Göbekli Tepe, and while we still Geophysical survey indicates that there know relatively little about the unique are more than a dozen further subterra- site and its functioning, it is impos- 18 19

18 sible to define its role in the settlement ate within wide-area networks. Having landscape – which is one that is very first faced the challenge of devising new unfamiliar to us, whether from personal ways to conceptualize their condition as experience of reading in the anthropo- members of sedentary, village communi- logical literature. Setting those difficulties in symbolic form, these hunter-gath- ties aside, we can at least appreciate that erers quickly turned to the exploration the sites mentioned (and Schmidt 2005b of the culturally rich possibilities of this is careful to list them more thoroughly, new way of life. Following the leads of document what has been reported, and Ian Hodder (1990) and Peter Wilson give the appropriate publication details) (1988), we may call the result of this co- give prominent and central positions evolutionary process in southwest Asia to buildings of elaborate architectural “domestication”. design, with which are associated clear indications of imagery and symbolism, Domestication whether in visual form or in the shape of In his book The Domestication of the use for ritual activities. Human Species, based on a cross-cultural In a paper parallel to Schmidt’s knowledge of ethnographically docu- (2005b), Rollefson (2005) briefly reviews mented hunter-gatherers, the anthro- Domestication is the evidence for ritual architecture and pologist Peter Wilson argued for a clear ritual centres in the southern Levant, difference between the traditional, the effect of fortunately relieving this author of the small-scale, mobile hunter-gatherer band need to document further the explosion societies and sedentary hunter-gatherer living in houses, of symbolic architecture that began in societies, who live in permanent build- the final Epipalaeolithic, and continued ings in village societies. Wilson called living in villages. through the aceramic Neolithic in that the former type the “open society”, region. Rollefson attributes the growth while sedentary hunter-gatherer societ- In “open societies” of ritual activity to population increase ies, like village-farming societies, are both within individual settlements and called “domesticated” societies (Wilson people were constantly in the overall density of human popula- 1988). He considered “domestication” tion within the landscape. He subscribes in the same sort of terms as Ian Hodder aware of each other to the theory of religion as the social (1990) in his book The Domestication “glue” holding societies together. of Europe: Structure and Contingency in within the group. While there is general agreement now- Neolithic Societies. Domestication is the adays that what Cauvin (1994) called “la effect of living in houses, living in vil- révolution des symboles” occurred at the lages. In “open societies” people were beginning of the Holocene (presaged, of constantly aware of each other within course, in the Epi-palaeolithic period), the group. He argued that domestication there is a poor ability to explain why was a significant event in human evolu- it should have happened then and not tion because it challenged that natural, earlier. In what follows, I shall be turn- evolved dependence on paying constant ing Rollefson’s evolutionary perspective attention to one another. On the other on its head. He takes a classic ecological hand, living in houses grouped in vil- line, supposing that larger co-resident lages offered the potential for structur- communities and higher population den- ing people’s thinking. sity in general required adaptations that Wilson argues that the way that we took the form of socio-cultural mecha- conduct ourselves is as much in response nisms which served as the sociological to sensory inputs as a matter of instincts; “glue” holding together the larger, more thus the adoption of houses and village stressed communities of the aceram- life – domestication – involved new ic Neolithic period. In his preliminary responses and new thinking, in terms of discussion of the deficiencies of most the development of structure in social theories of religion, Pascal Boyer simply life, the elaboration of thinking about undermines the “social glue” theory structure in the world, and ways of signi- (Boyer 2001: 26-8). I argue that co-evo- fying links between structure in domestic lutionary processes developed human life and structure in the world. Wilson’s cognition and culture towards a fully analysis of modern, mobile hunter-gath- symbolic stage of culture, and that that erers shows that they rely on uninter- opened the way for large-scale, perma- rupted and unimpeded attention, so that nently co-resident communities to oper- each member of the group is constantly 18 19

19 aware of the whereabouts of the others in turn engender new ways for minds and what they are doing. These “open to think. The most obvious examples societies” are marked by an emphasis of such cognitive-cultural co-evolution- on “focus” (Wilson 1988: 31), while ary revolutions are the emergence of a sedentary “domesticated” societies are full, modern language capacity, and the distinguished by an emphasis on the development of writing. “boundary” (Wilson 1988: 57-8). Wilson Like a number of archaeologists, I The essence of writes : “Architecture is a materializa- have found Merlin Donald’s ideas and tion of structure, and the adoption of arguments extremely stimulating and Donald’s hypothesis architecture as a permanent feature of very exciting (Donald 1991; 1998; 2001). life introduces spatial organization and The essence of Donald’s hypothesis is that the allocation as an ordering visual dimen- is that the modern human mind has sion” (Wilson 1988: 61). It was natural evolved further and further from the modern human mind for domesticated societies to form ana- primate mind by means of a series of logues between their built environment three major adaptations, each of which has evolved and community, between house and was driven by the emergence of a new household, and between the built envi- representational system (Donald 1991, further and further ronment that they create and inhabit conveniently précised in Donald 1998). and the world in which they live. Wilson Each of these new representational sys- from the primate mind introduces frequent examples of seden- tems was added to the already existing tary societies for whom the structure of faculties: one did not supplant or replace by means of a series their villages and their houses expresses another. the structure of their social lives. And, The first representational system to of three major like other anthropologists, Wilson cites emerge is labelled by Donald “mimetic examples of sedentary societies whose culture”, dependent on mimesis, or non- adaptations, ideas about the organization of the cos- verbal action-modelling involving ges- mos are modelled in the structuring of ture including vocal gesturing, non-ver- each of which was their houses and their settlement. In bal communication, and shared atten- another recent publication, I have gone tion. It is very difficult for us to imagine; driven by on to mention some of the many writers it was limited and slow, but Donald is and thinkers who have noted the signifi- emphatic that it constituted the proto- the emergence of a new cance of the architecture of the house in type of human culture, and facilitated the representation of ideas about the some degree of information storage and representational system. structure of the world (Watkins 2003). transmission. However, neither Wilson nor Hodder Language, in the form in which we can tell us why the emergence of domes- know it around our world, was the sec- tication occurred when it did, around the ond of the modes of representation. end of the Pleistocene and the begin- Language, Donald explains, gives us ning of the Holocene periods. For that, humans a powerful means of explic- we need to turn to overtly evolution- it recall from memory, the ability to ary theories concerning the evolution of address and organize knowledge, and human cognition and culture. to make it accessible to further reflection. As I have sought to emphasise The co-evolution of mind and culture elsewhere (Watkins 2003; 2004; 2005; in The thesis that I want to try and build is press a; in press b), taking my cue from that the cognitive and cultural evolution Terence Deacon’s book, The Symbolic of modern humans, Homo sapiens, had Species (Deacon 1997), and as Donald reached a stage where it could readily be also emphasises, full modern language triggered into the development of pow- involves much more than the forma- erful new forms of symbolic representation of a lexicon, or the emergence of tion in material form. There are several the physical ability to speak as modern cognitive psychologists, linguists and speakers do. Crucially, language implies neuro-scientists working on the general a facility with symbolic representation. If idea of cognitive and cultural co-evolu- modern humans have had the cognitive tion – a process in which human minds/ and cultural capacity to manage the sys- brains were stimulated into new ways tem of symbolic representation that we of thinking and representing ideas in a call language, they have had the poten- positive feedback loop where human tial to devise other modes of symbolic minds develop new cultural media that representation, too. The early archaeo- 20 21

20 logical indications of that capacity for different cultural environments within symbolic representation in material form which they developed, they have equal- and action antedate the first figurative ly significant implications for the ways representations of the European Upper that the minds of prehistoric people Palaeolithic; they are found associated developed within prehistoric cultural with the newly emerged Homo sapiens in environments. Following Donald’s logic, Africa (D’Errico et al. 2003). cultures that were fully symbolic and This geometric However, the greatest change in minds that operated within fully sym- human culture has been what Donald bolic cultural contexts are quite different approach to houses, refers to as the emergence of “theoretic from less than fully symbolic cultures culture”, a mode that is supported by and less than fully symbolically literate combining curvilinear systems of “external symbolic storage”. minds. As members of today’s Western And this most recent transformation of archaeological community, it is easy to and straight lines, culture has found its full realization in appreciate the importance of the writ- the use of alphabetic writing systems. ten word as a mode of external symbolic should be emphasized, Ideas and information encapsulated in storage. Because of our education and external symbolic storage systems (think upbringing with its emphasis on literacy since it became of a university library, with shelves full and the printed word, it is less easy for of archaeological journals and all the us to appreciate the role of other, non- part of a tradition, varied monographs) are accessible to verbal, non-literate modes of symbolic any of us, at any time. We may criticize representation. Yet, as archaeologists, we as possibly evidenced or reformulate the information that we ought to be aware of the importance of find, and add to it with our own publi- both portable artefacts and fixed con- by later buildings cations for others to synthesise in their structions and buildings as modes of turn. It should not be hard for us to rec- symbolic representation in other cul- in Mureybet and ognize that, while the genetic makeup tures (and, indeed, in our own cultures). of our brains may not have changed I take a similar view to that articu- Jerf al-Ahmar. over the last few generations, centuries lated by Colin Renfrew in response or millennia, the ability to link to an to Donald’s view of external symbolic accumulating external memory store has storage and writing (Renfrew 1998). On afforded our minds cognitive powers the one hand, Renfrew rejected the that would not otherwise have been idea of an Upper Palaeolithic revolution possible. Donald speaks of our minds as as the beginning of human modernity hybrid minds, dependent on their ability (Renfrew 1996) and, on the other hand, to access external symbolic information. he thought that Donald’s concern with The emergence of external symbolic alphabetic writing as the beginning of storage systems is a cultural and not a truly effective external symbolic storage biological phenomenon, and it changes missed a significant earlier revolution. the cognitive working of the human Renfrew emphasised the potential of mind, enabling us to evoke qualitatively non-verbal, non-literate symbolic cul- new types of representation. ture in constituting modes of symbolic In his more recent book (A Mind So Rare: storage and transmission several millen- The Evolution of Human Consciousness), nia earlier than the first, non-alphabetic Donald expands on the ideas of brain- writing systems. In his recent writing, he culture co-evolution (Donald 2001). has developed the view that fully sym- He discusses at length the process of bolic material culture, emerging before “deep enculturation” in human learn- the first writing systems, constitutes a ing and the development of individu- further significant stage in human cul- al consciousness. Deep enculturation tural and cognitive evolution (Renfrew describes the way that a fully symbolic 2003), and he calls these ideas a theory cultural environment directly affects the of material engagement (Renfrew 2004). way that major parts of what Donald The idea that I wish to develop here and calls “the executive brain” develop from in other recent publications is that archi- infancy. Symbolic culture effectively tecture is a specially powerful mode of wires up functional subsystems in the external symbolic storage, that this mode brain that would not otherwise exist. of symbolic representation in architec- If these ideas have huge implications tural form was first realised at the end for the ways that the minds of people of the Epipalaeolithic and the beginning today have learned to operate in the very of the Neolithic in southwest Asia, and 20 21

21 that this realization of the potential of ies based in kinship, or hierarchically symbolic material culture accounts for organized societies based on class, status the precocity of southwest Asia from this or power. Lévi-Strauss was impressed time on for several thousand years. by the Annaliste historian Georges Duby, who wrote about the institution The built environment as external of noble houses in medieval France. symbolic storage network Indeed, house-based societies are to be The emergence of harvesting, food stor- found widely in the ethnographic litera- age, and sedentary life in village com- ture (I have written more fully on this munities came at a perfect time to coin- subject elsewhere; see Watkins 2003). cide with human cognitive and cultural And we may note that post-structuralist evolution. Communities in southwest and social thinkers such as Bourdieu, Asia began to use material culture in Derrida and Giddens also say that the the same way that they used language. house serves as a structuring instrument. Language is differential, rather than ref- We are clearly in good company. erential. The signs (words) take mean- However widely found the examples ing from their ‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ of societies, architects, anthropologists, context, in relation to one another. The or social thinkers who use the architec- same may be said for architecture. The ture of the house as a mode of structur- built environment of the village offered ing their thought or ideas, we cannot an arena within which abstract ideas assume that contemporary cultural expe- about the structure of the community, rience can be universalised. What we are the relationship of the community with seeing at the end of the Epipalaeolithic their world, and even the structure of and the beginning of the Neolithic peri- that world could be articulated in their ods of southwest Asia is the emergence buildings, and the relationship of build- of a new, fully modern mode of cognitive ings to one another. Further, individu- and cultural representation. al buildings constituted arenas within What I have sought to suggest is that which much more could be symbolically human cognitive and cultural evolu- constructed in their fittings and fixtures, tion had reached a point in the final and in the rituals conducted within Palaeolithic where external symbolic them. In building their houses and vil- storage networks became possible. In lages, they were framing concepts and southwest Asia, where dependence constructing in symbolic form the most on stored harvests and the trend to significant aspects of their world and sedentism happened to evolve in the their lives. For us, architecture and the Epipalaeolithic, house-building and built environment constitute our way life in villages were turned into what of living; architecture materializes our we know as architecture and the richly social institutions, frames our percep- meaningful world of the built environ- tions and forms the arena within which ment. The new way of life was dra- social and other relations are played out. matically different from the whole of Significantly, it provides the framework human experience living in small-scale, for the “deep enculturation” of human mobile, hunter-gatherer groups of fluid infants. Growing up in an architecturally membership. Living in relatively large- expressive environment, surrounded scale, permanently co-resident commu- by artefacts with symbolic values, and nities within a tightly drawn territory, guided by parents and other seniors who as Wilson (1988) suggested, presented already know this world, makes us who challenges but also opportunities. we are. The primary challenge was that of Anthropologists, architects and social constructing a new sense of community thinkers believe that architecture serves based not only on kinship but also on co- as a structuring device in the think- residence. At the same time, the village- ing of contemporary or recent societies. community needed to be understood That most influential of anthropological in the context of its neighbouring com- theoreticians, Lévi-Strauss, has written munities. The anthropologist, Anthony extensively on the house as a social Cohen, has worked for many years on form, proposing house-based societies the notion of community and how com- – sociétés à maison – as a category of munities are formed, maintained, and social organization, distinct from societ- seen by their members and non-mem- 22 23

22 bers. In a small book of primary impor- co-resident groups of several hundred or tance, Cohen described community as: several thousand people in permanent settlements. Once the challenge of the ‘that entity to which one belongs, symbolic construction of community had greater than kinship but more imme- been met, the opportunities offered by diate than the abstraction we call the new facility with symbolic culture “society”. It is the arena in which could be explored people acquire their most fundamen- The power of the built environment tal and most substantial experience resides in the fact that – as we can appre- of social life outside the confines of ciate – people live within it: it is not an the home... At the risk of substituting optional extra, like a library, that one one indefinable category for another, can consult when one wants. We inhabit we could say it is where one acquires the symbolic world of architecture. It “culture”.’ (Cohen 1985: 15) allows us to construct and read meanings at many levels and of many kinds. It Cohen shows how communities are allows us to construct environments that symbolically constructed and main- enrich other forms of dramatic symbol- tained through the manipulation of their ism played out within them. Here I am symbols in the minds of their members thinking particularly of ritual and drama. (Cohen 1985: 15). The symbolic con- I am therefore arguing that the first struction of community involves great sedentary hunter-gatherers and farm- cognitive and cultural complexity. The ers of southwest Asia recognized the construct of community became possible potential of the built environment as for humans only with the emergence of a powerful cultural system of external minds that were capable of operating in symbolic storage and reference. In the terms of symbolic culture. This capacity early Neolithic they were literally con- to build and maintain communities that structing new worlds of the imagination were larger than the circle of immedi- that they could inhabit and in which ate kin was necessary for the ability of their children grew up in a more power- early Neolithic groups to live together, ful environment for enculturation than for the first time in human history, in Homo sapiens had ever known.

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23 Özdogan, M. and A. Özdogan, 1990. Çayönü, a conspectus of IXe millénaire av. J. C.), in Habitat et Société: XIVe References recent work, in Aurenche, O., Cauvin, M.-C. and Sanlaville Rencontre Internationale d’Archéologie et d’Histoire Boyer, P. 2001. Religion Explained: the human instincts P. (eds), Pet réhistoire du Levant : processus des changements d’Antibes, eds. F. Braemer, S. Cleuziou, & Coudart, A. that fashion gods, spirits and ancestors. London, William culturels : 68-77. Paris. Éditions du CNRS-Paléorient. Antibes: Éditions APDCA, 131-49. Heinemann. Renfrew, C. 1996. The sapient behaviour paradox: how to 2000. New discoveries in architecture and symbolism at Bucak, E. & Schmidt, K. 2003. Dünyanın en eski heykeli. test for potential?, in Modelling the Early Human Jerf el Ahmar (Syria), 1997-1999. Neo-Lithics : A Atlas. Aylık co_rafya ve ke_if dergisi, sayı 127, kim 2003: Mind, eds. P. Mellars, & K. Gibson. (McDonald Newsletter of South-west Asian Lithics Research 1/00 :1-4. 36-40. Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute Stordeur, D., D. Helmer, B. Jammous, & G. Willcox, 1996. Cauvin, J. 1994. Naissance des divinités, Naissance de l’agriculture: for Archaeological Research, 11-14. Jerf-el Ahmar: a new Mureybetian site (PPNA period) on La Révolution des Symboles au Néolithique. Second, revised 1998. Mind and Matter: Cognitive Archaeology and the Middle Euphrates. Neolitbics: A Newsletter of South- edition, 1997. Paris: CNRS Publications. [Published External Symbolic Storage, in Cognition and Material west Asian Lithics Research, 2/96, 1-2. (2000) as The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture. Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage, eds. C. Stordeur, D., D. Helmer, & G. Willcox, 1997. Jerf-el Ahmar: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.] Renfrew, & C. Scarre. (McDonald Institute Monographs.) un nouveau site de l’horizon PPNA sur le moyen Euphrate Çelik B. 2000. An Early Neolithic Settlement in the Center Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Syrien. Bullétin de la Société Préhistorique Française 94(2), of _anlıurfa, Turkey, Neo-Lithics: A Newsletter of Southwest Research, 1-6. 282-5. Asian Lithics Research, 2-3/00: 4-6. 2003. Figuring it Out. London: Thames & Hudson. Stordeur D. & B. Jammous, 1995. Pierre à rainure à décor Cohen, A. P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. 2004. Towards a Theory of Material Engagement, in animal trouvée dans l’horizon PPNA de Jerf el Ahmar, London: Routledge. Demarrais, E., Gosden, C. & Renfrew, C. (eds.), Syrie. Paléorient 21,1 : 129-130. Deacon, T. W., 1997. The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution Rethinking Materiality: the engagement of mind with the Stordeur D., M. Brenet, G. Der Aprahamian & J.-C. Roux of language and the human brain. London: Allen Lane, The material world: 23-31. (McDonald Institute Monographs.) 2000. Les bâtiments communautaires de Jerf el Ahmar et Penguin Press. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Mureybet, horizon PPNA (Syrie). Paléorient 26,1 : 29-44. D’Errico, F., Henshilwood, C., Lawson, G., Vanhaeren, M., Research. Watkins, T., 1990. The origins of house and home. World Tillier, A.-M., Soressi, M. Bresson, F., Maureille, B., Renfrew, C. & C. Scarre (eds.), 1998. Cognition and Material Archaeology 21(3), 336-347. Nowell, A., Lakarra, J., Backwell,, L. & Julien, M. 2003. Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. (McDonald 1992. ‘The beginning of the Neolithic: searching for mean- Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Language, Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for ing in material culture change.’ Paléorient, 18/1: 63-75. Symbolism, and Music – An Alternative Multidisciplinary Archaeological Research. 1996. ‘The origins of the household in North Perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 17/1: 1-70. Rollefson, G. 2005. Early Neolithic Ritual Centers in the Mesopotamia.’ In Veenhof, K. (ed..) Houses and Donald, M., 1991. Origins of the Human Mind: Three Stages in the Southern Levant. NeoLithics: A Newsletter of South-west Households in Ancient Mesopotamia: 79-88. Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge (MA): Asian Lithics Research 2/2005. 2003. Memes, memeplexes and the emergence of religion Harvard University Press. Schmidt K., 1998. Frühneolitische Tempel. Ein in the Neolithic, in Magic Practices and Ritual in the Near 1998. Hominid Enculturation and Cognitive Evolution, Forschungs bericht zum präkeramischen Neolithikum Eastern Neolithic, vol. 8, Studies of Production, in Cognition and Material Culture: the Archaeology of Obermesopotamiens. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Subsistence and Environment, eds. H. G. Gebel, B. D. Symbolic Storage, eds. C. Renfrew, & C. Scarre. (McDonald Orientgesellschaft zu Berlin 130, 17-49. Hermansen & C. Hoffmann Jensen. Berlin: Ex Oriente, Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for 2001. Göbekli Tepe and the Early Neolithic Sites of 43-7. Archaeological Research, 7-17. the Urfa Region: a Synopsis of New Results and Current 2004. Building Houses, Framing Concepts, Constructing 2001. A Mind so Rare. London: W. W. Norton & Co. Views. Neo-Lithic: A Newsletter of South-west Asian Worlds, Paléorient 30.1: 5-24. Hauptmann, H. 1993. Ein Kultgebäude in Nevalı Çori, in Lithics Research 1/01: 9-11. 2005. Architecture and “theatres of memory” in the Frangipane, M. et al. (eds.), Between the Rivers and over the 2003. The 2003 Campaign at Göbekli Tepe (Southeastern Neolithic of southwest Asia, in DeMarrais, E., Gosden, Mountains. Archaeologica Anatolica et Mesopotamica Alba Turkey), Neo-Lithics: A Newsletter of South-west Asian C. & Renfrew, C. (eds.), Rethinking materiality: the Palmieri Dedicata: 37–69. Rome. Lithics Research 2/03: 3-8. engagement of mind with the material world, 97-106. 1999. Frühneolithische Steingebäude in Südwestasien, 2004. Frühneolithische Zeichen vom Göbekli Tepe Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological in Beinhauer, K. W., Cooney, G., Guksch, C. E. & Kus, Neolitik Göbekli Tepe Betimlemeleri. TÜBA-AR. Türkiye Research. S. (eds.), Studien zur Megalithik. Forschungsstand und Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Dergisi 7: 93-105. In press (a). The neolithic revolution and the emergence ethnoarchäologische Perspektiven, Beiträge zur Ur- und 2005a. Die „Stadt“ der Steinzeit. In Falk, H. (ed.), Wege of humanity: a cognitive approach to the first comprehen- Frühgeschichte Mitteleuropas 21: 227-238. zur Stadt - Entwicklung und Formen urbanen Lebens in sive world-view, in The Transmission and Assimilation of Hodder, I. 1990. The Domestication of Europe: Structure and der alten Welt, Vergleichende Studien zu Antike und Culture: Perspectives from the Eastern Mediterranean, Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Orient 2: 25-38. Bremen. ed. J. Clarke. (British Academy Monographs.) Oxford: Kislev, M. E., D. Nadel, & I. Carmi, 1992. Epi-palaeolithic 2005b. “Ritual Centers” and the Neolithisation of Upper Oxford University Press. (19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Mesopotamia. NeoLithics: A Newsletter of South-west In press (b). The emergence of networked communities, Israel. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 71, 161-6. Asian Lithics Research 2/2005. in Towards New Frameworks, ed. Gebel, H. G., Schmidt, Mumford, L. 1961. The city in history: its origins, its transforma- Searle, J. 1995. The construction of social reality. London: K., Özdogan, M. & Rollefson, G. Berlin: Ex Oriente. tions, and its prospects. London: Secker & Warburg. Allen Lane. Watkins, T., A. V. G. Betts, K. Dobney, & M. Nesbitt, 1991. Nadel, D. & I. Hershkovitz, 1991. ‘New subsistence data and Stordeur, D., 1998a. Espace naturel, espace constraint à Jerf Qermez Dere, Tel Afar: Interim Report No 2, 1989. human remains from the earliest Levantine el Ahmar sur l’Euphrate. In Fortin M. & Aurenche O. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Epipalaeolithic.’ Current Anthropology 32: 631-5. (eds), Espace Naturel, Espace Habité en Syrie du Nord Archaeology, Occasional Paper Paper No. 13. Nadel, D. & E. Werker, 1999. The oldest ever brush hut (10e - 2e millénaires avant J. C.) : 93-108. Toronto : The Watkins, T., K. Dobney, & M. Nesbitt, 1995. Qermez Dere, plant remains from Ohalo II, Jordan Valley, Israel (19000 Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies. Lyon: Maison Tel Afar; Interim Report No. 3. Edinburgh, Department of BP). Antiquity 73, 755-64. de l’Orient (Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Project Paper No. Özdogan, A. 1995. Life at Çayönü During the Pre-Pottery Méditerranéen 33, 28). 14. Neolithic Period (According to the Artifactual Assemblage), 1998b. Jerf el Ahmar et l’horizon PPNA en Haute Wilson, P.J., 1988. The Domestication of the Human Species. in: Readings in Prehistory. Studies Presented to Halet Çambel: Mésopotamie, Xe-XIe millénaire avant J.-C. In : New Haven (CT) & London: Yale University Press. 79–100. Istanbul. Lebeau M. (ed.) About Subartu : studies devoted to Upper Yartah, T. 2004. Tell ‘Abr 3, un village du néolithique 1999. Çayönü, in Özdogan, M. & Bagelen, N. (eds.), Mesopotamia, vol. 1 : 13-30. Brussels. Brepol. précéramique (PPNA) sur le Moyen Euphrate. Premier Neolithic in Turkey. The Cradle of Civilization: 35–63. 1999. ‘Organisation de l’espace construit et organisation approche. Paléorient 30/2: 141-58. Istanbul. sociale dans le Néolithique de Jerf el Ahmar (Syrie, Xe -

24 Residence Ownership and Continuity From the Early Epipalaeolithic into the Neolithic

Dani Nadel 2003). However, it is only in a few large Natufian sites and many early Neolithic Zinman Institute of Archaeology village sites that the walls of dwelling University of Haifa structures were built of stone, and thus past organization of space within camps Introduction or villages was better preserved than in Until the Upper Palaeolithic, direct most earlier sites (Flannery 1972, 2002; archaeological evidence for the inner Byrd 1994, 2000; Nadel 2003). organization of the home space, the One of the hallmarks of early Neolithic dwelling structure, is extremely scarce. villages in the Near East is the dense Lower and Middle Palaeolithic remains building within them, also demonstrated from many cave sites, for example, do by repeated renewal of floors and struc- not provide details of the built home, tures, and the common construction of but rather demonstrate the use of nat- new houses exactly above old ones. It urally closed and protected spheres. has been suggested that such a tradition, In several Upper Palaeolithic sites in already present in early Natufian sites Europe and the Near East, the remains reflects sedentism (Edwards 1989) and of built dwellings have been preserved the long-lasting ties between people (Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen and their specific place within the camp or village (see more on Natufian settlement patterns in Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar- Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989; Belfer- Cohen 1991).

Figure 1: Location of Ohalo II on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (above), and central area of excavation (right).

PB 25

25 26 similarities to the other huts. All huts are more-or-less oval and, in the five fully observable cases, the long axis is in a north-south direction. In two cases, the entrance was clearly located in the middle of the long eastern wall [huts 1 (floor II) and 2]. The lengths of the huts vary between 2.5 and 4.5 m, while their areas range from 5 to 13 m2. The floors have a bowl- like section, and are always lower than the surrounding surface. Thus, the first stage of hut construction was to dig a shallow oval depression – at least 20 cm lower than the surface – into the soft the upper and lower floors by layers of bedrock. No postholes were detected silt/sand that were 3-5 cm thick in most Figure 3: in or around any of the excavated huts. places. This floor had a high density of Section through the Such a simple building technique did finds, including horizontally deposited floor of brush hut 2, not require heavy logs for a central sup- specimens such as flint artefacts, bones, showing dark port. and a gazelle horn core. A large, flat, charcoal-rich lenses No stone pavement or continuous basalt stone was set horizontally on this on top, and natural stone-lined wall bases were document- floor (see below). The bottom floor (III) lacustrine silty-clay ed. In hut 12, however, stones, mostly was larger than the middle one. It, too, below 10-20 cm long, formed a loose arch was rich in flint, bones, and charred along the exposed north-west edge of remains. No stone installations were the floor. Most of them were placed in preserved within the huts, nor are there groups of two or three stones, 20-50 cm built hearths. apart, and there are broken stone imple- Thin sections through the floors sup- ments among them (Nadel 2003). port the floor distinctions reached by The dark cultural deposit within each field observations. In particular, the floor hut was usually 10-20 cm thick in the layer showed in situ microscopic features, The color of the center, although thicker in huts 1 and including horizontal charred fragments 12, and became thinner towards the of grasses (Nadel et al. 2004; Tsatskin anthropogenic layers walls. It had high densities of charred 2002; Tsatskin and Nadel 2003). remains, animal bones, flints, and other The densities of finds are high on is always dark, with daily debris. In all sections, the lower the floors, while finds are extremely limit of the archaeological layer was rare in the deposits around and below rich assemblages of clearly distinguishable from the under- the huts (Figure 3). Thus, the color lying light-colored natural marls, clays of the anthropogenic layers is always charred remains, and sands (Figure 3; for sedimentologi- dark, with rich assemblages of charred cal and thin-section details, see Tsatskin remains, while the surrounding deposits while the surrounding 2002; Tsatskin and Nadel 2003). are light gray, the typical color of silts and clays. Furthermore, counts of flints, deposits are light gray, Successive Floors for example, amount to several hundred debitage pieces in most units of 0.5 m x the typical color of The floors 0.5 m x 0.05 m (1/80 of a cubic metre). In five huts, the anthropogenic accumu- In the natural bedrock deposits, by con- silts and clays. lation between the walls, composed of trast, they drop to isolated finds or none thin mud floors and the debris depos- at all. ited above and into them, exhibited no It should be mentioned that, at the observable layers, although small lenses Kebaran site of Ein Gev I, the near- and “sub-layers” that did not continue est site to Ohalo II with pre-Natufian from wall to wall were observed (Figure remains of huts, the “indoor” anthro- 3). However, in hut 1 it was possible pogenic deposit was thick (up to ca. 60 to distinguish three successive floors cm) and divided into several layers (Bar- (Figure 4). The upper floor (I) was only Yosef 1978). These layers, like the Ohalo partially preserved in the southern half II hut 1 floors, could be reflections of of the hut. The middle floor (II) was long or repeated occupation of the same well preserved and was separated from hut. 26 27

27 that differ from those of flints and fish bones. Had natural processes, such as water transportation, been responsible for the observed scatters, the high densities of all small remains should have overlapped. Thus, these independent and non-random distribution patterns appear to represent distinct locations of work, storage, and discard on the floor of the brush hut. Refitting of flints also provides evidence for knapping on the floors. So far, we have more than 100 refits in hut 1 and more than 60 in hut 2. Furthermore, in hut 13 there were several concentrations of heat-shattered flints. When con- joined, each “pile” of chunks produced a bladelet core. Such evidence points to “indoor” knapping and in situ preservation of the flints. In addition, there are small numbers of conjoinable basalt pieces on some of the floors. On floor II of hut 1, a flat basalt stone had been set in an unusual way (Figure 4; Nadel 2003). First, a patch of yellow sand was spread on the floor, where the stone was to be placed. Then, several pebbles were set in the sand, and the flat stone on top. The stone was thus placed horizontally and firmly, to be used for Finds on the floors grinding cereals on its upper flat side All floors were rich with material remains (Piperno et al. 2004). Figure 4a, 4b: Plan of daily activities, including many thou- The remains of grass bedding were pre- of floor III, brush sands of flint products (totaling ca. 45,000 served at the bottom of floor III (Figure hut 1, showing loca- pieces, excluding debris and chunks). 4; Nadel et al. 2004). These consisted tion of grass bedding Seeds were abundant, and a sample of exclusively of Puccinellia convoluta grass, (top), and section ca. 60,000 from hut 1 has been studied cut above ground and organized in a through the three (Kislev et al. 2002; Weiss et al. 2005). repeated manner, with bundles placed in floors Animal bones were also plentiful, and the same orientation, like tiles. They orig- (bottom). thousands of fish bones, as well as thou- inally covered most of the floor, around a Note different scales: sands of mammal bones and many bones simple central hearth. It is probable that height in figure 4b of birds, were recovered from each brush similar floor covers were used on floor II is given in meters hut. in that hut, and in huts 3 and 12, where a Conspicuous concentrations of finds thin, dark organic deposit may represent were observed on floors. For example, poorly preserved layers of grass. a small, dense area of flint products, The wide variety of tiny (seeds, including cores, bladelet blanks and tiny fish bones, certain flint elements) pieces, occupied floor II in hut 1. Around and heavier in situ remains indicates it, numbers of flints were very low, sug- that the identified surfaces, rich with gesting the interpretation that two or remains of daily activities, are indeed three knappers had sat in a semi-circle true floors, and the level of preserva- while working flint (Nadel 2001). tion is such that specific locations of On the same floor, concentrations of indoor activities are still identifiable. fish vertebrae and other fish bone do not overlap with the flint concentra- Sub-Floor Stones tions (Nadel et al. 1994). Furthermore, Context high densities of seeds were also docu- Two kinds of stone settings were mented, again with distribution patterns found below brush hut floors: erect 28 29

28 stones and an enigmatic arrangement under hut 1. Before presenting these, by way of elimination, it will be shown that these stones are very unlikely to have been the result of natural depositional or post-depositional process. First, it it noteworthy that no stones were found within the natural lacustrine layers. In all trenches opened in and around the site (totaling more than 100 m in length, average 1 m depth) and in sections under the archaeological deposits (Figure 3), no stones of any size were observed. Stones were found only in certain archaeological features, or immediately adjacent to them, as described below. Second, all the settings discussed here are below floors, at the interface a functional purpose, like the support of Figure 5: between the natural lacustrine bed- the hut structure. Two basalt flakes rock and the bottom of the archaeo- The small size of the sub-floor erect found erect under logical deposit. This repeated pattern flakes and stones found under huts 1 and floor III of brush of location is not random. 3, and their deep, unusual locations, bring hut 1 As the floors are in situ, and as the to mind two tentative interpretations: underlying lacustrine bedrock does not contain stones, the presence of the stone settings should be attributed 1) The stones supported small to intentional placement by the site’s above-floor wooden or perishable inhabitants. installations, of which nothing else remains. This seems unlikely, Erect stones as the stones are small and do Erect stones were found under the floors not appear to have a particular of two brush huts. In hut 1, near an spatial pattern. arrangement of stones (see below), two small, flat, basalt flakes were preserved erect (Figure 5). The thin flakes are 6 2) The stones were set in a sym- -10 cm long, and such finds are rare in bolic context, like corner stones, the stone assemblage retrieved from this during floor construction or at the hut. very beginning of occupation. Five stones were also found under the They may have been related to floor of hut 3 (Figure 6). Here, one elon- social behavior in which ownership gated oval pebble and four angular basalt and continuity of a specific location stones had been placed erect into the at the camp were represented on or natural clay layers, with only their tops under the floor. reaching the bottom of the floor. Thus, during most of the hut occupation, the It should be remembered that a large stones were not visible. These stones stone was set erect into the lacustrine are 10-20 cm long and thus bigger and fine sediment near the stone circle by the heavier than the two basalt flakes from grave (Nadel 1994; 2002). It was placed hut 1. on a sharp edge created by crude, bifacial Much larger vertically-placed stones flaking, with a north-south orientation. By were also found at the site. For example, it and lying parallel, was a large flint blade. three were on the floor of brush hut 2, Here, again, it appears that the erect stone their top ends extending 15-20 cm above was not used in a functional manner, but the surface. One flat basalt stone, ca. rather set as a symbol in a social context. 35 cm long, was almost erect just outside the northeast wall of hut 3. A similar The stone configuration under hut 1 stone, in a similar position and location, An unusual arrangement of in situ stones was near hut 12. These could have had was exposed under the bottom floor of 28 hut 1. The arrangement is composed of 29

29 was placed on the pelvis of the dead man, while a basalt tool fragment marks the position of the “pelvis” in the stone configuration. Furthermore, by this large fragment was the roundest basalt pebble in the figure. An emphasis on the pelvis could have signified fertility or gender. 4. The legs of the buried man were fold- ed, and thus composed a short part of the skeleton. The stone configuration, too, has short “legs,” with an extra stone on the right, in the position where the bent knees of the deceased are located. As there should be no doubt about the grave and its components, the similarities between the stone setting and the burial should be taken as a possible indication of the meaning of the former, namely a 14 stones, carefully chosen and placed schematic depiction of a human figure, Figure 6: (Figure 7). probably related to death. Erect stones found The total length of the setting is ca. It is well known that anthropomorphic under the floor of 45 cm. Ten of the stones are small, representations are rare in the Levantine brush hut 3. Note the round pebbles, very similar in their Palaeolithic record (Bar-Yosef 1997). The dark top of the stone dimensions (between 44 and 51 mm nearest in time and space is the Natufian on the right, where it in length, Table 1). In addition, there figure found in structure 26 at ‘Eynan was embedded within are two somewhat larger specimens. (Perrot 1966). The human figure was the bottom layer of The central stone is elongated, and was constructed of seven basalt pestles, with the dark floor placed along the main axis of the set. a very high degree of symmetry. Also, The largest piece, however, is an angular one should remember that some of the fragment of a basalt implement. Near it European Upper Palaeolithic figurines is a small, round basalt pebble. The use (more-or-less contemporaneous with of ten very similar pebbles, a fragment of Ohalo II), as well as many Levantine a basalt implement and a flint flake, and Neolithic ones, like the pebble figurines A round, crude, the general configuration, are not ran- from Sha‘ar Hagolan (Garfinkel 1999), dom and could not have resulted from a are hardly recognized as figurines, as basalt hammerstone natural process. The purpose of the exposed arrange- Table 1: Material and maximum was placed on ment is unclear. If it was intended to length of the stones in the stone depict something, it was very schematic configuration found under floor the pelvis of (or some stones or other elements are III, hut 1. missing or displaced). One possible, the dead man, and definitely not exclusive, reconstruc- Material Length (mm) tion (Figure 8) follows certain similari- while a basalt tool ties to the only human skeleton found basalt fragment 25 at the site (Figure 9). Interestingly, a burnt flint flake 31 fragment marks comparison between the skeleton (see elongated limestone 44 Hershkovitz 2002; Nadel 1994; Nadel basalt pebble 45 the position of and Hershkovitz 1991) and the sub-floor limestone pebble 46 stone configuration from hut 1 shows limestone pebble 46 the “pelvis” in the that: elongated basalt fragment 48 1. There is a general long axis in both, basalt pebble 48 stone configuration. with a bilateral symmetry. basalt pebble 49 2. The face of the deceased was directed limestone pebble 49 to the east (rising sun?) with the aid of elongated limestone 51 small pebbles set under the head. The limestone pebble 51 “head” of the stone configuration was elongated limestone 55 directed to the southeast, where the sun basalt tool fragment 90 rises in winter. 3. A round, crude, basalt hammerstone 30 31

30 31 in several Natufian structures (see Valla Figures 8: 1988, 1991, for structure 131 from ‘Eynan Arrangement as a clear case study). In the same site, of stones of there is evidence for construction of new brush hut 1, structures exactly above old ones (Perrot cleaned and set and Ladiray 1988). In PPNA Jericho, in original order. the phenomenon is well documented Note similarity (e.g., Kenyon 1981, plate 238). Edwards to a schematic These early (1989) has argued that such sequences human figure reflect long-term use of the sites, and Epipalaeolithic that they can serve as evidence for sedentism in the early Natufian. groups, like their The case of hut 1 at Ohalo II, as is also probably true for the ‘Ein Gev I Natufian and hut, indicates that the practice of using a specific location at the camp for residen- Neolithic followers, tial episodes lasting more than one season, and probably for several repeated developed a deep events, is not a Natufian “invention.” It was the practice of opportunistic, semi- and sophisticated sedentary, early Epipalaeolithic populations millennia earlier, and reflects camp ideological relationship organization that is not clearly documented (if at all) for earlier Palaeolithic with their camp. sites in the Levant. Such a tradition evolved in groups The organization of that settled long enough, and more than once, at a chosen dwelling site. These space was far from early Epipalaeolithic groups, like their later Natufian and early Neolithic fol- random. lowers, developed a deep and sophisticated ideological relationship with The orientations of their camp. The organization of space was far from random and, for example, ground, and the common lack of exclu- dwellings and their the orientations of dwellings and their sively defined locales (with very few excep- entrances were predetermined. Each tions) for activities such as tool manufac- entrances were basic social unit, or household (Flannery ture or food preparation. This continuity of 1972, 2002; Byrd 2000), had one or the perception of the “home” transcend- predetermined. several huts, similar in dimensions and ed through time, and saw relatively little indoor activities (Nadel 2003). In some change from the early Epipalaeolithic into cases, “families” renewed the floors or the PPNA, even though subsistence, social returned to their huts after short spells complexity and community size did change of abandonment, instead of building dramatically. new huts. The attachment to the hut One of the clearest examples of the and its location is clear, and should be attitude to camp or village space can be viewed as indicating that perception of seen in the numerous Natufian and PPNA camp space by its inhabitants was not burials. In Natufian sites, whether early random. Social organization at the camp or late, the burials are concentrated in the was dictated, among other factors, by sites and, in many cases, in specific loca- ownership and relevant multi-year (and tions in the camps or caves. This issue has maybe multi-generation) memory of the been widely discussed in the literature community as a whole and by each of (Byrd and Monahan 1995), and only a the social sub-units. limited number of examples will be pre- Importantly, some aspects of the dwell- sented here. ing unit and indoor organization, as pre- The repeated use of a chosen locale served at Ohalo II, are found in Natufian within the camps for burial is well docu- and even PPNA dwellings (Nadel 2003, mented at sites such as ‘Eynan (e.g., cem- 2004). These include the size and shape eteries A, B, Perrot 1966; Boyd 1995), of the structure, the floor sunk into the Hayonim Cave (Belfer-Cohen 1988), 32 33

32 Nahal Oren (Stekelis and Yizraeli 1963; Noy 1989; Nadel et al. 1997), Hayonim Terrace (Valla et al. 1991), el-Wad Cave and Terrace (Garrod 1937; Belfer-Cohen 1995; Boyd 2001) and Hilazon Tachtit (Grosman 2003). These examples indicate that at least some graves were not located randomly at the site, but repeatedly placed in chosen locations near previous burials. In many cases, new burials damaged older ones, indicating that the exact locale was chosen several times, and that there was time depth in the use of these locations. These concentrations of graves show an ideology also manifest in the remains of structures, namely, that there was a collec- tive memory regarding where structures the small-scale, although somewhat enig- Figures 9: would be built, reflecting household own- matic, sub-floor stone settings at Ohalo The OHII complete ership and continuity in the overall divi- II should be viewed. When similar cases skeleton during sion of the camp space. are found in Natufian and Early Neolithic excavations, looking In PPNA sites, there is a certain con- contexts, they are commonly regarded west-northwest tinuation of this ideology, as can be seen as reflecting codes of social behavior that in the burials of Jericho, including the 12 concern ownership or other beliefs (Kuijt at the bottom of the staircase in the tower 1996). Furthermore, enigmatic Natufian (Cornwall 1981), and repeated building in engraved items have been interpreted as the same locations. symbolic, perhaps in the context of rising The more symbolic Furthermore, the use of stones and territoriality (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen stone-carved features in Natufian graves is 1999). Therefore, with evidence of con- aspect of the domestic remarkable. For example, bedrock mortars tinuity present for various levels of camp and portable mortars occurred at various organization, the more symbolic aspect sphere found at sites, such as al-Wad terrace, Hayonim of the domestic sphere found at Ohalo II Terrace and Nahal Oren. These examples should not simply be dismissed as enig- Ohalo II should not illustrate that the Natufians’ association matic or random. We should instead view of specific artefacts with burial contexts. the relevant remains as we do for later simply be dismissed These symbols, within their systemic con- sites, and interpret them accordingly. text (Byrd and Monahan 1995), have their as enigmatic or random. origins in earlier cultures, one of which is Ohalo II, where a grave contained a set of Acknowledgements We should instead view symbols that includes orientation of the The project was generously supported by body and face, a stone implement, and an the Irene Levi Sala CARE Archaeological the relevant remains incised gazelle bone. Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation Within this ideological framework, the (Grant No. 831/00), the Jerusalem Center as we do for later sites, above-described remains from Ohalo for Anthropological Studies, the L.S.B. II reflect a camp concept that was well Leakey Foundation, the MAFCAF and interpret them developed millennia later. The tradition of Foundation, the Stekelis Museum marking locations in the camp and placing of Prehistory in Haifa, the National accordingly. material symbols – especially ones relating Geographic Society, the Israel Antiquities to graves and dwelling floors – prevailed for Authority and the Zinman Institute of many generations. It is from this angle that Archaeology (University of Haifa).

32 33

33 References Goring-Morris, A.N. and A. Belfer-Cohen, 2003, Current Anthropology 35(4): 451-458. Structures and Dwellings in the Upper and Nadel D., I. Carmi, and D. Segal, 1995, Bar-Yosef, O., 1978, Man - an outline of the pre- Epi-Palaeolithic (ca 42-10 K BP) Levant: Radiocarbon dating of Ohalo II: archaeo- history of the Kinneret area. Monographiae Profane and Symbolic uses. In: S. Vasil’ev, O. logical and methodological implications. Biologicae 32: 447-464. The Hague, New York. Sofer and J.Kozlowski (eds.), Perceived Journal of Archaeological Science 22(6): 811- 1997, Symbolic expressions in the Landscapes and Built Environments: The 822. later prehistory of the Levant: why are they so Cultural Geography of Late Paleolithic Eurasia Nadel D., T. Noy, L. Kolska-Horwitz, and few? In: M. Conkey, O. Soffer, D. Stratmann (chapter 8), 65-81. BAR International Series I. Zohar 1997, A note on new finds from & N.G. Jablonski (eds.), Beyond Art, Pleistocene 1122, Oxford. the Natufian graveyard at Nahal Oren. Image and Symbol. Memoirs of the California Grosman, L., 2003, Preserving cultural traditions Mitekufat Haeven, Journal of the Israel Academy of Sciences no.23: 161-187. in a period of instability: the late Natufian of Prehistoric Society 27: 63-74. 1998, The Natufian culture in the the Hilly Mediterranean zone. Current Nadel, D. and E. Werker, 1999, The oldest Levant, threshold to the origins of agriculture. Anthropology 44(4): 571-580. ever brush hut plant remains from Ohalo Evolutionary Anthropology 6(5): 159-177. Hershkovitz, I., 2002, The inhabitants of Ohalo II, Jordan Valley, Israel (19 K BP). Antiquity Bar-Yosef, O. and A. Belfer-Cohen, 1989 II. In: D. Nadel (ed.), Ohalo II, a 23,000 Year- 73 (282): 755-764. The origins of sedentism and farming com- Old Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers’ Camp on the Shore Nadel, D., E. Weiss, O. Simchoni, A.Tsatskin, munities in the Levant. Journal of World of the Sea of Galilee: 16-20. Hecht Museum, A. Danin, and M.E. Kislev, 2004, stone age Prehistory 3(4): 447-498. Haifa. hut in Israel yields world’s oldest evidence Bar-Yosef, O. and A. Belfer-Cohen, 1999 Kenyon, K.M., 1981 (ed.), Excavations at Jericho, of bedding. Proceedings of the National Encoding information: unique Natufian Vol.III. The British School of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences 101(17): 6821-6826. objects from Hayonim Cave, Western Galilee, Jerusalem. Noy, T., 1989, Some aspects of Natufian Israel. Antiquity 73: 402-410. Kislev, M.E., D. Nadel, and I. Carmi, 1992, mortuary behaviour at Nahal Oren. In: I. Belfer-Cohen, A., 1988, The Natufian graveyard Epipalaeolithic (19000 B.P.) cereal and fruit Hershkovitz (ed.), People and Culture in in Hayonim Cave. Paléorient 14(2): 297-308. diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel. Review Change: 53-57. BAR Int. Series 508, Oxford. 1991, The Natufian in the Levant. of Palaeobotany and Palynology 73(1-4): 161- Perrot, J., 1966, Le gisement Natoufien de Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 167-186. 166. Mallaha (Eynan), Israel. L’Anthropologie 70 Belitzky, S. and D. Nadel, 2002, Late Pleistocene Kislev, M.E., O. Simchoni and E. Weiss, 2002, (5-6): 437-484. and recent tectonic deformations at the Ohalo Reconstruction of the landscape, human Perrot, J. and D. Ladiray, 1988, Les Hommes II prehistoric site (19K) and the evolution economy and hut use according to seeds and de Mallaha (Eynan) Israel. I. Les of the Jordan River outlet from the Sea of fruit remains from Ohalo II. In: D. Nadel (ed.), Sepultures. Association Paléorient, Memoires Galilee. Geoarchaeology 17(5): 453-464. Ohalo II, a 23,000 Year-Old Fisher-Hunter- et Travaux du Centre de Recherche Francais de Boyd, B., 1995, Houses and hearths, pits and Gatherers’ Camp on the Shore of the Sea of Jerusalem No.7, Paris. burials: Natufian mortuary practices at Mallaha Galilee: 21-23. Hecht Museum, Haifa. Piperno, D.R., E. Weiss, I. Holst, and D. (Eynan), Upper Jordan Valley. In: S. Campbell Kuijt, I., 1996, Negotiating equality through ritual: Nadel 2004, Starch grains on a stone imple- and A. Green (eds.), The Archaeology of Death a consideration of Late Natufian and document Upper Paleolithic wild cereal in the Ancient Near East. Oxbow Monograph Prepottery Neolithic A Period mortuary processing at Ohalo II, Israel. Nature. 51: 17-23. Oxford. practices. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology Stekelis, M. and T. Yizraely, 1963, 2001, The Natufian burials from el-Wad, 15: 313-336. Excavations at Nahal Oren. Israel Mount Carmel. Beyond issues of social differ Nadel, D., 1994, Levantine Upper Palaeolithic - Exploration Journal 13(1):1-12. entiation. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Early Epipalaeolithic burial customs: Ohalo II Tsatskin, A., 2002, Geoarchaeology of a Society 31: 185-200. as a case study. Paléorient 20(1): 113-121. prehistoric campsite on the shore of lake Byrd, B.F., 1994, Public and private, domestic 2001, Indoor / outdoor flint knapping and Kinneret. In: D. Nadel (ed.), Ohalo II, a and corporate: the emergence of the southwest minute debitage remains: the evidence from 23,000 Year-Old Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers’ Asian village. American Antiquity 59(4): 639-666. the Ohalo II submerged camp (19.5 ky, Camp on the Shore of the Sea of Galilee: 56-59. 2000, Households in transition. In: I. Kuijt Jordan Valley). Lithic Technology 26(2): 118 - 137. Hecht Museum, Haifa. (ed.), Life in Neolithic Farming Communities. 2002, (ed.), Ohalo II – a 23,000 Year- Old Tsatskin, A. and D. Nadel, 2003, Formation Social Organization, Identity and Differentiation: Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers’ Camp on the Shore of the processes at the Ohalo II submerged pre 63-98. Plenum Publishers, New York. Sea of Galilee (English / Hebrew). Hecht historic campsite, Israel, deduced from soil Byrd, B. F., and C.M. Monahan, 1995, Death, Museum, Haifa. micromorphology and magnetic susceptibil-- mortuary ritual and Natufian social structure. 2003, A long continuity: the Ohalo II brush ity studies. Geoarchaeology 18(4): 409-432. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14(3): huts (19.5 ky) and the dwelling structures in Weiss, E., M.E. Kislev, O. Simchoni, and D. 251-287. the Natufian and PPNA sites in the Jordan Nadel 2005, Small-grained wild grasses as Cornwall, I.W., 1981, The Pre-Pottery Neolithic Valley. Archaeology, Anthropology and Ethnology in staple food at the 23,000 year old site of burials. In: K.M. Kenyon (ed.), Excavations at Euroasia 13(1): 34-48. Ohalo II, Israel. Economic Botany 588:125- Jericho, III, Appendix A: 395-406. The British 2004, The Ohalo II and the Natufian 134. School of Archaeology, Jerusalem. dwelling structures (Jordan Valley, Israel). Valla, F.R., 1988, Aspects du sol de l’abri 131 Edwards, P.C., 1989, Problems of recognizing ear- In: Ch. Delage (ed.), The End of the Hunter- de Mallaha (Eynan). Paléorient 14(2): 283- liest sedentism: the Natufian example. Journal Gatherer Societies. BAR Int. Series, British 296. of Mediterranean Archaeology 2(1): 5-48. Archaeological Reports, Oxford, pp137-151. 1991, Les Natoufiens de Mallaha et Flannery, K.V., 1972, The origins of the village as (in press), Stones in their symbolic context: l’espace. In: O. Bar-Yosef and F.R.Valla a settlement type in Mesoamerica and the Epipalaeolithic – Pre-Pottery Neolithic (eds.), The Natufian Culture in the Near East: a comparative study. In: P.J. Ucko, continuity in the Jordan Valley. In: N. Levant: 111-122. International Monographs in R. Tringham and G.W. Dimbleby (eds.), Man, Balkan-Atli and D. Binder (eds.), Neolithic Prehistory, Archaeological Series 1, Ann Arbor. Settlement and Urbanism: 23-53. Duckworth, Chipped Stone Industries of the Fertile Crescent. London. Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, 2002, The origins of the village revisited: from Subsistence and Environment 4. ex-oriente, nuclear to extended households. American Berlin. Antiquity 67(3): 417-433. Nadel, D. and I. Hershkovitz, 1991, New Garrod, D.A.E. and D.M.A. Bate, 1937, The subsistence data and human remains Stone Age of Mount Carmel. Clarendon Press, from the earliest Levantine Epipalaeolithic. Oxford. Current Anthropology 32(5): 631-635. Garfinkel, Y., 1999, The Yarmukians. Neolithic Nadel, D., A. Danin, E. Werker, T. Schick, Art from Sha’ar Hagolan. Bible Land Museum, M.E. Kislev, and K. Stewart, 1994, 19,000 Jerusalem. years-old twisted fibers from Ohalo II.

34 PB

34 Final Natufian architecture at ‘Eynan (‘Ain Mallaha) Approaching the diversity behind uniformity

Nicolas Samuelian, Université de Paris Hamudi Khalaily, Israel Antiquities Authority François. R. Valla, Université de Paris

The issue of space is critical for under- the notion of "base-camp" by Bar-Yosef standing the meaning of the Natufian. (1970). This is particularly true if one sees Spatial organization has been a major Natufian sedentism as a forerunner, and focus of recent research at the site of possibly a precondition, for the economic ‘Eynan (Bocquentin 2003, Bouchud 1987: The issue of space behavior that drove Near Eastern societ- 98ff., Delage 2001, Perrot et al. 1988, ies toward food production. Indeed, the Samuelian in Valla et al. 1998, Samuelian is a major challenge passage from a mobile way of life to one 2003, in prep., Stordeur 1988: 97ff., Valla that includes long stays in the same locali- 1981, 1988, 1991, in press). These analy- for understanding ty must have involved significant changes ses have provided insight into the overall in the way space was conceptualized. layout of the site, showing that buildings the meaning of the Natufian sedentism remains poorly were organized in lines along the natural understood. We are still unable to under- slope. Natufian in the stand what life in a Natufian village was The intent of this paper is not to deal like. How did Natufian villagers experi- with every aspect of the problems associ- historical process of ence space (territories, villages, houses) in ated with space, either as experienced their everyday life? Moreover, if it is true in everyday life or as mentally built by cultural change that human beings always live in a highly Natufian inhabitants. Rather, the paper symbolically constructed space, how are will focus on presentation of the Final if it is true that we to access this mental construct in Natufian buildings recently exposed and the case of the Natufian? This is all the reflect on the way they were used. In Natufian sedentism more difficult because there is no neces- other words, it will pay attention only to a sary correspondence between space as short moment, some time toward the end was a forerunner, trivial experience and space as a symbolic of the Natufian trajectory, without any construct. If the data at hand are equivo- attempt at broadening the time scope. and possibly cal about trivial experience, how can we Furthermore, it will concentrate on inves- expect it to be conclusive in an even more tigating individual buildings in order to a pre-condition, for the elusive fields, like concepts and ideas? discover possible clues to their function. Concern with spatial organization at economic behavior that Natufian sites was already evident in At the present stage of research, focus the early excavations at al-Wad (Garrod on definite examples is needed in order drove Near Eastern and Bate 1937, Goring-Morris 1996, to base hypotheses on data. Finds from Weinstein-Evron 1998). Later discover- the old excavations attributed to the Final human societies toward ies at ‘Eynan provided for the first time Natufian will be avoided because, with data for the plan and inner organisation few exceptions, their stratigraphic con- control of their main of houses (Perrot 1960, 1966). Only in text is controversial. There is no benefit 1972, however, did Flannery inaugurate in building interpretations on such shaky foodstuffs reflection on the data in terms of village basis. organization and use of space, seen as a historical trajectory from the Natufian to The Final Natufian structures: the PPNB. Flannery tried to link archae- major and minor buildings ological observations in the field with Excavations since 1996 of the Final a tentative reconstruction of changing Natufian layer (Ib) at ‘Eynan have social organization. Meanwhile, “territo- revealed a series of built structures that ries” became a subject of interest through can be divided into two main groups. the introduction of site "catchment analy- The first comprises major buildings, sis" by Vinta-Finzi and Higgs (1970) and similar to those called that Perrot called PB 35

35 “abris” (shelters) in the Early and Late architectural characteristics with the ear- Figure 1: Natufian layers. A second group com- lier shelters at the site. They are half- General map of prises minor structures that are usually buried in pits dug into the earth. The Final Natufian — but not always — found in associa- pits are lined on part of their circumfer- structures at ‘Eynan tion with shelters. These are post holes, ence with a curvilinear stone wall, which (excavations 2000-1) The major buildings hearths and a variety of stone arrang- does not rise higher than the ground ments for which no functional interpre- surface. Floors are not coated with plas- share their tation can be suggested at the moment. ter or clay. They sometimes have a par- We refer to most of these by the pur- tial pavement, but usually are indicated main architectural posely vague term, “basins”, because only by the minor structures associ- they are concave areas, some oval or ated with them, and by relatively large characteristics with the circular in plan, some semi-circular. The objects that may lie on their surfaces. combination in each specific case of these Besides these structural characteristics, earlier shelters major and minor structures appears to be each major building exhibits a succes- the key to a preliminary understanding of sion of floors, one on top of another, in a at the site. the major buildings. very compact stratigraphy with no sterile Five major buildings were exposed in layers between them. Compared to the They are half buried, the excavated area (fig. 1). They belong architecture exposed in older layers, the to two main stratigraphic levels: one of shelters excavated until now in the Final settled in pits dug from them (215) is capped with about 20 cm Natufian are somewhat smaller (none of of sediment ( level Ib2) while the oth- them covers 10 m2) and they are set in the natural ground ers (218, 200-208, 203, 202) are seen, at more superficially dug pits (walls are no least in part, at the surface of the Final higher than 50 cm). Natufian layer (level Ib1). The excavation of none of these buildings was com- Floor organization plete at the time of writing but enough Even superficial observations dem- is known of four of them (215, 200-208, onstrate that the minor structures are 203, 202) for some observations to be not distributed the same way on every made. floor in the major buildings. It appears These major buildings share their main that some floors (Type A) are organized 36 37

36 according to a rough pattern while others (Type B) do not exhibit the same kind of regularity. A closer inspection reveals that the surface of those floors without regular organization are either fully occupied with minor structures, or contain structures that do not seem compatible with the facilities expected in houses. Finally, the outline of the patterned floors can be reconstructed as oval in general shape, while that of the other floors is much less defined in the part not enclosed by the built wall. Based on these observations, two classes of floors in the major structures can be identified, one of which is relatively homogeneous, while the second has a mixed character since it is defined more through negative than positive features. Two of the excavated buildings have floors of Type A. In one of them (200- 208) two successive patterned floors were exposed (fig. 2) and a third floor, still in the process of excavation, seems to share similar characteristics. The other building (203) has two superimposed patterned floors capping at least one older surface with a different organization (fig. 3). Figure 1: The main features associated with the building and adjacent to it. Figure 2: General map of floors of Type A are as follows. The Hearths and post holes are the most Final Natufian Schematic maps of buildings are dug into a sloping surface easily understandable minor structures building 208 (A) and 200 structures at ‘Eynan and are only walled upslope. The wall associated with these floors but other (excavations 2000-1) upper floor (B). runs around at most half of the circum- features were also observed. Hearths of Example of superimposed ference of the floor. In the unwalled two kinds were found: cylindrical pits floors that may indicate a area, the edge of the floor abuts the lined with stones, and shallow basins house. Minor structures, natural surface with only a few centi- with some stones along the edge. On mainly hearths and post meters distingishing the dug-out floor one floor, in structure 200, hearths of holes, are set on the main surface from the slightly higher, natural these two types occur side-by-side. Post axis of the buildings. surface. As a result, the general aper- holes are always lined with stones. They (Crosses shown are at 1m ture of the floor is downslope, looking apparently suported vertical posts. Other intervals) northward, in the direction of the spring features include flat limestone slabs and of ‘Ain Mallaha. Minor structures associ- standing stones, which may have served ated with these floors are mainly orga- a variety of purposes. nized on two axes. One of these axes Floors are only relatively flat: no sys- is the chord joining approximately the tematic attempt was made to erase extremities of the wall. The second axis slightly protruding earlier structures, and is a line roughtly perpendicular to that there was apparently no effort to make chord and bisecting it. As a result, most floors horizontal. Post holes suggest that of the minor structures tend to be set on the stone wall served as a foundation two lines that are broadly the main axes for a superstructure of lighter mate- of the building. It should be emphisized rial, possibly reeds available from the that the geometrization of the construc- nearby Lake Hula shore. It also seems tion is only approximate. No perfect likely that these structures were roofed. symmetry was reached but the tendency It is more difficult to assess the extent to follow a geometric pattern is clear. of these superstructures. Was only the Occasionally, minor structures can be set inner part of the buildings (between on the prolongation of these axes, out of the stone wall and the minor structures 36 37

37 tially lined with curvilinear stone walls. Furthermore, they exhibit similar succes- sions of occupation levels. Nevertheless, their size range is probably greater and the openings in the walls show a variety of orientations: westward in 202, east- ward in 215. But the main differences lie in the kind and organization of the minor structures associated with these floors. Hearths and “basins” are the main minor structures found in association with these floors. In some cases, these hearths, and the refuse they produced, occupy the entire surface enclosed in the major structure, leaving no space for any activity other than those connected with the hearth. This is the situation of hearth 235 (an oven?) in building 202 (fig. 4B) and hearth 228 in structure 215. The earliest known floor in building 203 is crowded with three hearths, each of them with different characteristics (225, 232 and 234), and a depression filled with ashes and some stones (237, another hearth? figure 3B). Stone-lined “basins” are found either in the major structures (206 in 202’s last use, where it covers most of the available space — see figure 4A), or out of the major structures and adjacent to them (220 in relation to 215; 230 adjacent to 203’s earliest known floor — see figure 3B). The last use in Figure 3: on its chord) walled and roofed? Or 215 is related to a set of two standing Schematic maps of floors did the superstructures enclose the oval blocks maintained with slabs set into the in structure 203 buildings entirely? The relatively clear limits of the floors may be considered an ground. Until now, no post holes have been A — upper floor in the same indication of some kind of obstacle along recognized in Type B floors. This cannot building, with hearth and most of the circumference of the build- be understood as a general rule, given post holes ings. As analysis is still in progress, it is pre- the limited number of examples at hand. It is nevertheless a distinctive feature, B — the oldest floor exposed mature to discuss the spatial distribution and may have important implications in at the time of writing shows of the abundant small debris and objects the analysis of the particular cases under minor structures with no found on these floors. Preliminary results examination. clear patterning indicate that the two floors under study may bear the same range of objects Altogether, the variety in minor structures and in their organization on Type B Note ‘basin’ 230 adjacent to — mainly flints and fauna — in similar floors prevents any common interpreta- the building proportions. Basalt tools and unworked fragments also occur. In one case, it tion for the uses of these floors and con- seems that the limestone slabs on the sequently for the functions of the major floor attracted concentrations of flint buildings at the time they were used. waste and bones, which may suggest Besides the characteristics common to knapping and processing areas. It is also each of the major buildings, one of the important to stress that the distribution few shared features associated with these of the objects varies with their weight floors is a lack of evidence for superstruc- and with their nature (cores versus dif- tures. The feeling that no superstructure ferent kinds of tools, bones, etc.). was attached to the major buildings when The major buildings associated with associated with these floors is reinforced floors of Type B do not differ from by the “basins” adjacent to some of the the buildings associated with the floors walls and by the diffuse limits of the floors just described in that they are pits par- wherever it was possible to follow them 38 39

38 out of the walled areas. On the other hand, phytolith analysis revealed a concentration of reeds and canes outside wall 215 that could be indicative of a mat, either standing as a wall, or laid on a surface (Rosen-Miller in Valla et al. 2004). Further difficulties in the interpretation stem from the possible relation between the successive phases of occupation in each building. Meaning may be very different if the successive uses were conceived at once for a series of events over a short time or if they were taking place independently over a prolonged period. Again, both cases may well have occurred. Despite the diversity in the minor structures, it is of interest that during many, but not all, stages of occupation, floors of Type B are associated with hearths. As mentioned above, these hearths are very different from one another. Sometimes only one hearth is found (235 in 202, 228 in 215), which appears as the center of activities in the building. In one case (on 203 earliest known floor), several hearths are clustered together and seem to correspond with a variety of activities, probably at least in part contemporaneous and maybe complementary in function. One of these (225), associated with lumps of burnt clay (March in Valla et al. 2001), may have served artisanal purposes. It is also worth noting that the large "basin" (230) linked to the same stage in the seems to prevent such a use. Moreover, Figure 4: building occupation also exhibits signs of the meagre indications at hand do not Schematic maps of the manipulation of burnt material: small support their interpretation as houses in building 202 burnt stones and ashes. The remaining any of the examples with sufficient doc- “basins” do not show any obvious clues to umentation for a preliminary conclusion A — Late stage, with the purposes of their builders. to be attempted. The first known floor “basin” 206 on top of Detailed analysis of the objects associ- in building 203, which is the most equiv- which is grave H157 ated with these floors is too preliminary ocal, with its three or four hearths, shows for any observations at this stage. some indication of artisanal activities. B — Early stage with Altogether, it is apparent that hearths hearth 235, in which Discussion are an important feature on most of the refuse (mainly stones and At this moment, with the research admit- floors in this class, which suggests a vari- ashes) occupy all the space tedly far from complete, how can we ety of activities related to fire, including in the building provisionally interpret the data at hand? perhaps a developed pyrotechnology far It seems that the differences between beyond cooking of foodstuffs. When no the nature and organization of the minor hearth appears, the function remains structures in the major buildings, as unknown. This is the case with the last described above, are significant enough use of structure 202, when a stone-built to warrant differences in the way these “basin” set in an artificial pile of blocks buildings were used. Type A floors are was arranged. It is also the case for the patterned in a way that is not inconsis- last activities in structure 215, when tent with use as houses. On the other standing blocks were erected in the hand, Type B floors do not seem appro- building. priate for this function. The fact that As already mentioned, interpretation these floors have little space in the cannot be limited to observation of each buildings around the minor structures floor in the different buildings without 38 39

39 at least considering the possiblity of indication of the diversity of the needs short sequences of successive events of the Final Natufian inhabitants at the making sense in relation to one anoth- site. er. Unfortunately, the time duration is Turning back to Flannery’s (1972) not easy to estimate. In building 203, paper, it is may be of interest to compare according to present data and under- the Final Natufian “shelters” to obser- standing, a building without housing vations made in some modern African It seems that the facilities turned into a house with two villages. In both cases, constructions distinct phases of floors, separated by that may look similar at first glance differences between a grave, and using the same post holes. have a diversity of functions. Parts of Remnants of the artisanal activities rest- the buildings in the African villages are the nature and ing on the early surface were only slightly kitchen and storage facilities. Natufian disturbed by the users of the succeeding examples suggest a somewhat different organization of the house. Occupation of the house resulted set of functions. Storage is not clearly in nearly total burial of the underlying evident. Kitchens appear possible, but minor structures in the occupation debris. In the final stage of although hearths in houses may have occupation, after the post holes were been primarily devoted to cooking, more major buildings are dug, a corpse was deposited on the floor technical purposes cannot be ruled in a box of some kind (Bocquentin in out. As for houses, the finding of two significant enough to Valla et al. 2001 and Valla et al. 2002). hearths in one of them seems to argue Later, the bones were rearranged when against the notion that the smaller ones warrant differences the house was again inhabited. This (less than 10 m2) were inhabited by only sequence seems to warrant some dura- one individual. Admittedly, there is still in the way these tion between the successive occupations room for debate on this point (see Byrd in the building. The situation in build- 2000). Finally, no indication of a circu- buildings were in use. ings 215 and 202 is more equivocal. In lar compound-like organization can be building 215, there are at the moment no traced. Floors in the data to help us decide whether the last It is often argued that the first “villag- two stages constitute one brief sequence es” resulted from small agglomerations first class are or independant events. In building 202, of partially buried, rounded buildings. it is not clear if the building was con- This statement, probably correct, broad- patterned in a way ceived for a series of actions ending with ly speaking, needs some qualification. the deposition of a corpse, or if the grave Long ago, it was already suggested that not inconsistent with closing the sequence there is just an some Early Natufian houses may have opportunistic use of a preexisting hollow been semi-circular in plan rather than a use as houses. between "basin" 206 and wall 202, which fully circular (Valla 1988). Later on, hous- is perhaps more probable. es in PPNA Netiv Hagdud and Hatula On the other hand, Provisionally, the following conclusions have been shown to follow an elongated may be suggested. First, the exposed oval model (Bar-Yosef and Gopher 1997, floors in the major buildings were not all designed for Lechevallier and Ronen 1994). Final a similar purpose. On the contrary, they Natufian “shelters” at ‘Eynan are curvi- second class show evidence for a variety of functions. linear in plan but demonstrate a relative- Second, these buildings all exhibit a suc- ly wide range of variability. A tendency do not seem cession of activities of variable duration, toward geometrization can be observed including in some cases periods of aban- in the planning of houses. The general appropriate for t donment. Third, the same building may plan is a relatively well-designed, elon- have been converted from one function gated oval. The setting of the minor his function to another. Fourth, it is not impossible structures is organized according to some that some of these buildings, but not all sense of symmetry as well, even if the of them, were houses. It is worth noting result is far from perfect regularity. This that a building could be turned from geometric approach to houses, combin- another function into a house. Fifth, ing curvilinear and straight lines, should among the minor structures, a variety of be emphisized, since it became part of a hearths testify to a number of manipula- tradition, as possibly evidenced by later tions involving fire, including some arti- buildings in Mureybet and Jerf al-Ahmar sanal transformation of clay. Sixth, among (Cauvin 1977, Aurenche 1980, Stordeur the minor structures are also a variety of et al. 2000). Search for regularity is less “basin-like” buildings, the functions of evident in the “shelters” not intended which elude us, but which are further to be houses. The wall from "shelter" 40 41

40 202 is somewhat ogival, that from shelter munal” in the political connotation of 215 shows a marked asymmetry. To what the term. It is not clear either how the This geometric extent this has to do with care in the division of space by the observed build- building procedure is hard to determine. ings reflects subdivisions in the human approach to houses, Building 202 may have been hastily group. Perhaps no topic in Natufian made (only one course of stones was set studies is more elusive than social orga- combining curvilinear at the mouth of the pit) but 215 looks nization. Larger exposures may help relatively well built. document the question, but they should and straight lines, Study of the Final Natufian architec- not be attempted at the cost of the study ture at ‘Eynan is still at a preliminary of floors and minor structures, since should be emphasized, stage. This report can only be an explor- these appear to be clues to the interpre- atory note. For the sake of simplicity, tation of the diversity of the buildings. since it became we have not referred to graves except when their presence is directly relevant part of a tradition, to the questions with which we are Acknowledgments: dealing. But their relation to the village, The authors thank the organizers of the as possibly evidenced by and especially to houses, adds another Conference, “Domesticating Space”, dimension to the meaning of the build- for inviting us. The excavations at later buildings ings that we should not ignore if we ‘Eynan were funded by the Ministère are to gain a broader understanding of des Affaires Etrangères (Paris), with in Mureybet Natufian architecture. help from the Irene Levi-Sala CARE It is hoped that further study will allow Archaeological Foundation, the Wenner- and Jerf al-Ahmar us to elaborate on the social meaning of Gren Foundation for Anthropological the variety in buildings found at ‘Eynan. Research, and the National Geographic Among the excavated buildings, none Foundation. Marjolaine Barazani helped can be considered “public” or “com- in preparing the illustrations.

References Garrod, D.A.E., and Bate, D.M.A., 1937, The in The Natufian Culture in the Levant, edit- Stone Age of Mount Carmel. Oxford ed by O.Bar-Yosef and F.R.Valla, pp.111-122. Aurenche, O., 1980, Un exemple de l’architecture University Press. Oxford. International Monographs in Prehistory. domestique au VIIIe millénaire : la maison Goring-Morris, A.N., 1996, The Early Natufian Ann Arbor. XLVII de Mureybet. In Le Moyen Euphrate, Occupation at El-Wad, Mt.Carmel reconsid- In press, Natufian Behaviour in the Hula zone de contact et d’échange, edited by ered, in Nature and Culture, edited by M.Otte, Basin, the question of territoriality, in J.Margueron, pp. 35-54. E.J.Brill.Leiden. Actes du Colloque International de Liège. Human Paleoecology in the Levantine Bar-Yosef, O., 1970, The Epi-Paleolithic Cultures ERAUL n°68: 417-427. Corridor, edited by N. Goren-Inbar and J.D. of Palestine. Hebrew University. Jerusalem. Lechevallier, M., and Ronen, A., 1994, Le gise- Speth. Oxbow. Oxford. Bar-Yosef,O., and Gopher, A., 1997, An Early ment de Hatoula en Judée occidentale, Israël. Valla, F.R., Khalaily, H., Samuelian, N., Neolithic Village in the Jordan Valley, Part 1: Mémoires et Travaux du Centre de Recherche Bocquentin, F., 2002, De la prédation à la pro- The Archaeology of Netiv Hagdud. American Français de Jérusalem 8. Association duction: l’apport des fouilles de Mallaha (1996- School of Prehistoric Research Bulltin 43. Paléorient. Paris. 2001). Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Cambridge. Massachussets. Perrot, J., 1960, Excavation at Eynan (Ein Français de Jérusalem 10 :17-38. Bocquentin, F. 2003, Pratiques funéraires, Mallaha), 1959 season: Preliminary Report. Valla, F.R., Khalaily, H., Samuelian, N., paramètres biologiques et identités culturelles Israel Exploration Journal 10: 14-22. Bocquentin, F., Delage, C., Valentin, B., au Natoufien : une analyse archéo-anthro- 1966, Le gisement natoufien de Mallaha Plisson, H., Rabinovich, R., Belfer-Cohen, A., pologique. Université de Bordeaux 1. (Eynan), Israël. L’Anthropologie 1998, Le Natoufien final et les nouvelles Bordeaux. 70 (5-7): 437-484. fouilles à Mallaha (Eynan), Israël, 1996-1997. Bouchud, J. 1987, La faune du gisement Perrot, J., Ladiray, D., Soliveres-Massei, O., 1988. Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society 28: 105- natoufien de Mallaha (Eynan), Israël. Les hommes de Mallaha. Mémoires et Travaux 176. Mémoires et Travaux du Centre de Recherche du Centre de Recherche Français de Valla, F.R., Khalaily, H., Samuelian, N., March, R., Français de Jérusalem 4. Association Jérusalem 7. Association Paléorient. Paris. Bocquentin, F., Valentin,B., Marder, O., Paléorient. Paris. Samuelian, N. 2003, "Structures évidentes" et Rabinovich, R., Le Dosseur, G., Dubreuil, L., Byrd, B.F., 2000, Households in transition: "structures latentes", le cas du Natoufien final Belfer-Cohen, A., 2001, Le Natoufien final de Neolithic social organization within de Mallaha. Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Mallha (Eynan), deuxième rapport prélimi- Southwest Asia. In Life in Neolithic Farming Français de Jérusalem 12: 47-62. naire : les fouilles de 1998 et 1999. Journal of Communities, Social organization, identity and in prep., Les chasseurs et cueilleurs sédentaires de the Israel Prehistoric Society 31: 43-184. differenciation, edited by I. Kuijt, pp. 63-98. Mallaha (Israël) : la structuration spatiale et fonc- Valla, F.R., Khalaily, H., Valladas, H., Tisnerat- Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press. New York. tionnelle de leur habitat. Université de Paris 1. Laborde N., Samuelian, N., Bocquentin, F., Cauvin, J., 1977, Les fouilles de Mureybet Stordeur, D., 1988, Outils et armes en os de Rabinovich, R., Bridault, A., Simmons,T., Le (1971- 1974) et leur signification pour les orig- Mallaha. Mémoires et Travaux du Centre de Dosseur, G., Rosen-Miller, A., Dubreuil, L., ines de la sédentarisation au Proche-Orient. Recherche Français de Jérusalem 6. Bar-Yosef-Mayer, D., Belfer-Cohen, A., 2004, Annuals of the American School of Oriental Association Paléorient. Paris. Les fouilles de Mallaha en 2000 et 2001 : Research 44: 19-48. Stordeur, D., Brenet, M., Der Aprahamian, G., troisième rapport préliminaire. Mitekufat Delage, C., 2001, Les ressources lithiques dans le and Roux, J.C., 2000, Les bâtiments commu- Haeven: Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, nord d’Israël: la question des territoires d’ap nautaires de Jerf el-Ahmar et Mureybet hori- 33:75-205. provisionnement natoufiens confrontée à l’hy zon PPNA (Syrie). Paléorient 26.1: 29-44. Vita-Finzi, C., and Higgs, E., 1970, Prehistoric pothèse de la sédentarité. Université de Paris Valla, F.R., 1981, Les établissements natoufiens economy in the Mount Carmel area of 1. Paris. dans le nord d’Israël, in Préhistoire du Levant, Palestine: Site catchment analysis. Flannery, K.V., 1972, The origin of the village edited by J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville, pp. 409- Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 36: 1-37. as a settlement type in Mesoamerica and the 419. C.N.R.S.. Paris. Weinstein-Evron, M., 1998, Early Natufian El- Near East, in Man, Settlement, and Urbanism, 1988, Aspects du sol de l’abri 131 de Mallaha Wad revisited. ERAUL n° 77. Liège. edited by P. Ucko, R. Tringham and G. (Eynan), Israël. Paléorient 14.2: 283-296. Dimbleby, pp. 23-53. Duckworth. London. 1991, Les Natoufiens de Mallaha et l’espace, 40 41

41 42 PB

42 The hunter-gatherer “villages” of the PPNA/EPPNB

Stefan Karol Kozlowski Warsaw University a. b. Introduction The understanding of the earliest Near Eastern aceramic Neolithic (PPNA and EPPNB, 10,200-8,000 cal. BC) has ben- efited greatly from the past twenty years of research. Much new data, not the least on sites, planning, size and architecture, has come under scholarly consideration. The investigations concern settlements not only in the Levant (Jerf el-Ahmar, Netiv Hagdud, Gilgal), but also in territories lying farther to the north (Hallan c. d. Çemi, lower layers at Çayönü, Nevali Çori and east (Nemrik, Qermez Dere, M’lefaat). Let us then analyze this new data region by region, concentrating with little exception on settlements that feature circular buildings (rectangular or sub-rectangular plans are seldom encountered in this period). It should also be understood that the settlements e. f. in question were almost exclusively inhabited by hunting-gathering peoples that were de facto non-Neolithic in their economies (the sole exception is the EPPNB Nemrik 4, but it is later in time).

The Southern Levant (Figs. 1, 2) The settlements in this region are characterized by an exceptional thick- g. h. ness of cultural deposits, up to many meters (2.5m at Gilgal, >3 m at Netiv Hagdud, and 4-8 m at Jericho PPNA), corresponding to numerous occupational levels accumulated over a rather short (?) period of time. This suggests considerable settlement instability of the "aller-retours" or "come-and-go" type 0 1 2 3m (e.g., series of floors in Gilgal I dwellings), indicating that life here was perhaps not quite sedentary. Oval houses Figure 1. The base-wall type of circular dwellings of the European with "pinched" extremities and low base Upper Paleolithic (a. Mezin in the Ukraine, b. Dolni Vestonice walls are featured on all of these sites. in the Czech Republic, c. Poggenwisch in Germany) and Near Base walls are never structural or sup- Eastern hunter-gatherer 'Neolithic' (d. Gilgal I, e. Mureybet, f. porting walls; they consist of from one Çayönü, g. Hallan Çemi, h. Nemrik) to three courses of stones, large bones, bricks, or mud, rising no more than The Southern Levant has yielded a 0.5 m above the ground, and perhaps, number of PPNA "villages", and the best but not necessarily, suporting a lighter explored sites are Nahal Oren, Netiv screen wall made of a different building Hagdud, Jericho, Gilgal I, ‘Ain Darat material, but not of stone or mud. and Hatula. Nahal Oren was excavated PB 43

43 in its entirety, revealing ca. 14 large cir- 1978; van Loon 1968) suggest a heavy Available data cular structures, dwellings rising in ter- concentration of houses. As for Qaramel races on sloping terrain. The buildings, in North Syria, R.F. Mazurowski is of the from Hallan Çemi which spread over 0.04 ha, are crowded opinion (personal communication) that together, although it is not quite clear the maximal extent of the settlement and Çayönü suggests whether they were all contemporary. At was no more than 4 ha, according to Netiv Hagdud, the top of the tell is flat the surface material, and that the archi- the existence of and is built over quite densely. Here, the tecture was very congested, much as in area covered by the structures amounts the south. The circular-dwellings phase two different to perhaps 1.3 ha, the buildings are set ends in the region much earlier than in barely 7-9 m apart, and the cultural the south. The parameters of Djaade are Early Holocene deposits are very thick. It is difficult to comparable (E. Coquequinot, personal be sure how many of the buildings were communication). settlement models. actually contemporary. The 3 ha site at Gilgal I consists of buildings that rise The High Valleys of the At Hallan Çemi, on the slope, perhaps in terraces, fol- Tigris and Euphrates (Figs. 1, 2) lowing a very complicated and intricate Available data (Hallan Çemi, Çayönü- the area occupied in plan, the distances between particu- base: r3 and r4) suggests the existence of lar buildings reaching 1-4m. At Jericho, two different Early Holocene settlement the youngest phase the settlement must have covered ca. models. At Hallan Çemi, the area con- 2 ha, to judge by the run of the defen- ceivably occupied in the youngest phase could not have sive walls. However, only a small area could not have exceeded 0.15 ha and the with very dense architecture has been number of dwellings stood at three or exceeded 0.15 ha explored archaeologically. The thickness four (only two were actually explored). of PPNA deposits was 4-8 m and the The centre of the settlement remained and the number of lower "Proto-Neolithic" layers yielded open and revealed two concentrations mostly shelters rather than houses. The of cracked rocks and bones. In turn, dwellings stood at data from ‘Ain Darat appears to sug- the two oldest (base) phases at Çayönü gest a concentration of at least a few exemplify a bigger agglomeration that three or four. houses. Hatula in both phases had small spread from 0.1 to perhaps 0.25 ha, the houses (2-3 m in diameter) located far latter assuming the buildings from the The two oldest apart. The round buildings continued in two trenches — E and W — are con- the southernmost (Beidha village) and temporary. The better explored eastern phases at Çayönü desert regions (camps) into the PPNB trench revealed a concentration of 10 period. or 11 dwellings arranged around almost exemplify a bigger circular open spaces, the structures set The Middle Euphrates not far apart (1.5-10 m). In the r3 phase, agglomeration of and Northern Syria (Fig. 1) a fairly large open area adjoined the Jerf al-Ahmar is one of the best known buildings on the west, whether it actu- perhaps 0.25 ha. sites in this region (the second is ally extended all the way to the western Djaade, but it has mostly rectangular trench is not known. After a chrono- houses, except for the lowermost layer). logical hiatus, rectangular architecture Mureybet and Qaramel have not been appeared at Çayönü and at Nevali Çori. investigated as thoroughly. The thickness of occupational layers on these The Iraqi Jezirah (Figs. 1, 3) sites is comparable to those known from Nemrik, Qermez Dere and M’lefaat are the south (Jerf 3.5 m, Mureybet 6.5 m, multiphase settlements characterized by Qaramel 2.0 m). At Jerf al-Ahmar, which an insubstantial depth of the occupa- is a multi-layer site, the settlement was tional layers. All three sites date to the obviously split into two by a small wadi PPNA (except for Upper Nemrik). but, even including in the wadi, it did Nemrik with its five phases of occupa- not exceed 0.03 ha in area. The houses, tion has yielded the most evidence. Its which appear to have been numerous total area can be reconstructed between (4-6 in level I East, more than 7 in II 0.5 and 0.7 ha, depending on the phase, West) were crowded together and rising the settlement being smallest in the on terraces. In the middle, there was a earliest period and largest at the end. “communal” special structure, obviously The number of houses existing contem- separate from the dwelling space. With poraneously oscillates between 3 and 4 regard to Mureybet, the data (Cauvin to 6. The distances between the houses 44 45

44 b. c.

d. e.

Large "dwelling" structures Water

Limits of settlement, Dump/animal bones

Hard floor/pavement, C, GR Cemetery, grave

Terrace/slope,

ranged from 10 to 40 m. With the excep- covered ca. 0.3 ha. Its dirt surface was tion of phase 1, the dwellings occupied furnished with concentrations of pebbles Figure 2: a repeatedly renovated surface of tamped and big stone implements, and it was cut Arrangment of earth for phase 2 and of cobbles for phase with pits that followed an oval plan. Four dwellings from: 4. The dwellings actually occupied only a structures were excavated from this phase, European Palaeolithic small part of the village area (15-20%), the including three houses. The total number a. Kostienki I remaining space around them being used of houses was as much as twice the num- b. Mezin; for other purposes (burial ground, garbage ber excavated. The houses appear to have European Mesolithic disposal, economic activities using big been arranged around a dirt surface, ca 25m c. Bergumermeer; stone implements – querns and mortars, in length, with a large grave and a sarcopho- Near Eastern PPNA etc.). gus at its centre. d. Nahal Oren In the least known and hitherto unpub- The EPPN Nemrik 4b has 0.6 ha of e. Çayönü lished phase 2, the settlement at Nemrik cobbled space and three or more highly 44 45

45 dispersed dwellings and a cemetery. zoning of each settlement. The plan of At Qermez Dere, where the site has suf- Two models can be defined for the fered heavily from recent quarrying, the organization of PPNA/EPPNB settle- the settlement area investigated archaeologically covers ments: 0.3 ha. Even if twice that area is added to 1. It seems that the PPNA/EPPNB “vil- was another it on the north, the total size of the settle- lages” of the eastern Jezirah, despite ment would still fall within the standards being differentiated, followed a more or differentiating factor, for the period. At least three houses of the less uniform regional pattern that was late phases were grouped in a small area characterized by location on flattened with houses built in in the southern part of the site, apparently remains of terraces and the presence separated from a stone structure of non- of either clay or stone pavements or greater or lesser domestic (?) nature by a cobble floor, free floors that covered large “empty” spaces of big structures. (squares), on which, but also around or degrees of congestion, The last example to be analyzed here next to which, the life of the “village” is the two-phased "village" at M’lefaat, and its associated dwellings was orga- and with covering a total of 0.7 ha. It features the nized. These villages tend to be large. same elements of architecture – a dirt 2. The opposing model is a more dense- “central places,” floor covered with "islands" of cobbles, ly or even heavily congested space with furnished with large stone implements, a larger number of houses. This pattern such as squares fireplaces and pits. The center of this floor seems to be more characteristic in the was presumably left open, with dwellings west (Nahal Oren, Jerf al-Ahmar, Gilgal or “markets”. arranged around its circumference in a I, and earlier ‘Ain Mallaha, or Hayonim- congested pattern. Eight houses were cave). In the Jezirah, it appears only preserved in the upper layer and three in in lower M’lefaat. Other patterns not the lower layer. described here are also highly likely. A matter to be resolved is the potential Discussion (Figs. 1-3) correlation of various types of houses Data from the earliest (PPNA-EPPNB with the described types of settlements. period) “villages” found in different One type of house is simple, evi- regions of the Ancient Near East sup- dently a hut or shelter, sunk shallowly ports a few general statements. into the ground, surrounded or not by Equally important These settlements were small as a low base walls (Çayönü, Hallan Çemi, rule (0.1-1.3 ha, Jericho’s alleged 2 ha is Mureybet, Nahal Oren, Netiv Hagdud, for planning were an exception), and contained few dwell- Gilgal I, Zahrad adh-Dhra, Nemrik 3A). ings (4-14), which would imply that the Its entrance is at floor level, marked such factors as the communities inhabiting these "villages" in the base wall, or there is no visible counted no more than a few dozen entrance at all (with poles sunk into the nature of the people (assuming one nuclear family floor). per dwelling). The other and much more sophisti- space between The morphology and situation of the cated type was a house that was more space occupied by these hunter-gath- or less sunk into the ground, big and the dwellings, erer “villages” varied from the edge soundly built, with developed interior of a valley or slope, with dwellings in architecture, such as benches, solid and whether paved or terraces to a fairly flat area situated on regularly disposed posts or pillars, pits, a terrace edge or on some exposed ter- and large stone implements (Nemrik, unpaved, and rain forms, such as a peninsular terrace, M’lefaat, Qermez Dere, Jerf al-Ahmar “island”, or monadnock. The plan of – central buildings, Mureybet III, etc.). the functional zoning the settlements also vary, with hous- Occasionally this type has a heavy roof es being built with greater or lesser but no standing walls (except for one of each settlement. degrees of congestion, and with “cen- example from Jerf al-Ahmar). There are tral places” (squares/zones/“markets”) transitional forms, as well as other unique that can be present or not. In extreme designs (e.g., the sub-rectangular, multi- cases of congestion, such as at Hayonim room constructions from Jerf al-Ahmar). cave and later PPNB desert campsites, These two architectural forms stand- these settlements are “glued” together. ing in opposition appear to be differenti- Equally important for the planning were ated in various ways: such factors as the nature of the space First, they differ chronologically, between the dwellings, whether it was because the first form is generally, paved or unpaved, and the functional although not exclusively, earlier than the 46 47

46 GR a.

0 10m Large "dwelling" structures

Limits of settlement,

Hard floor/pavement,

Terrace/slope,

c. d.

Water

Dump/animal bones

CM Cemetery, grave

second one. This is clear in the stratigra- ermost Jarmo, than as a “base wall”. phy of Jericho-PPNA and Nemrik, while Fourth, base-wall dwellings have their Figure 3 : also consistent with the development chronological continuation in the Levant Arrangment of toward architecture of the upper levels in the desert installations of the PPNB. dwellings from: of Jericho PPNA, later lower Beidha, In many respects, the Levantine settle- Near Eastern PPNA PPN desert camps, and phases IIIB and ments described here, especially those a. M’lefaat-upper IV at Nemrik. containing the lighter building forms, b. Nemrik 2 Second, the first form is an obvious resemble those of the the Natufian and c. Nemrick IVB; continuation from the Natufian and Harifian (‘Ain Mallaha, Rosh Zin, Abu European Palaeolithic Harifian. Salem, Hayonim Cave, etc.) or desert d. Dolni Vestonice Third, the first form (hut with base PPNB (‘Ain Abu Nekeileh, Jilad, Azraq, wall) may have been more popular in Dhobai). Similarities include morphol- For sources, the Levant than in the rest of the Near ogy, size, number of dwellings, zoning, see bibliography. East, where it appears more often in presumed population size, structure of “well” form, as in Karim Shahir and low- dwellings, and economy. 46 47

47 What is it that differentiates the Near The other Eastern “Neolithic villages” (at least the Site Flint pieces earliest Levantine installations) of the and much more PPNA from the Paleolithic/Mesolithic Dolni Vestonice 10,000+ base camps of Europe or Near Eastern sophisticated type Amvrosiyevka 10,000+ PPNB desert camps? Kostenki I 101,000 was a house that Dolni Vestonice 82,000 First doubts Scholars refer to the Near Eastern Mezin 113,000 was more or less settlements described above as “vil- Netiv Hagdud 162,000 lages”. In other words, these settle- sunk into the ground, Nemrik 70,000 ments are alleged to be permanent, Mureybet* 70,000 all-year settlements occupied by a big and soundly sedentary population. The following *Van Loon’s excavations aspects could stand in favor of such an built, with developed interpretation:

interior architecture, On the other hand, they are also simi- 1. Solid houses (suggesting consider- lar to the European Upper Paleolithic, able investment of labor and resourc- such as benches, Gravettian pattern (Vigne Brun, Dolni es) occurring in one phase/layer, Vestonice, Pavlov, Mezin, Mezirichi, meaning they are more or less con- solid and regularly Dobranichevka, Kostenki I upper, temporary. However, actual contem- Avdeevo etc.). All these patterns are poraneity of these often intersecting disposed posts characterized by a relatively sedentary dwellings cannot be proved without character, as indicated by the kind and meticulous micro-stratigraphic analy- or pillars, pits, size of kitchen waste. ses and extremely precise dating. In a few cases, the soundness (and and large stone labor investment) of the dwellings both 2. Developed settlement planning. in the Upper Palaeolithic of Estern implements. Europe and the the Natufian of the 3. Flint material on a massive scale Levan (Mezin, Mezirichi, Yudinovo, (proving long occupation or several Dobranichevka, 'Ain Mallaha, Hayonim) re-occupations). suggests a sedentary character. Last but not least, there is careful settlement 4. Presence of large and small stone planning and the structural pattern of implements (mortars, querns, cup- the dwellings is surprisingly similar to holes, vessels, celts, pestles etc.). They some of the Near Eastern examples should have rather "sedentary" status (circular plan, dimensions, base walls, (but they did not necessarily serve as the latter also known from the Late food-producing installations), espe- Paleolithic - Poggenwisch, Germany. In cially the big, heavy ones. the case of Gravettian base camps, there is a considerable number of art objects, 5. Presence of graves (ownership of seldom-encountered large stone imple- "village" space). ments (Molodova V, Kostienki IV), burials (as in the Near Eastern “villages”), 6. Presence of very numerous ani- and even cemeteries located inside the mal remains (suggesting long-lasting settlements (Predmosti in the Czech occupation). Republic). The riverbank Mesolithic “village” of Lepenski Vir in Serbia seems to be of a It is possible to observe a certain similar nature, with its solid dwellings, logic in this line of reasoning, yet raised on a trapezoidal plan, constructed it does not satisfy the conditions of dwelling floors, graves between dwell- exclusivity or uniqueness for “vil- ings and the famous objects of mobile lages” of the PPNA/EPPNB period art. Neither does the base camp from (settled by hunter-gatherers, let us not Bergumermeer B in Holland depart from forget!) for a number of reasons. the standard (six huts, fireplaces, pits). First, similar space-planning solu- Should all this be confirmed, it then tions are presented by some Gravettian becomes valid in this context to ask: settlements from Europe (25,000 – 48 49

48 15,000 BP), as well as Natufian and es. Instead, there were low base walls Harifian settlements from the Near barely rising above the ground (Gilgal East (below), as well as PPNB desert I, Nemrik, houses 1 and 9) character- camps from Sinai to Azraq. ized by a “smoothed” (unbroken) top Second, some of these display simi- and possibly supporting a lighter pole lar architectural designs. structure that rose above it (e.g. Beidha). What is it that Third, their permanent/long-term/ These base walls could top or end the all-year occupation is just as well (or lined wall, as in contemporary light differentiates the not well) confirmed (successive stages African constructions, but could have of rebuilding, thick cultural deposits, been self-contained constructions, pres- Near Eastern new floors inside and outside the ent in dwellings sunk only slightly into dwellings, for example). Finds from the ground and even standing directly on “Neolithic villages” Netiv Hagdud, Jericho, and Gilgal the ground (Hallan Çemi, Çayönü-base, could suggest that the periods of per- Gilgal I, Netiv Hagdud, Nahal Oren). of the PPNA from manent occupation there were not They were of clay, stone, or both. very long, maybe even seasonal, like Neither did the majority of structures the Paleolithic and the possible seasonal occupation of of this type have a sound roof, meaning camps with circular huts from the des- a roof made of clay. Such roofs did not Mesolithic base camps ert PPNB. appear until the Nemrik 3B phase (ca. Finally, burials and even groups of 8100 years cal BC), when a developed of Europe or the burials are known from Gravettian system for supporting them, that is, four sites, as are large stone implements. To huge posts and later pillars, also made an Near Eastern PPNB be sure, these occur more frequently appearance. in the Natufian, but still they occur at However, had not a similar solution desert camps? Kostienki IV, Molodova V in Russia, already appeared earlier at Qermez Dere and Moldova. In the Gravettian, these with its pillars? And what about the are accompanied as a rule by a wealth roofs of the rectangular structures at of mobile art, indicating stability. Jerf el-Ahmar? Danielle Stordeur insists that she has found a collapsed struc- Next doubts tural standing wall there. In any case, Our experience of contemporary vil- the system of light poles supporting light lages is that they usually have dwellings roofs, known from Nemrik 2-3A, Gilgal that feature standing walls and sound I, Netiv Hagdud, and presumably also roofs. These are usually inhabited per- Çayönü, right from the beginning of this manently, but we should also be mindful period, was gradually displaced by more of seasonal villages of pueblo type. “solid” constructions. Do the villages of the PPNA period in In the light of this discussion, one is the Near East show the characteristics? tempted to ask what are the differences Not quite, apparently. For one thing, between these earliest structures with these circular dwellings never had, with low base walls and no solid roof, and the possible exception of upper Jericho the Paleolithic and Mesolithic huts of PPNA, solid, standing walls. What is Europe or the Epi-Paleolithic remains more, these non-existant walls never known from the Near East. It seems supported roofs of a structural kind. that the difference, if it exists at all, is The “walls” were most frequently just minimal, for these structures all repeated layers of stone, brick, mud or plaster a circular or oval plan (as is natural for that lined the foundation pits (for the the huts/shelters from the beginnings of last, e.g., lowest Jarmo, Nemrik house humanity), featured similar dimensions, 2A) and extended above surface as base were more or less deeply sunk in the walls. Sometimes they went deeper ground, had low base walls, and, finally, (Mureybet, house XLVI; Nemrik, house a similar, light roof-supporting system, as 4; M’lefaat house 8) but, overall, they well as a light or non-structural wall con- were shallowly founded, frequently not struction. The enclosed figures illustrate vertical but leaning outward, without some surprisingly similar constructions. any sort of structural bondwork. This One should rather ask whether some of was more like a form of separation or the PPNA “villages” (the earlier rather isolation than anything else. Hence, it than the later ones) were not more like is easy to understand why there are no the permanent/semi-permanent/season- solid walls known from circular hous- al European Gravettian settlements of 48 49

49 the cool steppe zone or the Natufian/ tion that was rather less permanent (in Were some of Harifian settlements, and possibly even the long-term anyway), drawing us even the European Mesolithic base camps, further away from the conception of a the earlier than real villages of the later Neolithic. real village. On the other hand, the Near The answer is self-evident as objects Eastern settlements had a developed and PPNA “villages” from both groups are characterized by: rich heavy stone industry, which should indicate sedentary life (considering the scale of invested work), seldom encoun- more like the 1. More or less similar size (Gravettian tered on Gravettian sites (Molodova V in 0.04-0.7 ha; PPNA – 0.04-1.3 ha). permanent or Moldova, Kostienki IV in Russia). Other Near Eastern settlements 2. Approximately similar settlement (M’lefaat, Nemrik 2, Qermez Dere, Jerf semi-permanent, solutions (dwelling zone vs. econom- el-Ahmar) that are of equally early date, ic zone, garbage/dump zone, burial however, offer elements that were evi- or seasonal zone); dently characteristic of true villages This incudes pavements, a huge labor invest- European Gravettian 3. Approximately similar number ment, and community buildings, which of dwellings (mostly 4-6, but with brought them closer to the Gravettian settlements of the exceptions, like Çayönü) and hence a “villages” (one floor, thin cultural layers, similar population size. cool steppe zone, numerous finds). Even if a long-term stability cannot be 4. Dwellings similar in size and struc- established, there could have been short- or the Natufian or ture (circular, sunk in the ground, term stability, like one human lifetime, low base walls, poles, light walls and a single generation, or perhaps even a Harifian settlements, roofs). single year. Unfortunately, serious arguments are lacking to resolve this issue. and possibly even the 5. Presence of burials inside the set- To date, neither the taphonomic data tlement area. European Mesolithic on seasonality, nor the actual variety of meanings of the terms “sedentism” or 6. Large quantities of lithic material “village” has been considered. Thus, base camps, (tens of thousands of pieces). we remain in the sphere of impressions than real villages rather than facts. Differences are also observable, how- A key question that we should ask in of the later Neolithic? ever. At least some of the Near Eastern closing is, at what moment in time and settlements (Qaramel, Gilgal I, Netiv in which regions of the Near East can we Hagdud, Jericho, ‘Ain Mallaha) differed start to speak of villages or permanent or from the Gravettian “villages” in a few all-year hunter-gatherer settlements of key elements. The considerable thick- the para-village type? Conversely, until ness of Near Eastern occupational depos- which moment in time (cf. PPNB desert its, and the overlap or intersection of circular structures of Sinai, Negev and objects of different age are both indica- the Black Dessert without heavy stone tive of many re-occupations. implements) and in which of the regions Finally, the evidence for floor renova- in question did the big, seasonal base tion inside and outside the dwellings, camps with circular huts continue to leaves a distinct impression of occupa- exist?

50 51

50 51 52 PB

52 Ground-Stone Tools and Implications for the Use of Space and Social Relations at 'Ain Abu Nukhayla, a PPNB Settlement in Southern Jordan

Seiji Kadowaki University of Toronto

The demography and social organi- However, recent re-investigations at zation of early agricultural communi- ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla, a Middle to Late ties are among major research prob- PPNB site in arid Wadi Rum, southern lems in archaeological investigations Jordan, have recovered archaeological Recent re-investigations of the Neolithic Levant (e.g., Banning evidence for an extensive distribution 1996; 2003; Byrd 1994; 2000; Flannery of residential buildings and diverse at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla 1972; 1993; 2002; Garfinkel 2002; Kuijt subsistence practices, including cereal 2000a; 2000b; Saidel 1993; Verhoeven cultivation and animal herding as well have recovered 1999; Wright 2000). These sociological as hunting and foraging (Henry et al. approaches to Neolithic communities 2003). The site is densely covered with archaeological evidence have successfully added new insights continuous architectural remains, most into the developmental processes of early with curvilinear stone walls arranged in for extensive distribution agricultural communities from a different a so-called “beehive structure” (Goring- perspective than those that emphasize Morris 1993) or “honeycomb” layout of residential buildings ecological factors (e.g., Köhler-Rollefson (Kirkbride 1967) (Fig. 2). The walls are 1988; 1992; Moore 1985: 52; Moore et al. preserved up to a metre in height and and diverse subsistence 2000; Rollefson et al. 1992). enclose various features and archaeo- Nonetheless, these social investiga- logical deposits with remains such as practices, including tions have tended to focus on settle- chipped-stone tools, ground-stone tools, ments in the Mediterranean environ- fauna, and botanical materials (Henry cereal cultivation mental zone, or “Levantine Corridor”, et al. 2003). These new archaeological where a number of early agricultural finds from the arid zone may require us and animal herding communities cluster. In contrast, such to reconsider the socioeconomic variabil- social examinations have been underde- ity of Neolithic inhabitants in this zone. in addition to veloped for settlements in arid, marginal The aim of this paper is to obtain insights areas. There, archaeological research has into the social relations at ‘Ain Abu hunting and foraging focused on investigation of the eco- Nukhayla through an examination of logical aspects of prehistoric occupants how ground-stone tools are distributed (Bar-Yosef 1984; Goring-Morris 1993; in architectural spaces. During excava- Simmons 1981) and hunting strategies tions at the site, archaeological remains (Betts 1998; Rosen and Perevolotsky were systematically collected with an 1998; Tchernov and Bar-Yosef 1982). emphasis on accurate recording of spa- Little is known about the social tial information, which provides critical aspects of Neolithic communities in the database for the spatial analysis in this arid regions except for brief remarks paper. occasionally made by some researchers. Using the results of the spatial analysis of They suggest that community organiza- ground-stone tools, I will infer how domes- tions in the arid regions may have been tic spaces were used by the inhabitants composed primarily of small groups that of ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla. Although it is dif- were similar to those of preceding peri- ficult to infer the entire range of domestic ods, based on the small, seasonal occupa- activities from the analysis of ground-stone tions of the sites, the abundant evidence tools, they do suggest several key domestic for hunting and foraging activities, and activities, such as food preparation, tool the paucity of evidence for agricultural production, and tool maintenance. practices (Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995; Finally, I will interpret patterns in Byrd 2000; Gopher and Goring-Morris the use of space with regard to social 1998; Simmons 1981). relations at the site. In particular, I will 53 PB 53

53 discuss the relations among the groups Formation processes of architecture of people who cooperatively conducted and ground-stone tools The basis for several domestic activities associated Aims of the examination of formation with ground-stone tools. The discus- processes examining both sion focusses on uniformity and vari- In examining the association between ability among the activity groups in architecture and artifacts, it is critical architecture and terms of architectural traits, the range of to separate “floor assemblages” from domestic activities, and the intensity of “house fill”. It is more likely that "floor activities lies in food-processing activities. The results of assemblages" represent direct remains this examination will provide a basis for of past activities, while "house fill" anthropological theory inferring the social implications of these probably includes dumped refuse or activity groups. artifacts tumbled down from a sec- about the recursive ond storey (Cameron 1990; Ciolek- Approaching prehistoric communities Torrello 1984, Jorgensen 1975; Lowell relationship between through architecture and behaviour 1991; Scarborough 1989; Schlanger As I point out in the introduction, Near 1991). However, a number of ethnoar- architecture and Eastern archaeologists have often inves- chaeological studies of site-formation tigated social relations in Neolithic com- processes suggest that various accre- human behaviour. munities by examining architecture and tion and depletion processes can alter the spatial organization of activities. The archaeological remains before and architectural attributes they have exam- after the abandonment of buildings ined include histories of construction and (LaMotta and Schiffer 1999; Schiffer Adherents of this modification of buildings (Banning and 1972; 1983; 1987). For example, “floor Byrd 1987), floor areas (Banning 1996; assemblages” can include secondary approach assume Byrd 2000), arrangements and accessi- refuse or structure collapse in addition bility of spaces (Banning 1996; Banning to de facto or primary refuse, while that architecture and and Byrd 1989; Flannery 1972: Garfinkel the “house fill” can contain de facto or 2002), and compartmentalization of spac- primary refuse that resulted from the human behaviour are es (Kuijt 2000b). The spatial analysis reuse of abandoned buildings (LaMotta of activities usually involves examining and Schiffer 1999). Moreover, when mutually influential, how certain activities, such as tool pro- house floors are made of penetrable duction, storage, and food preparation, materials, such as sand (the case at ‘Ain so that architecture were spatially organized in settlements. Abu Nukhayla), the ambiguity of floor The spatial organization of tool-produc- surfaces and the artefacts’ vulnerabil- constraints human tion activities is usually discussed in the ity to post-depositional disturbances context of craft specialization (Conolly makes the spatial delimitation of “floor activities to some 1999; Quintero 1998), while the spatial assemblages” difficult (Schiffer 1983: organization of storage and food prepa- 690). degree, while human ration is often regarded as indicating To this end, three datasets were inter-household relations or household examined to delimit “floor assem- behaviour also organizations (Byrd 1994;2000; Flannery blages” and to assess their integrity 1972; 1993; Wright 2000). (Fig. 1): (1) the morphological data contributes to the The basis of examining both architec- of ground-stone tools, (2) the vertical ture and activities lies in anthropological and horizontal spatial data of ground- formation of various theory based on the recursive relation- stone tools, shells, and charcoal, and (3) ship between architecture and human the architectural remains, including the aspects of architecture. behaviour (Rapoport 1990) that assumes location of hearths, the bottom level that architecture and human behaviour of walls, and cobble-pavement floors. are mutually influential. From this per- In the architectural dataset, the spatial spective, architecture constrains human distribution of rubble, which represents activities to some degree, while human collapsed walls or roofs, was also taken behaviour also contributes to the forma- into account. tion of various aspects of architecture. The following section only presents I employ this approach to understand summarized results of this examina- and explain the dynamic relationship tion of formation processes for two between archaeological evidence (archi- reasons. The first is that analysis of the tecture and ground-stone tools, in this formation processes of house deposits case) and human behaviour (social rela- appears elsewhere in detail (Kadowaki tions). in press). The second is that the focus 54 55

54 Complete ground stones (n=27) Shells (n=120) Broken ground stones (n=18) Charcoal (total weight=59.7g) Wall 0% 20% 40% Small quern 1 Fill 2 3 4 Reoccupations 5 Basin quern Hearths 6 7 Floor 8 Cobble pavement 9 Occupation before 10 the building Basin quern 11 12 13 14 Figure : 1 15 Stratigraphic diagram of Arbitrary levels house deposits in (10cm thickness) Locus 20 of this paper Stratigraphic is on the next diagram stage of oftoolkits). house-deposit of Locus 20 analysis: examining the use of space by However, these characteristics some- analysing the distribution of ground- times suffer distortion by several cul- The close examination stone tools that are likely to represent tural factors, such as subsequent scav- activities performed in the spaces. enging (at Locus 5), relaxed cleaning of the formation- activities before the anticipated aban- Delimitation and assessment of donment of the building (at Loci 5 and sensitive attributes of “floor assemblages” 25), or the dumping of refuse into aban- Figure 1 illustrates the stratigraphy of doned rooms (at Loci 5 and 25). The refuse allows us to house deposit in Locus 20. On the left of close examination of the formation- the diagram are depositional phases that sensitive attributes of refuse allows us identify these kinds of were identified through examination to identify these kinds of depositional of the above three datasets (Kadowaki events and to assess their influence on depositional events in press). The three main depositional the integrity of remaining tool assem- phases are floor occupation, reoccupa- blages. and to assess their tion, and fill. However, only the floor In the next section, I infer the use of occupational phase, described here, is space at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla by exam- influence on the directly relavant to the present study. ining the ground-stone assemblages Although floors are defined by archi- recovered in the floor levels. When integrity of remaining tectural features, such as pavement, interpreting the use of space, I will also hearths, and the bottom level of walls, take into account the possible distor- tool assemblages. the “floor assemblages” need to be tions of original ground-stone assem- delimitated by examining the forma- blages during the life-histories of build- tion-sensitive attributes of refuse. The ings. refuse recovered in floor levels is generally characterized by a high density of refuse, as seen in the stratigraphic Approaching the use of space from diagram of Locus 20 (Fig. 1). Other ground-stone tools characteristics of the refuse in the floor Activities indicated by ground-stone tools levels are a size-sorted distributional For this study, it is critical to know pattern, a high proportion of complete the functions of ground-stone tools. ground-stone tools, and the functional Although it is difficult to reconstruct the coherence of ground-stone tools (e.g., specific functions of all the ground-stone milling toolkits or pigment-processing tools, some tool types are likely to indi- 54 55

55 Figure 2: cate general categories of activities. This are indicated by chopping tools, pound- The distributions analysis classifies ground-stone tools into ers, shaft straighteners, cutmarked slabs, of complete the following four categories of activi- preforms of handstones, and flaked deb- food-processing tools in ties: (1) food preparation, (2) tool manu- itage. Chopping tools and pounders are loci 2, 5, 20, 22, 23, 25, facture and maintenance, (3) pigment likely to have been used for flaking and features 1, 2, and 10 processing, and (4) others. and pecking activities during the pro- Food-preparation activities are indi- duction and maintenance of ground- cated by several tool types: grinding stone tools. The use of chopping tools querns, handstones, mortars, and pes- and pounders for the production and tles. The use of these tool types for maintenance of ground-stone tools is food processing can be found in a num- supported by ethnographic observations ber of ethnographic and archaeological (Hayden 1987; Cook 1973), archaeo- examples (Bartlett 1933; Eddy 1964; logical remains at prehistoric workshops Fullagar and Field 1997; Kraybill 1977). (Hersh 1981; Hoffman and Doyel 1985; Although these tool types can be used Roubet 1989; Runnel 1981; Schneider for other purposes, such as processing 1996), and the experimental manufac- hide (Adams 1988), for pulverizing tem- ture of ground-stone tools (Hersh 1981; per and clay for pottery manufacture Wilke and Quintero 1996). In fact, vari- (Euler and Dobyns 1983; Rye 1981), for ous ground-stone tools from ‘Ain Abu processing pigment, and for sharpen- Nukhayla show traces of flaking and ing bone artefacts (Schneider 1993), it pecking on their lateral sides and work- is reasonable to consider their princi- ing surfaces, indicating that flaking and pal use to have been food preparation. pecking techniques were employed to First, these ground-stone tool types modify blanks or to rejuvenate grinding developed in the Levant from the late surfaces to regain rough texture (Wright Epipalaeolithic through the Neolithic 1992: 134-5). This observation is also period, coincident with an intensified supported by the recovery of preforms exploitation of plant resources and the of handstones and flake debitage. emergence of agriculture (Wright 1992; Pigment processing is suggested by 1993; 1994). Second, the frequencies the presence of small, red sandstone and morphologies of the above tool tablets that show wear facets and abra- types at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla show strong sive scratches on surfaces. Red pigment similarity to those of food-processing is attached to the surfaces of some hand- tools at contemporary agrarian villages stones and other ground-stone tools that (Kadowaki 2002). The grinding querns were probably used to pulverise pig- and handstones at these Neolithic agrar- ment. ian villages are likely to have served for Functions are unclear for the rest processing plant foodstuffs (Miller 1992; of ground-stone tools, such as ground Wright 1992, 1993, 1994). knives, perforated stones, and worked Tool manufacture and maintenance cobbles and pebbles. 56 57

56 Distribution of ground-stone tools ground-stone tools recovered at floor Figure 3: in architectural spaces levels of various loci, indicates that mul- Distributions of Figures 2 and 3 show the distributions of tiple activities were practiced at some various ground-stone ground-stone tools associated with floor loci, while other loci contain very scarce tools that indicate occupations of the buildings. The distri- traces of activities. In the next section, activities such as tool butional maps do not include probable these occurrences of ground-stone tools manufacture, tool secondary refuse (Kadowaki in press). will be examined in light of architectural maintenance, and Figure 2 shows the distributions of com- attributes, such as floor areas and the pigment processing plete food-processing tools. These tools occurrence of hearths. are distributed in Loci 2, 5, 20, 22, 23, 25, and Feature 1 of Locus 2. The con- Patterns in the use of space centration of handstones in Feature 1 Figure 4 examines the occurrence of of Locus 2 likely represents a cache of complete ground-stone tools relative to handstones. In contrast, no food-process- two architectural attributes: floor area ing tools occur in Loci 26, Feature 10 of and the presence of hearths. This allows Locus 5, and Feature 2 of Locus 22. us to group the loci into three catego- Figure 3 shows the distributions of ries. various ground-stone tools that indicate The first group of loci includes Loci 2, activities such as tool manufacture, tool 5, 20, 22, and 25. These loci are charac- maintenance, and pigment processing. terized by relatively large floor area, the The figure shows that red pigment tab- presence of hearths (except for Locus 5), lets were recovered in Loci 2 and 5. and large numbers of ground-stone tools In the latter locus, the pigment tablet that indicate food processing and other was associated with a broken, perforated kinds of activities, including tool pro- stone that was partly covered with stains duction and pigment processing. These of pigment, indicating that the tool was characteristics suggest that this group of used to process the pigment. Locus 2 loci is likely to represent general activity also contains a perforated stone and a areas. shaft straightener that suggests tool-pro- In contrast to the first group, loci of duction activities. Tool production and the second and third groups are both maintenance are also indicated at Locus small in size and lack hearths. These 25, which contains flaked debitage and two groups differ from each other in preforms of handstones. Other loci, such the density of ground-stone tools; the as 20, 22, 23, and Feature 2 of Locus 22, density of ground-stone tools is higher also contain some ground-stone tools in the second group of loci (Locus 23 that indicate tool production and main- and Feature 1 of Locus 2), while loci of tenance or other unknown activities. the third group (Locus 26, Feature 2 of Locus 26 does not contain any ground- Locus 22, and Feature 10 of Locus 5) stone tools. contain only a few or no ground-stone Table 1, which summarizes the tools. The high density of ground-stone 56 57

57 tools in the second group may represent another unit of loci is formed by Loci caching or storage of tools, while the use 20, 23, and 26. Locus 22 and Feature of the third group of loci is difficult to 2 of Locus 22 also clearly constitute identify with available data. Two loci in another unit. Locus 25 also appears the third group (Locus 26 and Feature to constitute a spatial unit with two 10 of Locus 5) also contain very few small loci that are located on its chipped-stone tools. The small quantity northeastern side. of refuse from these loci and their small floor areas may indicate their use for Implications for social relations at storage of other (perishable) materials. ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla The three groups of loci can be Do recurrent spatial units of domestic described in terms of their use of space. activities represent household units? Spaces of the first group have a rel- As pointed out earlier, this paper employs the atively large floor area, usually have view that architecture and human behav- hearths, and were used for multiple iour are mutually influential (Rapoport activities, including food preparation, 1990; Steadman 1996). Employing this tool production, tool maintenance, and framework for understanding material cul- pigment processing. Spaces of the sec- ture, the following discussion will focus ond group are small, lack hearths, on the implications of the identification of and were used for storage of ground- patterns in the use of space for our under- stone tools. Although spaces of the standing of the social relations among the third group are also small and without site’s inhabitants. hearths, the small amount of artefacts The use of space at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla at these loci suggests their use for is characterized by recurrent spatial units of storage of other materials. domestic activities, including food prepara- To summarize, Figure 5 shows the tion, tool production, pigment processing, spatial arrangement of loci by func- and storage (Fig. 5). These repetitive spa- tion. The three types of loci are tial units likely represent multiple coop- spatially arranged in such a way that erative groups of people who conducted general activity areas are usually asso- particular kinds of activities. ciated with storage, creating recurrent These corporate activity groups may Table 1: spatial units for multiple activities. correspond to households, which are Inventories of For example, Locus 2 and Feature 1 generally characterized by the practice groundstone tools of Locus 2 constitute one unit, while of various cooperative activities (Wilk from floor levels; Locus 5 and Feature 10 of Locus 5 and Nettings 1984; Wilk and Rathje Number of complete tools belong to another unit. In addition 1982), including residence, production, / Total number of tools to these relatively clear examples, distribution, consumption, inheritance, on floor

2 2

2 58 59

58 and child-rearing (Wilk and Nettings 1984; Wilk and Rathje 1982). However, in contrast to this cooperative and homogeneous aspect of households, they also have a conflictive and heterogeneous aspect that is characterized by their internal diversity and dynamic organization (Blanton 1994; Goody 1969; Steadman 1996; Tringham 1991). This heterogeneous aspect is often detectable in the use of space, labour organization, and power relationships among different genders and ages within households (Blanton 1994; Goody 1969; Oetelaar 2000; Tringham 1991). In this way, households can be understood from two contrasting viewpoints: cooperative vs. conflictive or homogenous vs. heterogeneous. In light of this potential ambiguity in household organization, the archaeological evidence examined in this paper Figure 4: does not allow us to determine whether domestic activities, and (3) the intensity Comparison of the recurrent spatial units of domestic activi- of food-preparation activities. occurrence of ties correspond to household units at complete ground- ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla. One spatial unit Architecture stone tools with may represent a single household unit, Several architectural traits indicate uni- two architectural or one household may be composed of formity among activity groups. First, attributes: floor area multiple spatial units of activities. most activity areas are delimited by and the presence of We cannot be certain that the recurrent curvilinear stone walls that constitute hearths spatial units of domestic activities direct- contiguous rooms of round to semi-cir- ly correspond with household units. The cular shape. These rooms are similarly observed spatial units do allow us, how- characterized by the absence of door- ever, to approach the groups of people ways, even in walls preserved as high as who cooperatively conducted certain 100 cm. In addition, the spatial units of kinds of domestic activities, including activity groups are routinely composed food preparation, tool production and of rooms of two different sizes. The maintenance, pigment processing, and larger rooms may be main activity areas storage. The occurrence of these activi- (mean = 8.7 m2, s = 1.5 m2), while the ties in architecturally delimitated spaces smaller rooms likely served for storage indicates that different groups conduct- (mean = 1.4 m2, s = 0.6 m2). ed tasks autonomously. The group size In contrast to these similarities, archi- seems quite small, as indicated by the tectural differences are observable on mean floor area (ca. 8.7m2) of activity floor surfaces and internal compartment spaces (excluding storage). In addition, walls. Cobble pavement occurs at Loci 4, these small groups of people appear to 20, and 25, while others have loose sand have had restricted networks for sharing floors or a flagstone pavement (Locus domestic activities with other groups, as 26). Internal compartment walls only doorways were not preserved, at least occur at Loci 2, 5, and 22. in the remaining walls (preserved to heights of 25 to 100 cm). Range of domestic activities Although the range of domestic activi- Comparison among the activity groups ties indicated by ground-stone tools is In order to understand the relations limited, food preparation and storage are among activity groups, it is useful to the primary activities practiced by the examine the degree of variation among groups identified in this study (Table 1). them on the basis of three material and Other activities, such as tool production behavioural characteristics: and pigment processing, were also prac- (1) architectural traits, (2) the range of ticed by the same groups. These activi- 58 59

59 ties are indicated by certain ground-stone may have resulted from the removal of tool types, such as shaft straighteners handstones after occupation. Post-depo- Uniformity and red pigment fragments, recovered sitional disturbance of Locus 25 is indi- from general activity areas or storage cated by the shallow deposit above the in activity groups spaces (Table 1). Tool production took floor levels and the random distribution place in all activity units except Locus 5, of tools in the floor levels (Kadowaki in is observable while pigment processing was restricted press). To summarize, the food-process- to Loci 2 and 5. ing loci appear to have a uniform density in house shape, of food-preparation tools. Intensity of food-processing activities floor size, In order to evaluate the intensity of Design and grinding efficiency food-processing activities, I examine of upper grinding tools the absence of the density and the grinding efficiency Table 2 shows the proportions of the of food-processing tools, which consist various types of upper grinding tools doorways, storage, of upper grinding stones (handstones recovered from the food-processing loci. and worked cobbles) and lower grind- Here, I assume that worked cobbles and practices of ing stones (grinding slabs and querns). irregular handstones are less efficient The density of food-processing tools than regularly shaped handstones, such food preparation (the number of tools per square metre as loaf-shaped, oval, rectilinear, and dis- of floor in the locus, Table 1) is high in coidal handstones. Locus 2 is distinct and tool production, storage areas, as seen at Feature 1 of from other loci in the use of only regu- Locus 2 and Locus 23, but these loci larly shaped handstones, while other density of are excluded from this analysis because loci include both regular and irregular these areas presumably represent tool handstones or worked cobbles (Locus 5, food-processing tools, curation, rather than food-processing 20, 22, and 25). The higher proportion activity. I assess the efficiency of food- of regular handstones in Locus 2 may and the design and processing tools by examining the size indicate more efficient food processing of grinding areas and the morphological at this locus than in others. efficiency of lower traits of the tools. Experimental uses Differences in the size of upper grind- of manos (upper grinding tools) indi- ing tools among the loci also suggests dif- grinding tools. cate that larger grinding surfaces allow ferent grinding efficiency between Locus greater grinding efficiency (Adams 1998; 2 and other loci (Table 2). Handstones Mauldin 1993). In addition, flat working from Locus 2 are longer than those from surfaces of grinding slabs allow more other loci, although this difference does efficient grinding than concave surfaces not show statistical significance. of basin querns (Adams 1998; Eddy In sum, the design of upper grinding 1964). I assume that the intensity of food tools varies between activity groups. In processing is proportional to the efficien- particular, the upper grinding tools of cy of the tools (Adams 1996: 35-6). Locus 2 are larger and more regularly shaped than those of other loci, indicat- Density of food-processing tools ing greater grinding efficiency at Locus As Table 1 shows, the densities of food- 2. processing tools vary little among the general activity areas, ranging from 0.6 to Design and grinding efficiency 1.1 tools/m2. Among these, Loci 5 and 25 of lower grinding tools have the lowest densities of food process- Basin querns are associated with all the ing tools (0.6 and 0.7 tools/ m2). food-processing loci, except for Locus 5, However, the analysis of formation where the querns were probably scav- processes suggest that some food-pro- enged after its abandonment. Loci 20 cessing tools are likely to have been and 25 also include working slabs. As removed from Loci 5 and 25. Two grind- shown by a t-test, the working surfaces ing querns appear to have been scav- of the slabs in Loci 20 and 25 (Mean enged during the subsequent reoccu- area = 1731 cm2, s = 495.5 cm2) are sig- pation at Locus 5 and relocated to the nificantly larger than those of the basin upper levels. With these two grinding querns in other loci (Mean area = 763 querns included, the density of food- cm2, s = 204.8; t = -5.56, df = 13, p < preparation tools in Locus 5 increases 0.01). Thus, these working slabs may to 0.8 tools/ m2. Likewise, the recov- have allowed more efficient grinding ery of only one handstone at Locus 25 at Locus 20 and 25 than in other 60 61

60 activity areas. However, these working of lower grinding tools. Table 2: slabs are scarcely modified, while the In sum, the activity groups identified Proportions of basin querns show extensive production through examination of the use of space various types of traces, such as flaking and pecking scars. is characterized by strong uniformity but upper grinding In addition, the flat surfaces of the work- some variation with regard to architectur- stones recovered at ing slabs do not show clear grinding trac- al traits, the range of domestic activities, food-processing loci es, such as striations that are clearly vis- and the intensity of food preparation. ible on the working surfaces of the basin querns. These observations suggest that Social implications of the activity groups the primary use of the slabs was not for At ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla there were fair- grinding food. Thus, despite their large ly uniform groups for certain domestic size and flat surfaces, the working slabs activities, including food processing, tool from Locus 20 and 25 do not indicate production and maintenance, pigment a significant difference in the grinding processing, and storage. This inference intensity between these loci and the is based only on ground-stone tools other food-processing loci. recovered in domestic spaces, which do To summarize, the design of lower not reflect all the activities that the site’s grinding tools appears fairly consistent inhabitants conducted. Other archaeo- among the activity areas except for the logical remains indicate a wider range occasional occurrence of working slabs. of activities, including hunting, animal However, these slabs do not seem to herding, cereal cultivation, production of have contributed primarily to food prep- chipped-stone tools and shell beads, and aration. building construction. Some of these activities may have been carried out by Summary the same activity groups identified in The above examination compared the examination of ground-stone tools, the activity groups by focusing on while others may have involved differ- three aspects: architecture, the range of ent social grouping. domestic activities, and the intensity of Despite this limited view of activities food processing activities. The analysis practiced at the site, the autonomous identified several differences among the practices of some domestic activities activity groups in floor surfaces, com- could be explained in terms of social partment walls, evidence for pigment processes in two ways: (1) the privatiza- processing, and the design and efficien- tion of activities and (2) the fission of cy of upper grinding tools. activity groups. Despite these points of variability, uni- The first explanation involves a shift formity among the groups appears more in the organization of activities from prominent. This uniformity is observable communal work to practices by indi- in house shape, floor size, the absence viduals or small groups. This privatiza- of doorways, the occurrence of storage, tion process involves several domestic practices of food preparation and tool activities, including food preparation production, the density of food-process- and storage. Some authors suggest that ing tools, and the design and efficiency this process progressed during the Pre- 60 61

61 Pottery Neolithic period in the Near moment. This built environment can be East (Flannery 1993, 2002; Wright 2000). approached through examination of the Moreover, this process is consistent with site-formation processes and life-histo- Byrd’s argument that social networks ries of building remains. For example, for sharing domestic activities decreased at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla (Kadowaki in The patterns among households at the PPNB settle- press), some abandoned buildings were ment of Beidha (Byrd 1994). A similar later reused as outside activity areas. detected in the use process of social change may explain the Moreover, the proposed presence of out- autonomous practices of some domestic door activity areas implies the patchy of space activities by small activity groups at ‘Ain distribution of contemporary houses Abu Nukhayla. in the settlement (see also Verhoeven, may allow two In contrast, the second explanation sug- this volume). This suggestion is particu- gests that the activity groups may have larly significant at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla possible explanations resulted from periodic fission of groups because of its settlement layout with a in their developmental cycle (Goody so-called “beehive structure” (Goring- regarding 1969). Based on his ethnographic obser- Morris 1993), in which curvilinear build- vations, Goody suggests that groups of ings are densely distributed with no the social processes people who share a residence or certain spaces between them. Despite this activities split periodically in accordance dense distribution of houses as archaeo- at the site: with changes in their composition due logical residues, I suggest that the pre- to the birth, aging, and death of group historic built environment at ‘Ain Abu the privatization members (Goody 1969). Banning and Nukhayla was characterized by a patchy Byrd (1987) used this anthropological distribution of occupied houses with of activities observation to explain the sequence of outdoor areas that facilitated movement architectural renovations at ‘Ain Ghazal and interaction among inhabitants. In and the fission of in the Middle PPNB. This develop- sum, the high compartmentalization of mental cycle of domestic or activity space at the site is likely the result of activity groups. groups might also explain the repetitive the accumulation of successive building occurrences of spatial units for domestic phases over a long period of time, while activities at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla. the prehistoric inhabitants of the site Thus, the patterns detected in the use probably experienced a more open built of space allows for two possible explana- environment. tions regarding the social processes at the site: (1) the privatization of activities and Conclusion (2) the fission of activity groups. These This paper examines the use of space two explanations operate over different at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla, a PPNB settle- time scales. The privatization process ment in the arid marginal zone, through occurred over the PPNB period, while the spatial analyses of architecture and the fission of activity groups occurred activities inferred from ground-stone over a shorter time, such as a generation. tools. The proposed use of space is char- Therefore, it is possible that both social acterized by the repetitive occurrence of processes took place concurrently among spatial units for several domestic activi- the inhabitants of ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla. ties, including storage, food processing, These social explanations need to be tool production and maintenance, and substantiated with more evidence in pigment processing (Fig. 5). It is dif- future research. For example, the priva- ficult to determine the relationship of tization process of activities will need to these recurrent spatial units for domes- be re-examined by analyzing the labour tic activities to household units because organization of a wider range of activi- of the potential variability of household ties, including animal herding and the organizations. However, these recurrent production of chipped-stone tools. In units of spatial activity, delimited by addition, we could obtain deeper insights architecture, still indicate that groups of into the developmental cycle of domes- people autonomously conducted certain tic groups through closer examination of kinds of domestic activities. the sequences of the construction and Finally, the social implications of modification of residential buildings. these uniform activity groups are that When conducting these further analy- two social processes were at work: (1) ses, it is also important to consider the the privatization of activities, and (2) the prehistoric built environment at a single fission of activity groups. The former 62 63

62 process principally represents long-term Abu Nukhayla and compare them with Figure 5: change in labour organization for pro- those at other Neolithic settlements in Domestic activities duction and consumption, and has been the Mediterranean zone. To this end, include storage, suggested by several archaeologists who examinations of architecture, the use of food processing, examined the spatial organizations of space, and site-formation processes may tool production architecture and domestic activities in remain useful analytical methods. and maintenance, Neolithic sites in the Levant (Byrd and pigment processing 1994; Flannery 1993, 2002; Wright 2000). In contrast, the fission of activity groups occurred over a shorter period, Acknowledgments such as a generation, according to the I would like to thank Donald Henry developmental cycle of domestic groups for his encouragement and support for (Goody 1969). my Master’s research, on which this These two social implications need to study is based. I am also grateful to be further examined in future. It is par- Joseph Beaver for providing me with ticularly necessary to continue research original architectural maps of ‘Ain Abu on the labour organization of other activ- Nukhayla. I wish to extend my appre- ities, such as the production of chipped- ciation to Ted Banning and Michael stone tools and animal herding, and on Chazan for the opportunity to contrib- the sequences of the construction and ute to this volume and for their edito- modification of residential buildings. rial assistance. I am, however, respon- It is also important to consider the pre- sible for any shortcomings in this paper. historic built environment at a single Funding support for the project at ‘Ain moment by examining the life histories Abu Nukhayla was provided by The of buildings (Kadowaki in press). Several National Science Foundation Research lines of further research are necessary Grant SBR-9731418 and The University better to illustrate social relations at ‘Ain of Tulsa Office of Research.

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In press Ground Stone Tools, Refuse Structure Formation Processes: Behavioral Inference Byrd. B. F. 1994 Public and Private, Domestic and the Life Histories of Residential Buildings Based on Traces Left by Cultural Formation and Corporate: the Emergence of the at ‘Ain Abu Nukhayla, Southern Jordan. In Processes. Journal of Archaeological Method Southwest Asian Village. American Antiquity New Approaches to Old Stones: Recent and Theory 2(3): 231-252. 59(4): 639-666. Studies of Ground Stone Artifacts, edited by Y. Tchernov, E. and Bar-Yosef, O. 1982 Animal 2000 Households in Transition. In Life Rowan, and J. Ebeling. Equinox, London. Exploitation in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Kirkbride, D. 1967 Beidha 1965: An Interim period at Wadi Tbeik, southern Sinai. Organization, Identity, and Differentiation, Report. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 99: 5- Paléorient 8(2): 17-37. edited by I. Kuijt, pp. 63-102. Kluwer 13. Tringham, R. E. 1991 Households with Academic/Plenum Publishers. Kraybill, N. 1977 Pre-Agricultural Tools for the Faces: the Challenge of Gender in Prehistoric Cameron, C. M. 1990 Pit Structure Abandonment Preparation of Food in the Old World. In: Architectural Remains. In Engendering in the Four Corners Region of the American Origin of Agriculture, edited by C. A. Reed, pp. Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited Southwest: Late Basketmaker III and Pueblo 485-521. Mouton Publishers, the Hague, Paris. by J. M. Gero and M. W. Conkey, pp. 93-131. Periods. Journal of Field Archaeology 17: 27-37. Kuijt, I. 2000a Life in Neolithic Farming Blackwell. Ciolek-Torrelo, R. 1984 An Alternative Communities: Social Organization, Identity, Verhoeven, M. 1999 An Archaeological Ethnography Model of Room Function from Grasshopper and Differentiation. Kluwer Academic/Plenum of a Neolithic Community: Space, Place and Social Pueblo, Arizona. In Intrasite Spatial Analysis in Publishers. Relations in the Burnt Village at Tell Sabi Abyad, Archaeology, edited by H. Hietala, pp. 127-153. 2000b People and Space in Early Agricultural Syria. Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut Cambridge University Press. Villages: Exploring Daily Lives, Community Te Istanbul. Conolly, J. 1999 The Çatalhöyük Flint and Size, and Architecture in the Late Pre-Pottery Wandsnider, L.1996 Describing and Comparing Obsidian Industry: Technology and Typology Neolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeological Spatial Structures. Journal of in Context. BAR International Series 787, Archaeology 19:75-102. Archaeological Method and Theory 3(4): 319-384. Oxford. LaMotta, V. and Schiffer, M. B. 1999 Formation Wilk, R. R. and R. McC. Netting 1984 Households: Cook, S. 1973 Stone Tools for Steel-Age Processes of House Floor Assemblages. In The Changing Forms and Functions. In Households, Mexicans? Aspects of Production in a Zapotec Archaeology of Household Activities, edited by edited by R.M. Netting, R. Wilk, and E. J. Arnould, Stoneworking Industry. American P. M. Allison, pp. 19-29. Routledge, London pp. 1-28. University of California Press. Anthropologist 75: 1485- 1503. and New York. Wilk, R. R. and W. L. Rathje 1982 Household Eddy, F. W. 1964 Metates and Manos. The basic Lowell, J. C.1991 Prehistoric Households at Archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25(6):617- corn grinding tools of the southwest. Museum Turkey Creek Pueblo, Arizona. The University 639. of New Mexico Press, Popular series pamphlet of Arizona Press, Tucson. Wilke, P. J. and Quintero, L. A. 1996 Near Eastern No. 1. Mauldin, R. 1993 The Relationship between Neolithic millstone production: Insights from research Euler, R. C. and Dobyns, H. F. 1983 The Ground Stone and Agricultural Intensification in the arid southwestern United States. In Neolithic ethnoarchaeology of Pai milling stones. In in Western New Mexico. KIVA 58(3): 317-330. Chipped Stone Industries of the Fertile Crescent, and Collected Papers in Honor of Charlie R. Steen, Miller, N. F. 1992 The Origins of Plant their Contemporaries in Adjacent Regions, edited by S. K. Jr. edited by Nancy L. Fox, pp. 253-267. Cultivation in the Near East. In The Origins Kozlowski and H. G. K. Gebel, Studies in Early Papers of the Archaeological Society of New of Agriculture: An International Perspective, Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Mexico: 8, Albuquerque Archaeological Society edited by C. W. Cowan and P. J. Watson, pp. 3 Environment 3, pp. 243-260. Berlin, ex oriente. Press. 9-58. Smithsonian Institution Press. Wright, K. I. 1992 Ground Stone Assemblage Variation Flannery, K. 1972 The origin of the village as a Oetelaar, G. 2000 Beyond Activity Areas: and Subsistence Strategies in the Levant, 22,000- settlement type in Mesopotamian and the Near Structure and Symbolism in the Organization 5,500 b.p. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, East: A comparative study. In Man, settlement and Use of Space Inside Tipis. Plains Department of Anthropology, Yale University. and urbanism, edited by P. J. Ucko, R. Anthropologist 45(171): 35-61. 1993 Early Holocene Ground Stone Assemblages in Tringham, and G. W. Dimbleby, pp. 23-53. Quintero, L. 1998 Evolution of Lithic Economies the Levant. Levant XXV: 93-111. Duckworth. in the Levantine Neolithic: Development and 1994 Ground-stone Tools and Hunter-gatherer 1993 Will the Real Model Please Stand Up: Demise of Naviform Core Technology. Ph.D. Subsistence in southwest Asia: Implications for the Comments on Saidel’s ‘Round House or dissertation. University of California, Riverside. Transition to Farming. American Antiquity 59(2): 238- Square?’. Journal of Mediterranean Rapoport, A. 1990 Systems of activities and sys- 263. Archaeology 6(1): 109-117. tems of settings. In Domestic architecture and 2000 The Social Origins of Cooking and Dining 2002 The Origins of the Village Revisited: the use of space, edited by S. Kent, pp. 9-20. in Early Villages of Western Asia. Proceedings of the From Nuclear to Extended Households. New Directions in Archaeology, Cambridge Prehistoric Society 66: 89-12 American Antiquity 67(3): 417-433. University Press. Fullagar, R. and Field, J. 1997 Pleistocene seed- Rosen, B. and A. Perevolotsky 1998 The grinding implements from the Australian arid Function of “Desert Kites” – Hunting or zone. Antiquity 71: 300-307. Livestock Husbandry? Paléorient 24(1): 107- 64 PB

64 The Domestication of Vertical Space: The Case of Steep-Slope LPPNB Architecture in Southern Jordan

Hans Georg K. Gebel Free University of Berlin

In the LPPNB of southern Jordan, intrasite social and spatial pressure forced the use of vertical space. As domestic space became more and more restricted through progressive community or family growth, two storey domestic structures developed in steeply sloped sites. In settlements like Ba‘ja, natural boundaries gave birth to use of vertical space. Developments in the Early Near Eastern Neolithic are dominated by a range of agglomeration processes, leading to the domestication of beings, abi- otic resources, material and immaterial spaces and spheres. These rapid initial agglomeration processes appear to have progressed in geographically varied and polycentric ways, determined by regional environmental conditions, and by the increasing role of interaction between regions. One must state that these early sedentary agglomeration processes also established the socio-spatial ethology of our modern life, or formed the sedentary ethology of human space (Gebel 2002). The groundplans of buildings and settlements indicate that the “Mega-Site” Late PPNB (hereafter LPPNB, Fig.1; Gebel 2004) of the Jordanian Highlands consisted of corporate family and commu- Sedentary Space nity structures. In these LPPNB milieus, Settled life demanded a fundamen- Figure 1: social and spatial agglomeration continu- tally different human territoriality than LPPNB sites in ously triggered cooperative structures, and did mobile, foraging life. This differ- discussion for the cooperative structures in turn triggered ent understanding of space resulted use of two-storey more agglomeration processes. It appears from a growing territorial inflexibility, architecture, with impossible to separate either element in determined by the new sedentary spa- information on the these developments. tial orientation, progressive population mega-site expansion This contribution presents the mate- dynamics and new socio-economic pro- (from Gebel 2004) rial evidence of one type of early spa- duction modes and structures. tial agglomeration, that of two-storey or Habitational and natural spaces were multi-storey housing, which developed reconceived and redefined in all aspects in southern Jordan during the 8th mil- of life and human expression. This lennium cal BC. Rarely are all elements resulted in hitherto unknown and of real two-storey architecture preserved increasingly complex types and levels together on LPPNB sites. Before we of conflict, countered by adaptations to discuss this evidence, we must consider more complex social and socio-economic the agglomeration and territoriality of structures that helped balance interests. space under early sedentary conditions. Warfare over habitats or aggression over

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65 Figure 2: Discussion of LPPNB architecture demands clear definitions of the specific terms in use, without Panoramic view which mutual understanding would fail. The following list of definitions must be considered of a LPPNB preliminary and incomplete, but may serve as a start for a common LPPNB architectural terminol- mega-site on a ogy for storeyed architecture. Terraced architecture requires different definitions of “basement”, shallow terrace, “groundfloor”, and “storey” than those used in common understanding. Here, for clarity, a storey reconstructed as above a basement is addressed as a second storey. a two-storey settlement. Basement: A storey below an upper storey. In Ba‘ja, considered a storey, even when built on a roof. (reconstruction basements were created from upper storeys by building by M. Kinzel) a new storey on top of them. Basements can have a cellar- Split-level structures: Architecture in which neighbouring like appearance. Substructures are not basements, although rooms with floors at different heights share walls. Split- they can be used (e.g., as a burial ground, as at Basta). level rooms are connected by passages.

Building terraces: Building lots created by terraces dug Storey: A closed room or group of (interconnected) or built into slopes, extending their space by off-slope rooms with ceilings built above them. substructures, or both. Strengthening buttress: Attached (abutting) or originally Floor: This term should be reserved for an actual floor built (bonded) to strengthen a (long) wall and possibly to (and not used as “storey”). support a main ceiling beam.

Ground floor: A neutral term for the lowermost storey, Substructures: Various types of sub-floor structures whether it carries an upper floor or not. Some ground below a basement or groundfloor (e.g., the LPPNB floors can be basements. channel-like or grill-type network of dry-stone masonry that created an even building lot on a slope, and vertical Level: An ambiguous term to be avoided in the discus- stones supporting floors as at Dhra‘, Finlayson et al. 2003: sion of storeyed buildings (but see “split-level” below). 18-19; Kuijt and Finlayson 2002). Substructures support raised floors. Rising-floor structures: An architecture in which storeys “move” upwards by the vertical extension of walls and by Subterranean: Sometimes an archaeologically ambiguous raising the floors with room fill, often related to split-level term, this should be reserved for buildings dug into the architecture (cf. evidence from pueblos in the American natural or cultural sediments and be distinguished from Southwest, e.g., Cameron 1996a: 199; 1996b: 79-80; buildings with outside levels that rose through sediment Kidder 1958: 122-124). accumulation.

Raised floors: Floors on substructures that do not form Support gap: A gap in a masonry wall to support beams a storey (e.g., substructures to create an even building (e.g., for lintels, staircases, ceilings, or roofs). ground or to provide ventilation or insulation). Support wall: Any wall built to support beams, including Pillars: Posts serving to support main beams of ceilings, wall ledges. (e.g., ‘Ain Jammam, Ba‘ja, as-Sifiya). Twin buttresses: Buttresses located in opposed position Roof: The unsheltered open-air space on top of any to support a main beam in the ceiling and possibly to storey that does not have one above it. It should not be strengthen walls. Attached (abutting) twin buttresses indi- considered as a “storey” itself. Several connected roofs (as cate a secondary need to carry extra weight. in pueblo-like LPPNB architecture) can form a communal space or roof “landscape” for intra-settlement traffic. Two-storeyed: A building with two ceilings and one roof, located directly above one another. Roofment: A new term for a partially sheltered, open- air space on top of a building. Roofments can be any Wall sharing: Where two neighbouring rooms or build- unroofed structures on a roof, e.g., parapet walls or any ings, usually at two different levels, share the same wall physical, spatial division on a roof. Isolated room-like struc- without an interconnecting passage.An example: Two- tures that were roofed (penthouses), however, should be storey housing in Ba‘ja, Area B-North

66 67

66 the territorial neighbourhood of settlements were new sorts of conflicts. The changing understanding of space included not only the material space; immaterial spaces — social spaces defined by new forms of conflict management or production hierarchies, new values in property definition and prestige goods, and ritual and symbolic spaces, like the intramural “domestication” of otherworldly powers or of the dead — became subjects of a hitherto unknown agglomeration. There are indications that the ritual and material space were not as differentiated in the early Neolithic as they are in modern times. Sedentary space is limited by imme- diate neighbourhoods. Social space is restricted by both physical and social boundaries, and stress is therefore created when there is a need for growth 1. According to Gary Rollefson (pers. comm.), ‘Ain and expansion. The resulting spatial Ghazal provides clear indications of both two-sto- Figure 3: pressures can be managed for a while by rey and split-level LPPNB structures. The best Basta, Area B, evidence is from a single building that shows both the adoption of new corporate structures aspects: “The building was a large residential build- Square 84; ing in the North Field. The reasons for claiming that View of the NE and by adding to the horizontal space at least the western part of the building had two sto- through the use of the third dimen- reys is that the fill of the ground floor included thick Wall of Room 2 red-painted plaster flooring that could only have sion. The use of vertical space again come from an upper storey; the western wall of the of Building Unit increased spatial pressure by allow- structure shows clearly that there was no split-level B VIII (photo: ing a higher population density within part of the building farther up the hill.” Basta J.A.P., Y. Zu‘bi) LPPNB settlements. 2. In the course of our architectural investigations at Ba‘ja and Basta, as well as exploring the recent Space is both a material and an traditional terraced housing in southern Jordan, it immaterial subject of domestication. became obvious that identification of a real second storey (closed rooms with two ceilings built above The domestication of space resulted each other) is not as easy as we anticipated and that the evidence sometimes is difficult to distinguish in agglomeration, and spatial agglom- from other sorts of shared-wall architecture (e.g. The use of right eration intensified the further domes- split-level structures or rising-floor structures). The investment of the Ba‘ja team in discussing the tication of space. The use of vertical architectural and stratigraphic morphodynamics of angles in LPPNB space is an expression of this intensified storeys has been considerable, and we now feel able to identify archaeologically what is coming mostly domestication. as a statement from other (mega-) sites: that second architecture seems storeys did exist. This discussion might soon require expansion : Recent discovery of staircases leading Vertical Space and Regional up in a MPPNB round house at Shakarat Mazyad to have triggered (north of Ba‘ja), together with staircases leading Architectural Development down into the same building, may indicate an earlier The beginnings of multi-room LPPNB use of the vertical space in the MPPNB, whatever the introduction of 1 this space may have looked like (Hermansen et al. architecture of southern Jordan extend n.d.). So far, this isolated discovery does not conclu- to an architectural history of just half a sively expand the second-storey discussion to the substructures, round houses of the MPPNB. millennium in the region. The round We are conservative in our view that secure evi- houses of the Middle PPNB seem to dence for second storeys so far comes only from the artificial terracing, LPPNB. The suggested examples of second storeys have been the first solid architecture from the MPPNB (the pier-houses from Beidha: in the southern Jordanian Highlands. Byrd 2005; Byrd and Banning 1988; the architec- tuure of Ghwair I: Simmons and Najjar 1998, 1999, or platforms Earlier solid architecture should be 2000) still appear doubtful. Despite its MPPNB radiocarbon dates, the Ghwair findings fully cor- expected along the rift’s fringes and respond to the character of a LPPNB culture and without substructures. its major eastern confluents. New evi- little is said about its MPPNB cultural affinities; if Ghwair is MPPNB, it should be explained why or dence from the round-house MPPNB how its LPPNB features came to exist isolated in at Shaqarat Mazyad2 demonstrates at an MPPNB context. For the pier-houses of Beidha: even Byrd (2005) notes that the question wasn’t least the use of roofs and thus the begin- solved how they relate to similar PPNC groundplans ning of exploiting the vertical space. known from ‘Ain Ghazal; it also appears archaeologically insufficient to argue that thick walls must have Staircases leading up in the interior of a carried a another storey. However, the pier-houses of Beidha might become a potential candidate for MPPNB round house must not have led discussing second-storey buildings already in the to a second storey, but at least can be MPPNB. 66 67

67 social unit (cf. Garfinkel, this volume). Given the limited resources of the PPNB environment in southern Jordan, corporate exploitation and consumption would have offered advantages over smaller MPPNB (nuclear) family units. The large, corporate family structures that followed allowed their members to reduce competion and, thus, conflict levels. They started to use rectangular, multi-roomed groundplans and, after a while, houses expanded vertically (Figs. 2, 5). It is worthwhile to consider the possibility of a developmental relation between round houses and right-angled groundplans on slopes with substructures. The use of right angles in LPPNB architecture seems to have triggered the Figure 2: introduction of substructures, artificial The distributions terracing, or platforms without substruc- of complete tures. The introduction of right-angled food-processing tools groundplans could have facilitated sec- in Loci 2, 5, 20, 22, ond storeys, since they provided more 23, 25, and Feature 1 solid structural support. of Locus 2. Basta seems to indicate that regional architectural variability was substantial in the LPPNB of southern Jordan. There is little secure evidence for two-storey evidence for use of the roof. Staircases structures in Basta, although some evi- Figure 4: may have existed in places were the dence clearly hints at split-level architec- Ba‘ja 2003; dense honeycombed arrangement of ture (Kinzel 2003; 2004). One may speak Aerial view of the round houses did not have space for of an optional second-storey architecture excavation areas, installations that allowed inhabitants to in Basta (cf. below). Kuijt’s (2000) recon- from SW. reach the roof from outside. However, struction of the Basta House might be ( photo: Ba'ja N.P., K. new evidence for PPNB architecture correct in principle, but we cannot be at Traulsen). continuously surprises us, and it would all sure that the houses of the LPPNB not be unlikely to find evidence of early Basta village were two-storeyed through- MPPNB round “towers” with second out. Rising-floor structures (see below) storeys and flat roofs. are virtually absent in Basta but seem to It is not clear at all if southern Jordan be characteristic of steep-sloped Ba‘ja, witnessed an indigenous development where vertical rock formations and gorg- from round to rectangular groundplans. es limited horizontal settlement growth. It could well be that such a stage of The LPPNB occupation of Basta, main- development does not exist but that ly resting on fairly slight slopes, shows rectangular architecture was introduced architecture built on artificial terraces of from the north with the new social para- dry-stone masonry with grill-type sub- digm that accompanied the mega-site structures. The height differences among expansion (Fig. 1; Gebel 2004).3 The the various terraces is not very significant LPPNB mega-site architecture strongly (Nissen, forthcoming), and the buildings hints at the existence of social units in Areas A and B show little maintenance larger than nuclear families (possibly or alteration as compared with the steep- kin groups or lineages) as the standard sloped sites (‘Ain Jammam, Ghwair I, Ba‘ja, al-Basît). 3. If the pier houses of Beidha C were two-storey (Byrd 1994; 2005: 132; Byrd and Banning 1988, but Large, presumably central, rooms questioned by B. Finlayson during experimental surrounded by rows of smaller rooms reconstruction in 2005, pers. comm.) and are indeed of MPPNB date (see fn 1), they would represent appear to be characteristic of the the earliest two-storey architecture of the region. LPPNB in southern Jordan. Various Archaeologically, for now they should be considered as doubtful evidence for two-storey houses publications (e.g., Kuijt 2000; Gebel 68 69

68 69 Could it be that the generally larger space occupied by a house in Basta made second storeys unnecessary, or is it simply a matter of shorter house lives in Basta’s Area B, of wall preservation, or of room-fill observation during excavation?

Architectural and Sedimentary Morphodynamics and Definitions Discussing the complex structural framework in which second storeys were established requires us to consider the following occupational morphodynamics and characteristics of a southern Jordanian LPPNB settlement. These morphodynamics have been studied in detail in Ba‘ja but their features are fully or partly present in all other excavated LPPNB sites in southern Jordan. a. The level of floors (of a basement or ground floor) rose during habitation and led to a building up of the walls, either for specific rooms or for entire room-groups. This could create different (basement or ground-floor) levels within a single house, with ceilings moving upwards and ceiling materials deposited on floors. The different levels were connected by inserted stairs or stairwells. b. This process in turn affected existing or newly established upper storeys, for which roofs would have been gradually Figure 6 (above): similar height, and an intact room height raised, too. Ba‘ja, Area B-North; of ca. 2.1 m (Gebel, Muheisen, Nissen, c. At some locations, complete rooms Groundplan of domestic, and Qadi et al. 2004: Fig. 4; Nissen, or parts of basements were filled with steep-slope architecture. forthcoming: Fig. 22). Decorated plas- rubble (or, in cases of groundplan Figure 7 (below): ter at various heights in the room fill alterations, with selected material Ba‘ja, Area B-North: Part indicates that the material originated in from demolished walls). In such cases, of the eastern sections of an upper storey. It is not easy to under- traces can be found indicating that a for- B22/32, with evidence for stand why Basta would have single-sto- mer upper storey was transformed into leveled wall heights (Wall rey houses while closely similar ground- a basement (see below). An overall re- 34) and in situ floor/ceiling plans at other sites provide more direct arrangement of the groundplan, namely remains (Layer 41) evidence for second storeys. the insertion of small rooms, accompanied this shift, and often required the blockage of former doors and wall openings or the insertion of new ones. d. Intra-and extra-mural spaces may have served as dumping areas for wall rubble from which dressed wall stones had been removed. Raised levels of open spaces in the settlement seem to have resulted in shorter doors or blocked doors. e. Processes a.-d. are jointly responsible 2 for the excellent preservation of the 2 walls’ heights in settlements (up to 4.5 m in Ba‘ja). 70 71

70 Full evidence of true, two-storey 36, below Buttress 33). An additional Figure 8: LPPNB architecture was recently measure adapting the domestic struc- Ba‘ja, Area B-North, traced in Ba‘ja, Area B-North, Squares ture to the new storey was the erec- Square B22; B22/32 (Figs. 6-9; Gebel, Hermansen, tion or modification of the stairwell Girder grillage of and Kinzel, in press). Here, a larger, between Walls 8 and 10 (Room 3). Four Walls 16 and 19, 7 presumably central room of an upper steps were identified, crossing a height Buttresses 33 and 55, storey was built on top of the leveled of some 80 cm. The uppermost Step staircase Room 3, room walls of an earlier storey, which 23 ends at 1166.71 m in front of Wall and cut-down Wall itsself appears to have previously been 19, at a place where Threshold 56 (at 34 with in situ ceil- an upper storey that was transformed by 1167,32) occurs. Staircases ending blind ing Layer 41, from this action into a basement. The new, in front of a wall are quite common in southwest partly eroded, upper room must have the terraced steep-slope architecture (photo: M. Kinzel) rested over Rooms 2, 4, 5, and 6, and of the LPPNB, not only in Ba‘ja. The unexcavated areas in B21. This storey- evidence we have here suggests that shifting shows one of the major building the greater depth of the upper Step 23 principles attested in Ba‘ja (Gebel and helped to create a landing where anoth- Hermansen 2001: 19; see also Cameron er small step or ladder would lead up to 1996a; 1996b; Kidder 1958: 122-124). Threshold 56, crossing the remaining The B22/32 finds show that the new height of some 60 cm. upper storey or room was established Thus, the staircases, the supposed by cutting back the wall heights under- small step or ladder of perishable materi- neath the same level, and by inserting or al on Step 23, and Threshold 56 allowed modifying other walls to that level.4 In 7. In as-Sifiya, Area C, Squares 9-10, a “central the example presented here, the walls room” surrounded by smaller rooms was discovered were levelled to an altitude of 1167.3 in 1997-98. The excavator describes hints of a second storey in a way similar to ours, but seems not m ASL (Walls 19, 34, and 16 of B22). to have identified ceiling or roof materials: “There These walls became load-bearing are two small walls projected into the room and intersected with the north wall of this room. Two walls, forming a kind of “girder grillage” limestone slabs (two steps) were discovered and located between these two walls, they probably rep- for the new floor. Two supports for the resent part of a stairway leading to the second storey new floor’s beams could be identified at built on top of this central room. Also this central room has a buttress attached to the southern wall elevations of 1167.2 m (Locus 8a, running and built to support the roof beams.” (H. Mahasneh, out of Wall 8) and 11167.24 m (Locus pers. comm; see also Mahasneh 2003). 70 71

71 for subdividing room space. Such wall strengthenings, especially if not execut- ed in the original building plan (“retro- fitted buttresses”, as Bill Finlayson calls them), are most likely additions to walls that later had to carry the load of another storey. Wherever they appear in pairs in opposed locations, however, we may expect that they were erected to carry the main or central beam of the beam network of a ceiling or floor. At least four such twin-buttress pairs can be identified in Area B-North (marked by arrows in Fig. 6). Buttress 24 in B32 may have had the function of a strengthening buttress, but it may also have served to reduce the span, for which available beams were not long enough to bridge. There do not appear to be any minimum or maximum standard distances between such main beam supports, since these were influenced by Figure 9: access to the floor of the upper new available beam lengths (juniper, stone Ba‘ja, Area B North, room, located between Walls 39, 10, 8, 7, oak, and pistachio were probably avail- Square B22; and 54, or between the twin buttresses, able), room sizes, and other spatial and Staircase in Room 3, 33 and 55, respectively. Further excava- topographical conditions. from south tions will hopefully clarify whether the (photo: M. Kinzel) stairwell was built before erecting the LPPNB buttresses usually abut the new upper storey, and previously led to walls; rarely are they bonded with the roof or a roofment of the building, them. This must be an indication of or was attached west of Wall 8 during their secondary or subsequent struc- erection of the new upper floor. tural purpose, caused by later static Room 17 (ca. 8-9 m2), with its twin but- needs (strengthening buttresses), the tresses, may well represent the remains need for beam supports when erecting of a yet unexcavated larger room of the a new storey (support buttresses), or Reconsideration last storey that existed in this domestic both. Some buttresses extend through area. Most likely, a “girder grillage” the storeys, while others were erected of the architecture of leveled walls like those mentioned when building a new storey (e.g., abut- above will show up in its lower stratifica- ted Buttresses 33 and 55 were founded in Area B-North tion. Like the new upper room between on top of leveled Wall 34, witnessing buttresses Loci 33 and 55, it had a stair- their secondary need as a beam supports proves the well to its west (Room 3). Room 17 also for the upper storey, Fig. 7). had a stairwell (Room 14a) to the west. The distance between Buttresses 33 existence of at least Reconsideration of the architecture in and 55 (3.4 m) does not lead us to Area B-North proves the existence of at expect that a single beam spanned the three storey least three such storey transformations supposed large room of the latest upper in perhaps three buildings. The other storey. Possibly we can expect that a transformations example appears to exist in Rooms central pillar helped shorter beams to 22/23, where we find a system of altered span the distance. in perhaps twin buttresses (Loci 7 and 9, Loci 4/5, Ceiling Layer 41 (Fig. 7) rests on the and the opposed one in B23). leveled Wall 34, and is 20-30 cm thick. three buildings. Buttresses are a common feature in The height of its base corresponds to the LPPNB architecture of southern the height of the beam supports Loci Jordan, as are walls that extended at 8a and 36, the height of a support gap right angles into the interior of rooms (Locus 40) in Wall 39, and the lev- (e.g., Wall 7 in B23). Buttresses do not eled tops of Walls 16 and 19. Not only necessarily have the function of sup- the corresponding heights, but also its porting a ceiling’s beams (Kinzel, forth- material let us interpret this Layer 41 coming). They could simply represent as the in situ remains of a floor/ceiling strengthening of long walls or means between the upper large room with the 72 73

72 twin Buttresses 55 and 33, and Rooms 2, 6) Insertion or modification of staircases, 4, 5, and 6 underneath. The clayish-silty stairwells, or ladder spaces to provide material is a compact and dense mixture access between the storeys or to the of finer sediment with a high content of roof. lime, recycled plaster, and charcoal. 7) Reorganization of room connections Observations in by blocking (or inserting?) wall open- Summary ings (passages, window-like openings) Ba‘ja also hint If we generalize the evidence from Area in the new basement or groundfloor. B-North in Ba‘ja, and consider all infor- that LPPNB mation from the other LPPNB sites in Observations in Ba‘ja also hint that southern Jordan, we may hypothesize that LPPNB basements or groundfloors basements or the following measures took place when- were intentionally filled, and that the ever a new storey or room association former upper storey became a basement groundfloors was established in LPPNB steep-slope by adding a new storey above it. At this housing: time, another episode of groundplan were intentionally 1) Cutting back the walls of an existing alterations included insertions of stairs, groundplan (upper storey or ground floor) walls, windows, buttresses to support filled, and that to a similar height in the area above which planned upper storey features, and clos- the floor(s) of the new storey would be ing of windows and passages. The com- the former upper located. The previous groundplan would plexity of architectural events in this now represent a basement or groundfloor. process results from the fact that the storey became a 2) Possible insertion of further rooms or various building measures could hap- walls, creating a cellular layout of this pen in one building at different levels basement by add- basement that functioned as a girder gril- or on terraces. If we assume that the lat- lage for the new floor of the new upper est upper storey is always eroded away, ing a new storey storey (or ceiling of the new basement, steep-slope stratigraphies like those in respectively). Ba‘ja should contain mainly superim- above it. 3) Insertion, reuse, or modification of posed basements and only rarely frag- buttresses in the basement or ground- ments of upper storeys. floor to strengthen the walls so that they could support another storey. 4) Building or extension of buttresses in or into the upper storey to support the Acknowledgements main beams of the ceiling or strengthen I thank Ted Banning, Bill Finlayson, the walls there. Bo Dahl Hermansen, Moritz Kinzel, 5) Modification of walls in the girder Hamzeh Mahasneh, Hans J. Nissen, grillage of the ground floor to create Gary O. Rollefson, and Alan Simmons beam supports, where necessary (gap for sharing their ideas about two-storey supports, wall supports). housing in the LPPNB.

72 73

73 References Wandels vom akeramischen bis zum kera- PPNB architecture. Neo-Lithics 2/04: 18-22. mischen Neolithikum, II: Grundzüge sozialen forthcoming. Basta architectural reconstruction. Banning, E. B., and B. F. Byrd 1987. Houses and Wandels im Neolithikum der südlichen In: H.G.K. Gebel, H.J. Nissen, and Z. Zaid, the changing residential unit: Domestic archi- Levante. http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg. Basta II. The Stratigraphy and Architecture. tecture at PPNB ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan. de/volltexte/466. Freiburg, Universiäts- Berlin, ex oriente. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 53: 309-25. bibliothek. Kuijt, I. 2000. People and space in Early Byrd, B. F. 1994. Public and private, domestic and 2004. Central to what? Remarks on the settle- Agricultural Villages: Exploring Daily Lives, corporate: The emergence of the Southwest ment patterns of the LPPNB mega-sites in Community Size, and Architecture in the Late Asian village. American Antiquity 49(4):639- Jordan. In: H.D. Bienert, H.G.K. Gebel, and Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Journal of 666. R. Neef (eds.), Central Settlements in Anthropological Archaeology 19: 75-102. 2005. Early Village Life at Beidha, Jordan: Neolithic Jordan. Studies in Early Near Eastern Kuijt, I., and B. Finlayson 2002. The 2002 excava- Neolithic Spatial Organization and Vernacular Production, Subsistence and Environment 5: tion season at Dhra, Jordan: Preliminary results Architecture. British Academy Monographs in 1-20. Berlin, ex oriente. from the Jericho IX and Pre-Pottery Neolithic Archaeology 14. Oxford University Press, Gebel H.G.K. and B.D. Hermansen 2001. A period components. Neo-Lithics 2/02: 17-20. Oxford. LPPNB Ba‘ja 2001. A short note. Neo-Lithics Mahasneh H. 2003 Archaeological investigations Byrd, B. F., and E. B. Banning 1988. Southern 2/01: 19. at the Neolithic site of es-Sifiya Site/ Wadi Levantine pier houses: Intersite architectural 2004. Ba‘ja 2003: Summary on the 5th Mujib, Jordan. Adumatu 7: 7-28. patterning during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Season of excavation. Neo-Lithics 2/04: 15-18. Nissen H.J. forthcoming. The architecture. In: Paléorient 14: 65-72. Gebel H.G.K., M. Muheisen, H.J. Nissen, H.G.K. Gebel, H.J. Nissen, and Z. Zaid (eds.), Cameron, C. M. 1996a. Multi-story construction N. Qadi, with contributions by C. Becker, B. Basta II. The Stratigraphy and Architecture. Berlin, in Southwestern pueblo architecture. In D. Hermansen, R. Neef, R. M. Shafiq, and ex oriente. J. J. Reid and P. R. Fish (eds.), Interpreting M. Schultz 2004 Late PPNB Basta: Results Nissen H.J., M. Muheisen, and H.G. Gebel, with Southwestern Diversity: Underlying Principles of 1992. in: H.D. Bienert, H.G.K. Gebel, and contributions by C. Becker, R. Neef, H.J. and Overlying Patterns, 195-199. Arizona R. Neef (eds.), Central Settlements in Pachur, N. Qadi, and M. Schultz 1987 Report State University Anthropological Papers. Neolithic Jordan. Studies in Early Near Eastern on the first two seasons of excavations at Basta. Tempe: Arizona State University. Production, Subsistence and Environment 5: Annual of the Department of Antiquities of 1996b. Observations on the pueblo house 71-104. Berlin, ex oriente. Jordan 31: 79-120. and household. In G. Coupland and E. B. Gebel, H.G.K., B.D. Hermansen, and M. Kinzel, Simmons A. and M. Najjar, 1998. Preliminary Banning, (eds.), People Who Lived in Big in press. Ba‘ja 2005. Short report on the 6th report of the 1997-98 Ghwair I excavation sea- Houses: Archaeological Perspectives on Large season of excavation. Neo-Lithics 1/06. son, Wadi Feinan, southern Jordan. Domestic Structures, 71-88. Monographs in Hermansen B. D, T. I., J. C. Hoffmann, et al. n.d. Neo-Lithics 1/98: 5-8. World Archaeology 27. Madison, Prehistory Shkarat Msaaid 2005: A short preliminary 1999. Preliminary field report of the 1998-1999 Press. report. Neo-Lithics 1/06, forthcoming. excavations at Ghwair 1, a Pre-Pottery Finlayson, B., Kuijt, I., Arpin, T., Chesson, M., Kidder, A. V. 1958. Pecos, New Mexico: Neolithic B community in Wadi Feinan Region Dennis, S., Goodale, N., Kadowaki, S. Maher, Archaeological Notes. Papers of the Peabody of southern Jordan. Neo-Lithics 1/99: 4-6. S. Smith, S., Schurr, M., and McKay, J. 2003. Foundation for Archaeology 5. Andover: 2000. Preliminary report of the1999-2000 exca- Dhra’ Excavation Project, 2002 interim report. Phillips Academy. vation season at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Levant 35: 1-38. Kinzel M. 2003. Basta, Südjordanien. settlement of Ghwair 1, southern Jordan. Neo- Garfinkel, Y. 2006, The Social Organization of Über legungen zur Rekonstruktion von Lithics 1/00: 6-8. Neolithic Sha'ar Hagolan, In Domesticating Area B (7000 BC) nach bauarchäologischen Verhoeven, M., 2006. Megasites in the Jordanian Space, E.B. Banning and M. Chazan (eds.), Befunden. Berlin, Technische Universität: Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: Evidence for 'Proto- ex-Oriente, Berlin. unpub. Abschlußarbeit Aufbaustudium Urbanism'. In Domesticating Space, E.B. Banning Gebel H.G.K. 2002. Subsistenzformen, Denkmalpflege. and M. Chazan (eds.), ex-Oriente, Berlin. Siedlungsweisen und Prozesse des sozialen 2004. Some notes on the reconstruction of

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74 Megasites in the Jordanian Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Evidence for ‘Proto-Urbanism’?

Marc Verhoeven The University of Tokyo

In recent years, the phenomenon of “megasites” in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB ca. 7500-7000 cal BC) in Jordan has received considerable attention from prehistorians (e.g., Bienert 2001; Gebel 1997; Hole 2000; Kuijt 2000; Rollefson 1998; Simmons 2000).1 Megasites are large sites, up to 12 ha, pre- dominantly located in the mountainous area east of the Jordan rift valley. From north to south the megasites are (fig. 1): Beisamoun (in Israel: Lechevallier 1978), Abu Suwwan (Simmons et al. 1988), Wadi Shu‘aib (Simmons et al. 2001), Kharaysin (Edwards and Thorpe 1986), ‘Ain Ghazal (Rollefson 1997; Rollefson et al. 1992), es-Sifiya (Mahashneh 1997), al-Baseet (Fino, 1998), Basta (Nissen 1990) and ‘Ain Jammam (Waheeb and Fino 1997). Simmons (1995: 119-120; 2000: 215-216) has noted the following general characteristics of megasites: 1. They are all large, mostly > 9 ha. 2. Many of the sites are located in or adjacent to relatively marginal ecological zones (desert edges). 3. The sites became established in most of the major wadi systems, often near springs. 4. The cultural deposits are generally not as thick as at tells. 5. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A occupation appears that relatively very small portions Figure 1: seems to be absent, and the PPNB depos- of the megasites have been excavated, Location of Neolithic sites its date from the middle to late range of ranging from around 2% at ‘Ain Ghazal mentioned in the text that period. to only 0.037% of the total surface area 6. They appear to have been abandoned at Wadi Shu’aib and al-Baseet. It follows after the PPNB period. that at least 98% of the various megasites Megasites played an important remains unexcavated. role in some of the discussions at the Domesticating Space conference. In this Population estimates contribution I shall address the prob- Megasites have figured prominently in lematic nature of many current inter- many articles dealing with, among other pretations with regard to these large and things, Late PPNB population numbers. intriguing sites.2 1. See also Neolithics 2/97, an issue devoted to the symposium Central Settlements in Neolithic Jordan. Site and excavation areas 2. This article focuses on the Jordanian megasites, but it is also relevant for the interpretation of other large sites, Table 1 shows that the megasites generally such as PPNB Abu Hureyra (approximately 12 ha) in range in size from 7 to 12 ha. It furthermore Syria (Moore et al. 2000). PB 75

75 Megasite Surface area (ha) Excavated area (m2) Excavated area (%) It can be argued Beisamoun3 10 576 0.57 Abu Suwwan4 ? ? ? that, instead of Wadi Shu‘aib 9 34 0.037 Kharaysin5 36 0 0 constant occupation ‘Ain Ghazal 12 2355 1.96 es-Sifiya 7 140 0.2 density in all areas al-Baseet 7.5 28 0.037 Basta 10 1000 1 of the site, ‘Ain Jammam6 7 400 0.57?

occupation shifted Table 1. Estimated surface areas and excavation areas of megasites.7 from one area 3. At Beisamoun many structures (walls) were visible at the surface: the figure of 576 m2 represents the area of detailed surface mapping: sections a and b in 'bassin' 10, and sections c and d in 'bassin' 2. Within these sections only very small portions have been excavated (Lechevallier 1978: 125-145). to another 4. It is reported that Abu Suwwan is a major and large site, but its actual size is not mentioned. In 1955 Kirkbride excavated a small sounding to a depth of around 1.5 m at the site (Simmons 1995; Simmons et al. 1988). in the course of time. 5. Most likely the 36 ha distribution of artefacts at Kharaysin reflects erosion and deflation (Edwards & Thorpe 1986). 6. As yet, no plans have been published of 'Ain Jammam. 7. The estimated areas are based on Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989; Edwards and Thorpe 1986; Fino Ultimately, 1998; Kuijt 2000; Lechevallier 1978; Mahasneh 1997; Nissen 1990; Nissen et al. 1987, 1988; Rollefson pers. comm.; Simmons et al, 1988; Simmons et al. 2001; Waheeb and Fino 1997. this resulted in a

large occupied area, Generally, large aggregations and high our knowledge of PPNB society, econo- densities of people are assumed (e.g., my and technology. As indicated by the a megasite. Banning 1998; Bar-Yosef and Belfer- basic figures presented in table 1, how- Cohen 1989; Bienert 2001; Kuijt 2000; ever, these excavations cannot be held to Rollefson and Rollefson 1989; Simmons be representative of the entire megasite. 2000). For instance, for ‘Ain Ghazal, For one thing, this leads to an underesti- maximum population levels of 3528 mation of open areas. (Kuijt 2000: 81) and 3775 (Rollefson and Rollefson 1989: 76) have been estimated. Occupation density For Basta a number of 4116 is suggested It can be argued that, instead of constant (Kuijt 2000: 81). Generally, scholars speak occupation density in all areas of the of thousands of people, hence use of the site, occupation shifted from one area to term ‘proto-urbanism’ (e.g., Bienert 2001; another in the course of time. Ultimately, Gebel 1997). The population estimates this resulted in a large occupied area, in these studies seem to be based on site a megasite. Thus, the site as we see it size, relying on three critical assumptions today may never have been entirely cov- (e.g., Kuijt 2000: 81): ered with architecture and populated at 1. The type and density of the structures one point in time. (houses?) in excavated areas are repre- Using evidence from an area with sentative of the site as a whole. which I am well-acquainted, the pattern 2. The horizontal extent of cultural mate- of shifting occupation seems to hold for rials for each site is representative of the many Neolithic tells in the Balikh valley actual extent of the site while occupied. in northern Syria. Today the Neolithic 3. The occupation density is constant in tells of Sabi Abyad I and Mounbatah, all areas of the site. for instance, appear as sites of 4 ha and 30 ha respectively. Detailed sur- Problems of population estimates vey at Mounbatah (Akkermans 1993: In the following, I will argue that the 151-153) and excavations at Sabi Abyad above assumptions are quite problem- I (Verhoeven and Kranendonk 1996), atic, focussing on three main problems.8 however, have revealed that occupation shifted from one area to another in the Representativity of excavations course of time. Each of these sites origi- The various excavations, especially nally consisted of a number of smaller those at ‘Ain Ghazal, have had important settlements that, through processes of results and have considerably expanded tell formation and erosion, have merged 76 77

76 in the course of time. Archaeologists, access to tap water”. In fact, about 40% of therefore, should make a clear distinc- the buildings in the village of Suweimrah tion between site and settlement. are owned by these year-round nomads. These structures are never inhabited, and Year-round occupation are used for storage only. Circa 20% of the Neolithic settlements were not neces- houses are only occupied during certain It thus seems that sarily occupied all year round, as seems times of the year, mainly in the summer. to be assumed in most discussions of The remaining 40% of the buildings are population estimates megasites. With respect to this, I would occupied throughout the year, but near like to present some more data from the many of these houses tents are set up, related to megasites Balikh valley. On the basis of a detailed which are primarily used for relaxation study of the function and distribution of and entertaining the men. are founded on a hundreds of clay sealings at Sabi Abyad I, As Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen (1989: Akkermans and Duistermaat (1997) have 60) note, “... the range between fully rather weak basis. suggested that the population at the site nomadic and fully sedentary lifestyles was not composed entirely of permanent includes many different forms and combi- Yet these estimates residents, but had a considerable mobile nations, and it is the archaeologist’s task to or transhumant component, which made demonstrate for each case studied the way figure prominently use of the site for specific purposes at of life that was practiced by that society at specific times. Most likely, these ‘nomads’ a given archaeological period”. in basic models and comprised entire families since, as noted above, we seem to be dealing with par- Building a house of cards? hypotheses regarding ticular social groups. These non-residen- It thus seems that the population esti- tial groups mainly relied on a pastoralist mates related to megasites are founded on Late PPNB society. mode of subsistence in the Balikh val- a rather weak basis. Yet, these estimates ley and neighbouring areas. At the same figure prominently in important topics The most important time, they must have been closely associ- regarding Late PPNB society, which have ated with the sedentary populations at the been listed below. The most important of of these are related to various sites, which relied on cultivation. these issues are related to ‘proto-urbanism’. The dichotomy between nomads and ‘proto-urbanism’. residents was probably weak, and both Centre-periphery models groups may have changed places easily The existence of very large sites on the (Verhoeven 1999). one hand and smaller sites on the other There are also a number of ethno- hand suggests dependent relationships. graphic observations regarding seasonality Perhaps some sort of centralized redis- of occupation in the Near East. Köhler- tribution based on trade goods and eco- Rollefson (1987) has observed that the nomic surplus was developed. However, Marrai’e of the Huweitat tribe in Jordan, since small sites are rarely investigat- who combined pastoral and agricultural ed, the Neolithic human geography of subsistence activities, had three main pat- Jordan is as yet obscure (Rollefson 1998: terns of residence, which were directly 114; Simmons 2001: 145). Hole (2000) related to subsistence modes. First, there concludes that, to date, despite gross are people who have permanent houses differences in size and construction, in villages. Second, other families only there is no convincing evidence that live in the village for part of the year. any PPNB site served as a political or These families keep medium-sized herds economic centre.9 of sheep and goats, and usually stay in the village in spring, when grazing is possible Population aggregation, social crowding on the fallow fields. Third, there are the and architecture families who own large herds and who Kuijt (2000), among others, argues live in tents throughout the year. About that the megasite communities of sev- every month tents are relocated. Virtually eral thousand people lived in densely the entire family is engaged in herding packed residential structures covering and related activities. Köhler-Rollefson areas between 10 and 14 ha. According (1987: 526) has noted that “Although to Kuijt (2000: 87-88), two strategies these families are permanent tent dwell- 8. Although I am critical of many interpretations related to ers, many of them own houses in the large population numbers at PPNB megasites, I would like village simply to use these for storage (of to stress that I regard the various contributions used here grain, animal food, wool, tools) or to get (especially those of Kuijt, Rollefson, Simmons and Gebel) as pioneering, innovative and valuable! 76 77

77 adopted in response to increased popu- and an increase in pastoral activity (e.g., lation levels and control of food resourc- Kuijt 2000: 98; Simmons 1997: 312). es were the development of two-storey However elegant and structures and the compartmentalization Conclusion of buildings. The various models and hypotheses logical some of these just presented deal with crucial issues Social differentiation of Late PPNB society. These contribu- models may appear, In view of the postulated large populations are both important and influen- tion numbers, one would expect some tial. However elegant and logical some they are mainly based degree of social segmentation, a hier- of these models may appear, they are archical division of power and author- mainly based on quite speculative popu- on quite speculative ity. So far there is no evidence for this. lation estimates. It is beyond doubt Instead, the megasite community mem- that there were very large sites in the population estimates. bers seemed to have displayed limited Late PPNB, but as yet it is not clear social differentiation in mortuary prac- whether these megasites were occupied It is beyond doubt that tices and residential architecture (Kuijt over their entire surfaces. As a result, we 2000; Simmons 2000). should not assume at the moment that the there were very large megasites were the homes of thousands of Ritual people, who lived there on a year-round sites in the Late PPNB, It is generally assumed that marked basis. Archaeologists should make a clear evidence for symbolism in the Middle distinction between sites and settlements. but as yet it is not clear and Late PPNB, such as ‘temples’, Much more work needs to be done in deposits of plastered human skulls and order to create a sound empirical basis whether these megasites large plastered anthropomorphic statues with regard to ‘proto-urbanism’. Evidently, (Verhoeven 2002), is indicative of rituals full-scale excavation of megasites sites is were occupied over their that mainly served to create commu- virtually impossible. However, they might nity cohesion in order to counterbalance be more thoroughly investigated by a com- entire surfaces. social stress due to living in large aggre- bination of techniques, such as: gations (see the various contributions in Kuijt, ed., 2000). 1. detailed contour mapping of artefact distributions; Depletion of natural resources 2. geophysical survey; A number of scholars, most notably 3. small-scale but extensive excavation Rollefson and Rollefson (1989) and probes; Simmons (1997, 2000), have argued for 4. large-scale excavations of contiguous human-induced ecological degradation areas. in the Late PPNB (but see Gebel 2002). In their view, the large Jordanian sites, These approaches may be a first means to located in ecologically fragile zones, come to grips with the chronological and were initially adaptive in population architectural relationships, and eventually the increase and pooling of scarce resourc- people inhabiting the intriguing megasites. es, but eventually depleted the environment. For instance, with regard to ‘Ain Ghazal, Rollefson and Rollefson Acknowledgements (1989: 79) estimate that consumption for First of all I would like to thank Ted construction eventually stripped more Banning and Michael Chazan for than 2000 ha around the site of trees. their invitation to put forward my It is thought that these developments ideas. Discussions with Peter M.M.G. occurred against the back-drop of a Akkermans and Ian Kuijt were at the steadily deteriorating climate. basis of this contribution. I am obliged for their insights. The hospitality of my Site desertion and nomadic pastoralism dearest Sofie Debruyne made the writ- In the end, the failure to establish a ing of this contribution possible. Ans social hierarchy in the face of rapid Bulles corrected the English text. changes in economic systems, increasing aggregation of people into communities and environmental degradation resulted in the collapse of the megasite com- 9. See also various contributions in Neo-Lithics 2/97 munities, the abandonment of the sites, and Hole 2003. 78 79

78 79 80 PB

80 Domestic Activities at the Neolithic Site, ‘Ain Ghazal

Zeidan A. Kafafi Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology Yarmouk University

As the largest Neolithic site excavated in the Near East, ‘Ain Ghazal provides a wealth of evidence for the spatial organization of activities from the Middle PPNB to the Yarmoukian period. Since 1982, an international team of archaeologists has conducted 12 seasons of excavations at the site. These show that the site began as a small hamlet about 8200 cal BC, then grew steadily and rapidly for some two millennia. This paper will present evidence for the domestic activities that took place in both closed and open areas, and possible implications of changes in the spatial distribution of activities for our understanding of social organization among ‘Ain Ghazal’s inhabitants.

Introduction It also appearss that people did not feel The Neolithic witnessed one of the most Figure 1: secure to leave their property outside significant transformations in human his- Large quantities of their houses. The MPPNB houses were tory: the beginning and spread of agricul- peas, lentils and smaller erected next to one another on terraces ture, and the establishment of permanent amounts of barley were and there were no courtyard walls sepa- settlements with solid structures, con- presumably stored in rating one family’s property or domestic struction of ritual buildings, production baskets or bags of human statues and figurines of both area from that of its neighbours. As we humans and animals, development of new will see, there was a shift over time toward burial customs, long-distance exchange in conducting more and more activities raw materials, and the invention of plaster outdoors. To construct their houses, the and pottery. These changes took place over Yarmoukians of ‘Ain Ghazal maintained a span of some four thousand years, and the terrace system originally started in During the earliest provide numerous opportunities for study- the Middle PPNB. On each terrace there ing some of the less substantial aspects of were open areas in which several activities period of occupation human life in this period. In this paper, I were practiced. There were also walls and examine the domestic activities associated courtyards that appear to have separated at 'Ain Ghazal, with these changes, and their distribution the activities of different households. among indoor and outdoor spaces, at the the inhabitants dwelt Neolithic site of ‘Ain Ghazal in Jordan. Basic Domestic Tasks Why ‘Ain Ghazal? The answer is that Storage in a single room and this site served as a central place for more During the earliest period of occupation than 2,500 years and its excavated material at ‘Ain Ghazal — the Middle PPNB (ca. the storage facilities culture reflects many human activities and 8000 to 7500 cal BC) — its inhabitants practices. occupied single room houses and storage were limited. The excavated Middle PPNB levels at facilities were limited. Archaeological ‘Ain Ghazal show that most, if not all, excavations in the MPPNB levels did domestic activities were carried out indoors. not expose any exterior storage pits Each house consisted of a single room that (Rollefson 1997: 288). However, a stor- measured about 5 m x 5 m, suggests very age pit was excavated in the corner small coresidential groups. of one of the rooms (Rollefson and Simmons 1986: figure 11). Moreover,

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81 82 83 84 85 86 architectural, economic, and technologi- cal changes to draw a clear picture of the social structure found at this site from around 8000 to 6000 cal BC. We might summarize these changes as follows. 1) During the Middle PPNB, there is much evidence for the practice of all kinds of activities indoors. People stored, cooked, spun, and buried their dead The production inside their houses. Houses were tightly packed with no large outdoor spaces to and use of art objects, separate them (Banning and Byrd 1987; Byrd and Banning 1988). However, this such as statues does not exclude the possibility that the Middle PPNB people practiced some and figurines, Figure 10: 1998). The much smaller figurines of activities outdoors. For example, pre- Reconstruction people and animals have been found in a paring plaster for the floors has to take provide some evidence of a game similar variety of domestic contexts, both indoors place outside and, as Verhoeven notes to Manqala in the and outdoors. Comparable figurines of (this volume), limited excavations at for possible ritual PPNC levels of the Yarmoukian period at Sha‘ar Hagolan Neolithic sites have probably missed the South Field were frequently concentrated in domestic considerable open areas. or ideological activities. courtyards, suggesting an outdoor, but still Does such a pattern of activity orga- family-centred, use. McAdam (1997) has nization, with most activities apparent- suggested that figurines at ‘Ain Ghazal ly taking place indoors, indicate that might have been used in domestic magic nuclear families were the predominant practices that often included the “killing” social unit, as Flannery (1972) proposed? of the figurine. Control over storage and consumption of foods within small households would be Discussion consistent with this hypothesis. Tangible evidence for human activities 2) In the following period, the Late allows us to explore changes in social PPNB, several activities regularly took organization at different scales. In fact, it place outside houses. Outdoor activities is only during the past two decades that are evident in the fireplaces in the step archaeologists have begun to shed light trench in the East Field and pit for pro- on the social context of Neolithic life duction of lime plaster in the North and in the Near East. These studies mainly Central Fields. In addition, some indoor focus on households, economy, and social activities such as storage continued to be life (e.g., Byrd 1999: 63-92; Kuijt 1999: practiced inside the houses or in special 311) and follow on efforts that had con- places built for this purpose. The stor- centrated on understanding the origin of age facilities are also larger in area than agriculture and the economic changes before. Furthermore, houses were more from one sub-period of the Neolithic compartmentalized, allowing inhabitants to another. More recently, scholars have to separate activities from one another tried to envision the social practices that more easily (Hunter-Anderson 1977; highlight elements of social differen- Kuijt 200; Banning 2003). tiation and egalitarianism in Neolithic Do these changes mean that Late communities, and the distribution of PPNB families were larger than during activities in space provides one source of the Middle PPNB? Can we infer from evidence for these changing practices. the knapping place in the East Field and ‘Ain Ghazal provides an excellent the firing pits for plaster production that example with which to study and under- individuals in each family had their own stand these changes. It was occupied for daily assignments or their own special- more than 2000 years and has yielded a ized crafts? large volume of information that allows It has already been suggested that the us to envisage social changes there. Late PPNB inhabitants of ‘Ain Ghazal Among these aspects are indoor and out- built several types of ritual buildings, door activities of the site’s inhabitants. In like the rounded structures in the North my view, we may combine the activities Field and the rectangular ones in the discussed above with evidence for the East Field. Does this variation in the

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87 form and distribution of ritual architec- practices. It seems that people became ture mean that there were several tribes busier with other things. or clans at the site during this period, Over the long course of its occupation, each with its own ritual structure? Are ‘Ain Ghazal flourished and expanded. It we allowed to conjecture that there were had a larger number of people occupy- priests who took care of these buildings ing a larger area than before (but see and led the inhabitants in their ritual Verhoeven, this volume). This invites us practices? I might suggest that the evi- to raise the following questions. Can we A well-organized dence for activities at ‘Ain Ghazal during infer the appearance of extended fami- this period is consistent with the coex- lies over these periods (cf. Garfinkel, this society that has istence of hierarchical and egalitarian volume)? Does it make sense to speak of dimensions in society. the appearance of social differentiation at different social levels 3) During the PPNC, the people of ‘Ain ‘Ghazal? Can we suggest the emer- ‘Ain Ghazal made plaster, cooked, bur- gence of power and authority at some that practiced ied the dead, and carried out several time during its occupation? The pres- other activities in open areas between ence of someone with the authority to different activties the houses or in courtyards. Sometimes give orders, resolve disputes, and arrange they built a ramada-like structure to things of communal interest might have should have had shade them while they sat on these out- facilitated a shift toward a more outward dor floors. distribution of activities than that found authorities who 4) The Yarmoukians who lived at ‘Ain when the site was first occupied. Ghazal continued to live much like their gave orders predecessors but added some new behav- iours. The production of pottery uten- Acknowledgements and arranged things sils. started during this period. Yet the I would like to express my sincere Yarmoukians continued to cook, make thanks to Prof. Muhammad Ajluni for in the community. fire, and manufacture things, no doubt reading and editing the English text of including pottery, outside their houses. this paper and to Mr. Eyad Kan‘an for In addition, the excavated PPNC and providing the line drawings. Yarmoukian levels produced only very few objects associated with art and ritual

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90 Traditional architecture and social organisation The agglomerated buildings of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in Neolithic Central Anatolia Marion Cutting Institute of Archaeology University College, London This paper explores the relationship and Byrd 1987; Byrd 1994; 2005; Flannery between the use of architectural space 2002; Kuijt 2000 and Rollefson 1997). and social organisation at the two Central Underpinning the majority of these stud- Anatolian neolithic sites of Aşıklı Höyük ies are two interconnected hypotheses. The and Çatalhöyük, where architectural tradi- first is that a change in social organisation tions apparently changed very little over that involves a shift in the importance of several centuries of continuous occupation. the individual household unit vis à vis the Data from both sites suggest that inter- wider community will be associated with preting the relationship between social architectural change. Thus the transition organisation and domestic architecture is from simple, small houses to larger, more particularly complex when architecture ornate ones within a settlement signals a is agglomerated. The factors that may rise in the importance of particular house- Vernacular buildings, bring about the kind of social change holds. This in turn indicates the develop- that causes traditional architecture to vary ment of kinship-dominance and a tendency following traditional include opportunity to accumulate wealth. for society to move from co-operative to Changes in patterns of animal exploitation hierarchical organisation. forms rather than being may have precipitated the abandonment of The second hypothesis, a variant on the agglomerated architecture at both Aşıklı first, suggests that societies that perpetu- architect-designed, Höyük and Çatalhöyük. ate their traditional use of built space over time are necessarily ‘conservative’, at least in usually have a more Introduction terms of social organisation. The word ‘architecture’ has many mean- Taken together, these hypotheses have direct relationship to ings and associations that range from the encouraged some to suggest that Aşıklı functional to the aesthetic. It is used not Höyük, with its repetitive architecture, may the functional needs, only to refer to ‘four walls and a roof,’ but have been a backward and inward-look- also to the total effect, both physical and ing society, ill-adapted to change, while social organisation aesthetic, that a structure may have on Çatalhöyük, with its changes in settle- both its inhabitants and its neighbours. ment layout, was more likely to be a for- or cultural-symbolic Thus the nature of the spaces within walls ward-looking, creative, and dynamic society or between buildings becomes at least as (Thissen 2002: 17-19; Gérard 2002: 109) . customs of the people important as, and probably more impor- The discussion that follows suggests that tant than, the form of the vertical walls neither hypothesis is appropriate when it who built them and for alone because it is within these spaces comes to interpreting the social dynamics that people carry out their daily activities. of people who constructed their buildings whom they were built. Vernacular buildings, following traditional so closely together that entrance by ground forms rather than being architect-designed, level was impossible. usually have a more direct relationship to This discussion is divided into three the functional needs, social organisation parts. The first describes the two sites of or cultural-symbolic customs of the people Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük and uses who built them and for whom they were quantitative data to compare their house- built (Cutting forthcoming; Golany 1980 hold and settlement architecture and to and Aran 2000). It is not surprising that, assess evidence for architectural continuity in the Near East, where so much mud- over time. The second identifies differ- brick architecture survives in the archaeo- ences between the two sites in architec- logical record, household and settlement ture and social organisation and discusses PB spatial configuration have been widely used the importance of accumulated wealth, 91 to study social organisation (e.g., Banning inheritance and social hierarchy. The third

91 explores the relationship between vernacu- that entrance at ground level was usually lar tradition and social change and suggests impossible, they configured and decorated why these two early farming communities their domestic space very differently (see may finally have abandoned their tradition below). This makes a comparison between of agglomerated architecture. Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük of particular interest to archaeologists who wish to Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük study the relationship between the use of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük provide a space, subsistence and social organisation Although remarkable architectural record of the first in early farming communities. two millennia of early agricultural settle- the inhabitants ment in Central Anatolia. Each site was The architecture occupied continuously for nearly a millen- at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük of both settlements nium, with the foundation of Çatalhöyük The plan of Aşıklı Höyük’s large hori- following closely the demise of Aşıklı zontal exposure reveals a large block of built their mud-brick Höyük1. The settlements were located at agglomerated mud-brick architecture similar altitudes, Aşıklı Höyük at 1119 (marked with a dotted line in Figure 1) domestic buildings m and Çatalhöyük at 980 m, little more with more dispersed mud-brick and stone than 130 km apart, in the Cappadocian buildings in the northeast and a cluster so closely together highlands and the Konya Plain, which of smaller buildings grouped around two are usually grouped together on topo- larger buildings in the southwest. The that entrance graphic grounds into the region of Central River Melendiz has severely eroded the Anatolia (Özdoğan in Gérard and Thissen mound on its northern, western and south- at ground level was 2002: 85). Despite these similarities, there ern flanks and it is clear from its current are also striking differences. shape that the agglomerated architecture usually impossible, Although the inhabitants of both sites once continued considerably further to the cultivated cereals (van Zeist and de Roller northwest and west. This central block of they configured and 1995, 2003; Asouti and Fairbairn 2002; agglomerated architecture differs from that Helbaek 1964; Fairbairn et al. 2004), their found elsewhere on the site and, although decorated their use of animals differed considerably. The associated with the unusual and apparently inhabitants of the main area of domestic non-domestic buildings in the the south- domestic space architecture at Aşıklı Höyük (see below) west. appears to predate the mud-brick and depended on wild animal resources, per- stone architecture in the northeast2. For very differently haps in part managing the wild sheep these reasons, the data used here to com- and goat whose copious remains were pare Aşıklı Höyük with Çatalhöyük have found within the deep middens at the site been collected only from the buildings (Buitenhuis 1997: 660). At Çatalhöyük within this central block. Level VIB has East, by contrast, the remains of domes- been chosen to represent the architecture ticated sheep/goat consumption were of Çatalhöyük (East) because it contains found within the buildings throughout its more buildings than the other (eleven) main occupation levels. The cattle prob- levels excavated during the early 1960s ably remained wild (Martin, Russell and (Mellaart 1962; 1963; 1964; 1966; 1967). Carruthers 2002). The architecture also differed. Although the inhabitants of The architecture: both settlements built their mud-brick occupation and continuity domestic buildings so closely together In order to use household and settle- 1. Aşıklı Höyük was occupied between about 8500 ment architectural characteristics to tease (or earlier) and 7400 cal BC (Thissen 2002a: 324). out ideas about social organisation, it is The main mound at Çatalhöyük (Çatalhöyük East) was inhabited between about 7300/7100 and 6100 cal essential to identify an architectural ‘snap- BC (Cessford 2002: 29) and the smaller neighbouring mound (Çatalhöyük West) at about 6000 cal BC shot in time’. This is because such ideas (www.canew.org). depend upon relationships – relationships 2. Esin and Harmankaya suggest that the central and between rooms within buildings, between southwestern areas of the site were broadly contempo- one building and another, and between rary (Esin and Harmankaya 1999 Vol. 1: 129). However, the agglomerated more obviously domestic buildings groups of buildings and the settlement as differ in terms of size, configuration, construction and a whole. We can only infer these relation- the distribution of hearths from the architecture in the northeast and southwest of the site (Cutting 2005). ships from buildings that were used con- Building T in the southwest corner of Aşıklı appears temporaneously. similar to the large Building A at the adjoining site of Musular (dated to about 7600 cal BC, Özbaşaran 2000, However, it is notoriously difficult on 92 Thissen 2002: 324-5). It has been suggested that both buildings may have been associated with ceremonies to tel sites to establish whether or not an 93 do with cattle hunting (Duru and Özbaşaran 2005) occupation floor within one building was

92 N 0 10m

The ‘central’ area of Figure1: excavated domestic architecture Aşıklı Höyük. Redrawn by Use of stone the author after plans in Esin and Harmankaya 1999 Plate: 90

in use at the same time as that in another only minor adjustments over time. These (Rosen 1986). Furthermore, recent exca- included a changed internal partition, an vations at Çatalhöyük have shown that alteration in hearth arrangements, and a many changes took place inside buildings minor building enlargement using a small over time, making it even more diffi- piece of space left between buildings (Esin cult to synchronise room and hearth/oven and Harmankaya 1999 Vol. 2: 94-5, Cutting arrangements (Cessford in press). It is not 2005) . The same degree of continuity in surprising, therefore, that there are doubts vernacular architectural tradition was found about the chronological integrity of the at Çatalhöyük, where the alignment of indi- central block of agglomerated architecture vidual buildings changed very little from at Aşıklı Höyük and of Level VIB (and the one level to another in the areas excavated. other levels) at Çatalhöyük. Despite phas- Although buildings changed over time in ing ambiguities, however, this architec- their decoration, internal partitioning, and ture can be used to represent architectural oven and hearth positions, their external snapshots in time because of the marked walls remained the same to a remarkable pattern of repetitive architecture over time degree between Levels VIII and IV.4 On at both sites. the very rare occasions when people enlarged Wherever successive phases of occupa- their buildings, they did so by encroaching tion were exposed at Aşıklı Höyük, it onto the small areas of open space left became clear that the vernacular agglomerated architecture had remained essentially 3. Excavations at Aşıklı Höyük concentrated on produc- 3 ing a large horizontal exposure. Successive phases of unchanged over several centuries . The deep occupation were recorded on the western edges of the tell, in a small area of the central part and, particularly, in northern section, for example, showed that a deep section on the northern eroded edge. new walls and hearths were built directly 4. When the architecture of one level is correctly aligned above the old during eight phases of occu- above or below that of another to take account of the pation (Esin and Harmankaya 1999 Vol. fact that Mellaart’s excavation area moved towards the 92 west as it deepened, building outlines show remarkable 93 2: 93). In the same area, eight phases continuity between at least Levels VIII to IV (Cutting of a small horizontal excavation revealed 2003, 2005, 2006).

93 Figure 2 : Çatalhöyük Level VIB Redrawn by the author after Mellaart 1962-1967 and Ritchey 1996

Hearth

Oven

Unbuilt space

Approximate scale 0 5m

between buildings. At Çatalhöyük, as at Building construction and decoration Aşıklı Höyük, buildings became even at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük more crowded together over time as The approximately rectangular or trap- every small area of open space was used ezoidal Aşıklı Höyük buildings were less up. substantially built than the more regular- In short, the excavation evidence dem- ly rectangular structures of Çatalhöyük onstrates remarkable architectural con- and appear incapable of supporting even tinuity through several hundred years a partial upper storey (Berker et al 1991: of occupation at both Aşıklı Höyük and 153). Çatalhöyük buildings usually had Çatalhöyük. This means that the block sturdy outer walls and would have been of agglomerated architecture exposed strong enough to support a partial or in the central site area at Aşıklı Höyük full upper storey (Cutting 2005). At and the buildings in Level VIB at both sites, buildings were built so closely Çatalhöyük can each be treated as if together that entry would have had to be they were architectural ‘snapshots in from roof level. time’ and their data used to detect real Not all buildings at Çatalhöyük con- differences in architectural tradition. tained the wall paintings, mouldings and Using these data, comparisons can be stylised bulcrania for which the site is made between the two sites in terms of so well known, and which led Mellaart building construction, decoration, size to designate some buildings as ‘shrines’ and configuration, and the presence or (Mellaart 1967: 65). However, nearly absence of hearths/ovens at each site. all buildings conformed sufficiently to a These aspects are considered in turn standard pattern of platforms, benches, 94 95 below in order to provide the basis for pillars, ovens or hearths, and storage investigating social organisation. areas to make a ‘Çatalhöyük building’

94 instantly recognisable as such. an average internal floor area of 7 m2, At Aşıklı Höyük, the situation was very than at Çatalhöyük, at 10 m2 (Figures Using the different. The buildings there were sim- 5a and 5b). pler, or at least lacked the kind of solid Building configuration also differed architectural data, ornamentation that would survive in the dramatically between the two sites, with archaeological record. There were few buildings at Çatalhöyük more elaborately comparisons can be internal features. Nevertheless, although sub-divided than those at Aşıklı Höyük. only a few walls or floors revealed hints At Aşıklı Höyük, 67% of the complete made between the of coloured plaster, their surfaces were buildings consisted of one room only, renewed frequently, and traces of rush and less than 7% had more than two two sites in terms of matting remained on some of the floors. rooms. At Çatalhöyük, by contrast, the In short, considerable care was taken to subdivision of buildings into two or more building construction, maintain the buildings at Aşıklı Höyük rooms was far more common. Only 40% even though they may have lacked the had only one room and nearly a quarter decoration, size and elaborate ornamentation that was such a of all buildings had three or more. Given notable feature at Çatalhöyük. the additional ‘furniture’ (columns, nich- configuration, Hearth es and platforms) typically found at Building size and configuration Çatalhöyük but not at Aşıklı Höyük, the and the presence at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük Oven buildings at the former site were clearly Quantitative data are available for two far more architecturally elaborate than or absence of hearths Unbuilt space units of architecture, buildings and those at the latter. However, despite rooms. A ‘building’ was defined as ‘all their relative simplicity, there seems little or ovens at each site. spaces that are beneath one roof ’ (Düring justification for describing the Aşıklı 2001: 5), while a ‘room’ was defined as an Höyük buildings as “mud-brick ‘tents’' These aspects are internal space bounded by at least three rather than ‘homes’ ”(Thissen 2002: 25). walls or partitions and with an area of at considered in turn least a square metre. Measurements were Hearths and ovens at recorded only for ‘complete’ buildings Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük to provide the basis Approximate scale 0 5m and rooms, defined as having at least The agglomerated buildings in the central three-quarters of their internal ground area of Aşıklı Höyük contained rectangular for investigating area clearly and unambiguously record- hearths that showed no special distribution ed on the site plans. Each complete room pattern or standard orientation (Özbaşaran social organisation. was recorded, even when it might be part 1998: 556). The data analysis, which shows of an incompletely excavated, and thus that the internal floor areas within those unrecorded, building, and its usable floor buildings containing hearths (57% of total space measured. Hearths and ovens were buildings) ranged between 5 and 17 m2, recorded as present or absent. confirms this, while nearly half the build- Applying these methods, it was possi- ings containing hearths were small (i.e., ble to identify 26 buildings and 80 rooms, with internal floor areas below 8 m2). many of which were part of incom- At Çatalhöyük, ovens and hearths were pletely excavated, and therefore unre- distributed quite differently. Nearly three- corded, buildings, within the agglomer- quarters of the ovens recorded, and nearly ated architecture in the central site area all the hearths, were situated in the large of Aşıklı Höyük, and 39 buildings and main living area and only one was found 93 rooms in Level VIB at Çatalhöyük. in a room with an internal floor area less Aşıklı Höyük’s buildings and rooms were than 9 m2. much smaller than those of Çatalhöyük (Figures 3a and 3b). At Aşıklı Höyük, Social organisation over half the complete buildings (53%) at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük had internal floor areas no greater than 9 Buildings and households at Aşıklı Höyük m2 and nearly a quarter had floors mea- and Çatalhöyük suring no greater than 6 m2. Only two The data presented above reveal some of the remaining buildings approached striking differences between the vernacu- the average size of Çatalhöyük buildings lar domestic architecture of Aşıklı Höyük (Figure 4a). By contrast, the Çatalhöyük and Çatalhöyük. These differences suggest buildings had an average internal floor that the inhabitants of each site arranged area of 19 m2 and varied more widely in their routine daily living activities very dif- 94 size (Figure 4b). Rooms were also gener- ferently and that their social organisation 95 ally much smaller at Aşıklı Höyük, with differed considerably. In order to tease

95 out the relationship between architecture, were large enough to have housed all the daily living activities and social organisa- basic living needs of a household group. It tion, it is best to start with the later site, is easy enough to envisage these structures Çatalhöyük, where buildings are more eas- as providing a place for a family group ily recognised as household centres. to rest, cook, eat, sleep and work5. People At Çatalhöyük, buildings typically con- clearly invested considerable energy and tained a full suite of ‘domestic’ architec- time in these buildings and it is difficult tural furniture – one large room and one not to believe that individual structures or more small rooms, benches, platforms, played an important role in establish- ovens, hearths and some decoration – and ing or reinforcing household identity.

Figure 3: Internal floor areas of buildings and rooms at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük

Figure 4: Building distribution by floor area at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük

Figure 5: Room distribution by floor area at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük

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96 The arrangement of domestic space at early farming communities in the Levant. Çatalhöyük suggests a society organised In this framework, Aşıklı Höyük might around individual household units that exemplify a co-operative egalitarianism Striking differences were closely associated with particular similar to the small-scale household stage buildings. Variations in building size, in that Byrd (1994) envisages at Beidha or between the vernacular the richness of interior decoration, or in the ‘micro-kinship’ system that Rollefson both suggest the existence of differences (1997) suggests pertained at ‘Ain Ghazal. domestic architecture in household wealth or status. The repeti- Çatalhöyük might mark the development tion of these spatial arrangements and the of a corporate kinship system leading to of Așıklı Höyük and persistence of size variations over time, the rise of lineage authority similar to that furthermore, suggest that their occupancy identified at Beidha or at ‘Ain Ghazal (the Çatalhöyük suggest passed from one generation to another. ‘extended family experiment’ or even the In short, the architectural indicators sig- ‘higher hierarchical kinship’ phase). that the inhabitants nal the existence of inherited inequalities However, interpretations of this kind of wealth among different households risk being too simplistic. The data pre- of each site arranged (Cutting 2006). sented above show unambiguously that Few if any of these indicators are appar- the substantial, elaborately decorated and their routine daily ent in the agglomerated architecture of configured houses of Çatalhöyük were Aşıklı Höyük. There, the presence of so established household centres in a way that living activities very many buildings too small to have housed the smaller and simpler structures of Aşıklı even a modest nuclear family6 suggests Höyük could not be. However, to infer differently and that that different buildings had different func- from this that Aşıklı Höyük was neces- tions. This suggestion is supported by the sarily a less structured or more egalitarian their social organisation fact that hearths occupied some build- society and Çatalhöyük a more structured, ings so small that they would, when lit, hierarchical one would be unsafe on at least differed considerably. have produced sufficient heat to convert three grounds. First, the strength of the whole buildings into oven-like areas7. If relationship between spatial structure and small buildings had specialized functions, social organisation varies from one society and the larger buildings were only large to another (Levi-Strauss 1963: 292) . This enough to have sheltered a few people, relationship may be particularly difficult to then it seems likely that any one group establish at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük of people would have needed to use more given that their agglomerated architecture than one building to meet their rou- is unlikely to have been as responsive to tine daily needs. This arrangement of changes in social organisation as are build- living space is entirely different from that ings arranged around open passageways or found at Çatalhöyük. There is no clear communal areas. Second, archaeological association between individual buildings socio-political interpretation is often based and individual households and signs of upon observations derived from societies differential household wealth or status thought to be similar, but ethnographic are lacking. Although the repetition of analogies for these early communities are spatial arrangements over time suggests almost certainly lacking. Labels such as an inherited occupation of buildings and egalitarianism, hierarchy, corporate kinship a developed sense of community with and social complexity become little more accepted ways of organising and order- than the constructs of modern research- ing household and settlement space, there ers. “Any reference to ‘later prehistoric’ or are no architectural indicators to signal historic contexts is bound to distort our the existence of inherited inequalities of perception of these societies, and reduce wealth among households. them, illegitimately, to the more familiar and far more constrained peasantry derived Differences in socio-economic from yet another millenni[um] of history organisation between Aşıklı Höyük ” (Pèrles 2001: 305). Third, the problems and Çatalhöyük that this lack of suitable ethnographic The architectural indicators at Aşıklı 5. However, it would have been difficult to carry out Höyük and Çatalhöyük suggest the pres- routine domestic activities when sub-floor graves were re-opened to bury the dead or during the construction of ence of two different models of socio-eco- the large bucrania that at times adorned the walls. nomic organisation and it is tempting to 6. Byrd suggests a minimum floor space of 8 m2 per try to fit these models within the frame- individual (Byrd 2000: 82). 96 work of socio-political development that 7. Similar oven buildings have been found in the village 97 has already been proposed for a number of of Kızılkaya, adjacent to Aşıklı Höyük (Ertüğ-Yaras 1997: Plates 16 and 17).

97 data presents are compounded by the fact the distribution of wealth or status within that such data as do exist demonstrate a community. Lee (1990) has argued that that the relationships between economic the ownership of animals lifts the ‘ceiling practice, the distribution of wealth, politi- of accumulation’ beyond which an indi- cal structure, and socio-cultural values are vidual or household can rise, while Netting both complex and variable (Salzman 1999, (1990: 254) writes, “Instead of shooting the 2001, and responses to his work in Current animal and eating the meat, one brings the Anthropology 42). beast into the settlement and it sits there as property”. Thus, an increasing reliance The architectural Accumulated wealth, inheritance upon sheep/goat domesticates and, finally, and social hierarchy upon cattle domesticates at Çatalhöyük indicators at Despite the difficulties in unravelling might have precipitated disparities in complex socio-economic relationships, a wealth distribution as control of larger and Aşıklı Höyük and common theme running through many larger herds by kin groups provided a route ethnographic studies is that inequalities to obtaining differential wealth or status Çatalhöyük suggest of wealth, in pastoral societies at least, are that was unavailable to the inhabitants of more likely to be associated with the rise of Aşıklı Höyük. As some groups became the presence of two socio-political hierarchies when wealth is wealthier than others and invested more permanent. Wealth is ‘permanent’ when it heavily in their buildings, art and ancestral different models of can be accumulated over time and is trans- ritual became more pronounced within ferable between generations (i.e., through their buildings, and the buildings more socio-economic inheritance) rather than when it is volatile differentiated in richness of decoration or routinely re-distributed among house- over time. In short, the adoption of animal organisation and it is holds (Casimir, Rao and Bollig 1999: 46; domesticates opened the way to the differ- Young 1999: 55). This observation has ential accumulation of wealth that, in turn, tempting to try important implications for both Aşıklı led to social inequality and, eventually, to Höyük and Çatalhöyük. It has already the introduction of hierarchical systems of to fit these models been suggested that architectural indicators socio-political control. for intergenerationally inherited wealth within the framework appear at Çatalhöyük but not at Aşıklı Conclusion Höyük. If this is so, then the indications Vernacular architecture tends to be repetitive of socio-political are that Çatalhöyük was more likely to rather than dynamic in nature. It requires a have been a hierarchical society organised strong impetus to change, such as the arrival development that has around differentially wealthy households of a new population with very different cul- than was Aşıklı Höyük. tural traditions, the discovery of new build- already been proposed An interpretation of this kind inevitably ing technologies, or a dramatic shift in the places considerable emphasis on the accu- balance of wealth, status and power within for a number of early mulation of wealth and it is worth consid- a community. In the context of early farm- ering why the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük ing communities such as Aşıklı Höyük or farming communities might have had opportunities for accumu- Çatalhöyük, changing subsistence patterns, lating wealth that were denied the earlier particularly in the exploitation of animals for in the Levant. settlers of Aşıklı Höyük. Cereal cultivation food, may well have provided such an impe- was practised at both Aşıklı Höyük and tus. Such changes would have encouraged a Çatalhöyük, but only at Çatalhöyük do differential accumulation of wealth among we have evidence for animal (sheep/goat) individuals or households. domestication. It is a pity that insuffi- That differential accumulation of wealth cient attention has been paid to the role would have required adjustments in inter- that livestock played in shaping different household relationships that would eventu- socio-political systems (Little 1999: 51). ally be reflected in household and settlement However, it seems probable that major architectural configuration as new buildings, changes in the way animals were obtained more suited to the new socio-economic for food would almost certainly have had circumstances, gradually replaced old ones. profound effects upon social organisation. Small buildings, for example, might give way The discontinuation of small-scale hunt- over time to larger structures able to shelter ing in favour of the large-scale exploitation larger households or extended families (cf. of wild cattle or a shift from managing Garfinkel, this volume). wild sheep/goat to rearing cattle would The spatial constraints imposed by 98 have required new ways of organising agglutinative buildings, however, made this 99 labour that almost certainly led to shifts in process of gradual replacement impossible

98 at sites with agglomerated architecture. as six times the average household size, At these sites, socio-economic change decision-making without a system of regu- tended to precipitate the abandonment of lation starts to degenerate because decisions the traditional architecture because chang- involve too many permutations. Identifying The adoption of ing the size, shape, or external design of the distinguishing features of those systems one building could only be done at the from architectural remains will always be animal domesticates expense of a neighbouring one. The archi- difficult, and never more so than amidst the tectural evidence at Çatalhöyük supports agglomerated buildings of Aşıklı Höyük opened the way to this hypothesis because the abandonment and Çatalhöyük. Nevertheless, it is possible of traditional agglomerated architecture to detect considerable differences between the differential appears to have coincided with substan- the domestic architecture of Aşıklı Höyük tial changes in patterns of animal use. At (small functionally specialised buildings accumulation of wealth Çatalhöyük East, the traditional agglom- with few signs of social differentiation) erated architecture of Levels VIII to IV and the domestic structures of Çatalhöyük and that, in turn, was associated with the use of sheep and (substantial multi-purpose houses differ- goat, but not cattle, domesticates (Martin, ing in size and richness of decoration). led to social inequality Russell and Curruthers 2002: 201). This On the basis of these differences, it is traditional architecture was replaced by possible to conclude that Çatalhöyük was and, eventually, the larger buildings of Levels III and more likely to have had a hierarchical soci- II, which are similar to those currently ety organised around differentially wealthy to the introduction of being excavated at Çatalhöyük West households than was Aşıklı Höyük. As (Cutting 2006; Gibson et al. 2003) where subsistence strategies shifted, so opportuni- hierarchical systems of cattle domesticates were present (Frame ties for accumulating wealth changed and 2003:14). Evidence from Aşıklı Höyük, the communities of both Aşıklı Höyük and socio-political control. although less clear-cut, likewise suggests Çatalhöyük underwent profound socio-eco- that a shift in patterns of animal exploi- nomic change on a scale that their tightly- tation may have occurred towards the packed domestic architecture eventually end of its occupation, when the propor- could not accommodate. Consequently, the tion of wild cattle to other sheep and long-established tradition of agglomerated goat non-domesticates appears to have architecture that so distinguished Aşıklı increased (Buitenhuis 1997: 656). This Höyük and Çatalhöyük from nearly all increase, together with the discovery of other contemporary settlements was aban- the large-scale culling of wild cattle at doned in favour of more open settlement nearby Musular and, by inference, at Aşıklı layouts. Höyük itself (Özbaşaran and Buitenhuis 2002: 70), suggests a substantial increase Acknowledgements in the importance of wild cattle in the I would like to thank: Professor Ufuk Esin final years of the settlement. The decline and Dr. Savaş Harmankaya for grant- of both Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük ing me access to Aşıklı Höyük’s plans; appears to coincide with changes in settle- Shahina Farid and the Çatalhöyük Project; ment patterns, with the emergence of three Professor James Mellaart, Dr. Mihriban smaller settlements (Musular, Yelliben, and Özbaşaran, Professor Nur Balkan-Atlı, Dr. Gedikbaşı) near the former, and 14 smaller Fusun Ertüğ, Dr. Sevil Gülçur, Professor dispersed settlements close to the latter Gülsün Umurtak and Güneş Duru for the (Baird 2006). lively discussions we have had about the In conclusion, both Aşıklı Höyük8 and Anatolian Neolithic; and Dr. James Conolly Çatalhöyük would without doubt have for his comments on the first draft of this required strong and well-structured regula- paper. The data presented were collected for tory systems in order to survive and prosper a doctoral thesis that was funded by the Arts over so many centuries. Braun (1990: 84- and Humanities Research Board. 86) has argued that, when communities 8. Aşıklı Höyük may at some stage have been about two- grow beyond a certain size, perhaps as small thirds the size of Çatalhöyük (Cutting in press b).

98 99

99 References South, North and KOPAL Area reports from The Neolithic of Central Anatolia: Aran K. 2000, Beyond Shelter: Anatolian the 1995-1999 seasons: The Çatalhöyük Internal developments and external rela- Indigenous Buildings. Istanbul, Tepe Research Project Volume 3, McDonald tions during the 9th - 6th millennia cal Architectural Centre. Institute Research Monographs and British BC. Istanbul, EGE. Asouti E. and A. Fairbairn 2002, Institute of Archaeology at Ankara Gibson C. and Last J. 2003 An early Subsistence economy in Central Anatolia Cutting M. 2003, The use of spatial analysis Chalcolithic building on the West Mound during the Neolithic: the archaeobotanical to study prehistoric settlement architecture. at Çatalhöyük." Anatolian Archaeology 9: evidence. The Neolithic of Central Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22(1): 1-21. 12-14. Anatolia: 181-192. Istanbul, Ege Yayınları. 2005, The Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic Golany G. (ed.) 1980 Housing in Arid Baird D. 2006, The history of settlement farmers of Central and Southwest Anatolia: Lands: Design and Planning. London, and social landscapes in the Early household, community and the changing use The Architectural Press. Holocene in the Çatalhöyük area. In of space, BAR International Series 1435. Helbaek H. 1964 First Impressions of the I. Hodder (ed.) Çatalhöyük Perspectives: Oxford, Archaeopress. Çatal Hüyük Plant Husbandry." Anatolian Themes from the 1995-9 Seasons: The 2006, The architecture of Çatalhöyük: Studies 14: 121-123. Catalhoyuk Research Project Volume 6, continuity, household and settlement. Kuijt I. (ed.) 2000 Life in Neolithic Cambridge, The McDonald Institute In I. Hodder (ed.) Çatalhöyük perspectives: Farming Communities: Social Research Monographs and British Institute themes from the 1995-9 seasons, The Organisation, Identity and of Archaeology in Ankara. Çatalhöyük Research Project Volume 6 Differentiation. New York and London, Banning E. B.and B.F. Byrd 1987, Houses Cambridge, The McDonald Institute Kluwer Academic/Plenum. and the changing residential unit: Research Monographs and British Institute Lee R. B. 1990 Primitive communism and Domestic architecture at PPNB 'Ain of Archaeology in Ankara. the origin of social inequality. In S. Ghazal, Jordan. Proceedings of the Forthcoming, More than one way to study a Upham The Evolution of Political Prehistoric Society 53: 309-325. building: approaches to prehistoric house- Systems: Sociopolitics in Small-Scale Berker D., C.E. Yakmar et al. 1991, hold and settlement space. Sedentary Societies: 225-246, Cambridge, Statical report on the mud-brick construc- Düring B. 2001 Social dimensions in the Cambridge University Press. tion of Aşıklı Höyük. Anatolica XVII: architecture of Neolithic Çatalhöyük. Levi-Strauss C. 1963 Structural 149-153. Anatolian Studies 51: 1-18. Anthropology. London, Allen Lane Braun D. P. 1990 Selection and evolution in Duru, G. and Özbaşaran, M., 2005, A non- Penguin Press. nonheirarchical organisation. In S. Upham domestic site in Central Anatolia, Anatolia Little P. D. 1999 Comments. Current (ed.), The Evolution of Political Systems: Antiqua XIII. Anthropology 40(1): 50-51. Sociopolitics in Small-Scale Sedentary Ertüğ-Yaras F. 1997 An ethnoarchaeological Martin L., Russell N. et al. 2002 Societies: 62-86. Cambridge, Cambridge study of subsistence and plant gathering Animal remains from the Central University Press. in Central Anatolia. Department of Anatolian Neolithic. In G. Gérard F. and Buitenhuis H. 1997 Aşıklı Höyük: A Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann L.Thissen (eds.), The Neolithic of "Protodomestication" Site. Arbor. Central Anatolia: Internal developments Anthropozoologica 25-26: 655-662. Esin U. and Harmankaya S. 1999 Aşıklı. In and external relations during the 9th - 6th Byrd B. F. 1994 Public and Private, M. Özdoğan and N. Başgelen (eds.), The millennia cal BC: 193-216, Istanbul, EGE. Domestic and Corporate: the Emergence Neolithic in Turkey (The Cradle of Mellaart J. 1962 Excavations at Çatal of the Southwest Asian Village. American Civilization), Vols. 1 and 2, Istanbul, Hüyük: First Preliminary Report, 1961. Antiquity 59(4): 639-666. AVSY: 115-132. Anatolian Studies 12: 42-65. 2000 Households in Transition: Fairbairn A., Near J. and Martinoli D. in 1963 Excavations at Çatal Hüyük: Second Neolithic Social Organization within press, Macrobotanical investigations of the Preliminary Report. Anatolian Studies 13: Southwest Asia. In I. Kuijt (ed.), Life in North, South and KOPAL area excava- 43-103. Neolithic Farming Communities: Social tions at Çatalhöyük East. In I. Hodder, 1964 Excavations at Catal Huyuk, 1963: Organization, Identity and Inhabiting Çatalhöyük: reports from the Third Preliminary Report. Anatolian Differentiation: 63-98. New York and 1995-1999 seasons: Chapter 8. The Studies 14: 39-117. London, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Çatalhöyük Research Project Volume 4, 1966 Excavations at Çatal Hüyük, 1965: Publishers Cambridge, The McDonald Institute Fourth Preliminary Report. Anatolian 2005 Early Village Life at Beidha, Research Monographs and British Studies 16: 165-191. Jordan: Spatial Organization and Vernacular Institute of Archaeology in Ankara. 1967 Çatal Hüyük. London, Thames and Architecture, British Academy Monographs Flannery K. V. 2002 The origins of the village Hudson. in Archaeology, London. revisited: from nuclear to extended Netting R. M. 1990 Population, permanent Casimir, M. J., Rao, A. and Bollig, M. 1999 households. American Antiquity 67: 417- agriculture, and politics: unpacking the Comments. Current Anthropology 40(1): 433. evolutionary portmanteau. In S. Upham 45-46. Frame S. 2003 Animal bones. Anatolian (ed.), The Evolution of Political Systems: Cessford C. 2002 Bayesian statistics and the Archaeology 9: 14. Sociopolitics in Small-Scale Sedentary dating of Çatalhöyük East. In G. Gérard F. Gérard F. 2002 Transformations and soci Societies: 21-61, Cambridge, Cambridge and L.Thissen (eds.), The Neolithic of eties in the Neolithic of Central Anatolia. University Press. Central Anatolia: Internal developments In G. Gérard F. and L.Thissen (eds.), Özbaşaran M. 1998 The Heart of a Home: and external relations during the 9th - 6th The Neolithic of Central Anatolia: The Hearth: Aşıklı Höyük, a Pre-pottery millennia cal BC: 27-32. Istanbul, EGE. Internal developments and external rela- Neolithic Site in Central Anatolia. In G. In press, Neolithic excavations in the North tions during the 9th - 6th millennia cal Arsebük, M. J. Mellink and W. Schirmer 100 Area, East Mound, Çatalhöyük 1995-98. BC: 105-118. Istanbul, EGE. (eds.):555-366. Light on Top of the 101 In: I. Hodder (ed.), Excavating Çatalhöyük: Gérard F. and Thissen L. (eds.) 2002 Black Hill: Studies presented to Halet

100 Çambel. Istanbul, Ege Yayınları. Rollefson G. O. 1997 Changes in 2002(a) The CANeW 14C data bases, Özbaşaran M. 2000 The Neolithic site of Architecture and Social Organisation at Anatolia, 10,000-5000 cal BC. In G. Musular - Central Anatolia. Anatolica 'Ain Ghazal. In H. G. K. Gebel, Z. Zafafi, Gérard F. and L.Thissen (eds.), The XXVI: 129-151. and G.O. Rollefson (eds.) The Prehistory Neolithic of Central Anatolia: Internal Özbaşaran M. and Buitenhuis H. 2002 of Jordan. II. Perspectives from 1997: developments and external relations dur- Proposal for a regional terminology for 287-307, Berlin, ex.oriente. ing the 9th - 6th millennia cal BC: 299- Central Anatolia. In G. Gérard F. and Rosen E. M. 1986 Cities of Clay: The 338, Istanbul, EGE. L.Thissen (eds.), The Neolithic of Geoarchaeology of Tells. Chicago & van Zeist W. and Deroller G.J. 1995 Plant Central Anatolia: Internal developments London, University of Chicago Press. Remains from Aşıklı-Höyük, a Pre- and external relations during the 9th - 6th Salzman P. C. 1999 Is Inequality Universal? Pottery Neolithic Site in Central Anatolia. millennia cal BC: 67-78, Istanbul, EGE. Current Anthropology 40(1): 31-44. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Özdoğan, M., 2002, Discussion following 2001 Towards a Balanced Approach to the 4(3): 179-185. Stones making sense: what obsidian could Study of Equality. Current Anthropology 2003, Some notes on the Plant Husbandry tell about the origins of Central Neolithic 40(1): 281-284. of Aşıklı-Höyük. In van Zeist (ed.), (by Didier Binder). In F. Gérard and L. Thissen L. 2002 Time trajectories for the Reports on Archaeobotanical Studies in the Old Thissen (eds.), The Neolithic of Central Neolithic of Central Anatolia. In G. World, Grőningen Institute of Archaeology, Anatolia: Internal Developments and external Gérard F. and L.Thissen (eds.), The Grőningen, 115-142. relations during the 9th - 6th millennia cal BC: Neolithic of Central Anatolia: Internal Young W. C. 1999 Comments. Current Istanbul, EGE, p. 85. developments and external relations dur- Anthropology 40(1): 54-55. Pèrles C. 2001 The Early Neolithic in Greece. ing the 9th - 6th millennia cal BC Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Istanbul, EGE, p. 13-26.

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101 102 PB

102 The Social Organization at Neolithic Sha‘ar Hagolan The Nuclear Family, the Extended Family & the Community

Yosef Garfinkel The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Introduction The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B villages of the Near East were characterized by rectangular dwellings, usually 50-100 m2 in size. These houses were sub-divided into a few rooms, usually between two and four. The houses were built some distance from one other, leaving space for open-air activities and movement of people across the settlement. Numerous examples of this type of settlement have been unearthed, such as at Jericho, Munhata, Yiftah’el, ‘Ain Ghazal, Beidha, Tell Ramad, Tell Aswad, Ugarit, Abu Hureyra, Nevali Çori and Çayönü. This type of site has social implications at two levels: the (nuclear) family and the community. A more complex architecture, with larger buildings and a more complex sub-division of internal space, appeared towards the end of the Pre- Pottery Neolithic B in sites such as Basta and Bouqras. A further development is evident in the Pottery Neolithic site of Sha‘ar Hagolan, discussed below. This site presents a new type of dwelling – courtyard structures – for the first time in the history of architecture. These tion areas were tested (E, F, G, H, N.), Figure 1. 2 houses, monumental in size, were likely and ca. 2,700 m were opened (Fig. 1). The Early Neolithic used by extended families. They were In addition, Steklis excavated four areas site of Sha‘ar Hagolan constructed along formalized passage- (A-D) between 1949 and 1952, but no and the location of the ways, indicating a sophisticated settle- architecture was found in these limited various excavated areas ment plan. excavations (1951, 1972). Sha‘ar Hagolan, located in the cen- In 1998, Michele Miller carried tral Jordan Valley, on the north bank out a surface survey of the site and of the Yarmuk River, ca. 1.5 km south found that the ancient settlement of the Sea of Galilee, is at the junc- was ca. 20 ha in area, making it one tion of the frontiers of modern Israel, of the largest sites of its period. She Jordan, and Syria. It is well known as established its size based on three the site where Moshe Stekelis (1951) lines of evidence (Miller 2002): first identified the Yarmukian Culture, a 1. The location of the eight excavation Pottery Neolithic culture that flourished areas, four dug by Stekelis and four by in the Mediterranean areas of Israel, our expedition (at that time Area N was Jordan and Lebanon, during the 7th not yet excavated). These areas extend millennium cal BC (Garfinkel 1993). over about 1 km on the north-south axis My point of departure is new fieldwork and ca. 300 m on the east-west axis. carried out for 11 seasons between 1989 2. Test trenches dug in the western and 2004 (Garfinkel and Miller 2002; and northern parts of the site. In some Garfinkel 2004). In total, five excava- of these trenches, remains of walls and PB 103

103 floors were observed and artefacts were in the southwestern corner (B) is round, found in the soil taken from them. No while all the other rooms are rectangular. finds were made in trenches located Five of the rooms have floors of beaten further to the north. earth, while three (D, G and I) are paved 3. The survey established the distribu- with closely fitting, flat basalt pebbles. tion of the artefacts scattered over the No clearly defined entrance was found surface of the site. in any of the stone-paved rooms, and they were probably entered through a The Architectural Data window-like opening that was higher Area E than the preserved height of the walls. This is a large horizontal exposure of Since these rooms differed from the nearly 1,700 m2 (Fig. 2). Here, two com- others in their paved floors and the lack plete courtyard buildings and two streets of an entrance at floor level, they prob- were uncovered and remains of at least ably differed in function as well. The The entrance has a three other buildings were exposed. This paving and the high entrance may have is a densely occupied area in the central been for insulation purposes, perhaps as threshold of large, part of the settlement near the river. protection from insects, rodents or damp. Thus, these rooms probably served as flat stone slabs. Building I storerooms. This building in the eastern part of Area Building I displays a modular arrang- Room B in the E consists of a large, triangular courtyard ment with three units, each consisting surrounded by eight rooms and covers an of a room and a storeroom. A fourth unit south-west corner area of ca. 225 m2 (Fig. 3). The building in the northeastern corner (E) does not method was simple: the walls have no have a storeroom, but half of the room is is round, while all foundation trenches and were laid direct- occupied up by two stone-paved instal- ly on the ground. They consist of a foun- lations that could have been granaries. the other rooms are dation of rounded basalt pebbles and a The large size and modular arrangement superstructure of rounded mudbricks. of Building I suggest that it was occu- rectangular or square. The central courtyard was entered from pied by an extended family, consisting the south through an open area between of four nuclear families. We will return to the buildings. The entrance has a thresh- the social organisation of Sha‘ar Hagolan old of large, flat, stone slabs. The room below.

Figure 2: Schematic plan of Area E

104 105

104 On the north, the building is enclosed by a straight wall formed by the large main room (Q) and the corner room Along the wall (R). Several figurines were discovered in Room Q, including a complete clay are a series of small figurine decorated with a herringbone Figure 3: pattern and another figurine carved from flanking rooms similar Schematic plan a stone pebble. This room contained a of Building I curved wall that created a separate room in size to the small (P). The northern part of Room R yielded an unusually large number of finds, rooms on the eastern including about 20 stone vessels and utensils (bowls, a grindstone, a pestle side of Building I. and hammerstones), a cooking pot, and Building II a large granary jar that was set into the This building, in the western part of Area floor. This area is therefore clearly con- E, is ca. 35 m long from north to south nected with food preparation. and ca. 20 m wide from east to west, and Unlike the other three sides, the west covers an area of ca. 700 m2 (Fig. 4). It side of Building II is not bounded by a is separated from the street bordering straight wall. Instead, the building’s edge it on the east by a wall that runs from is formed by the seven rooms on the the southeast to the northeast corner. western side of the courtyard. Building The building’s entrance was apparently I has a similar layout: it is enclosed in a in the southern end of this wall. Along well-defined line on the east, south and the wall a series of small flanking rooms west, but is bordered on the north by the are similar in size to the small rooms on combination of three spaces. the eastern side of Building I. Room G, The open central courtyard of Building paved with closely fitting basalt pebbles, II contains several installations of various was probably a storeroom. kinds (pits, stone paving, mud plaster The southern end of Building II is paving, and four large mortars). currently within the zone of the Yarmuk Building II is the largest structure from River; part of it has been destroyed by such an early period to have been uncov- floods and the entire southwest corner is ered in the Near East. It was clearly a missing. The surviving remains suggest courtyard house with rows of rooms on all that here, too, there was a row of small four sides. rooms, one of which (K) was paved with basalt slabs. Buildings III, IV and V Parts of three other buildings were exposed in Area E. Building III is in the Figure 4: eastern part of the excavation area, to the Schematic plan east of an alley (Fig. 2). To date, only a of Building II small part of it has been uncovered, consisting of a large central courtyard and a room that extends into the unexcavated area to the south. In the western part of Area E, to the west of Building II, small parts of two additional buildings (IV and V) have been exposed.

The street network Buildings I and III are separated by a small alley (ca. 1 m wide), paved with beaten earth. It winds 15 m before dis- appearing into the unexcavated area. Between Buildings I and II there is a main street, (ca. 3 m wide), which we exposed for a length of over 50 m. The road is paved with layers of small pebbles mixed with mud plaster and its

104 105

105 street system could have drained the rainwater by the shortest route, into the river.

Area H This area represents a part of the ancient settlement some distance from the river, ca. 300 m north of Area E. An excavated area of 700 m2 contained the remains of at least five large courtyard buildings, one complete. The buildings, abutting one another, were built on both sides of a plastered street. Unearthing the east part of Area H was problematic, as a dirt road runs on what was the embankment of a modern fish pond, limiting our options on that side. Nevertheless, we excavated as far as possible to the east, removing a few meters of the embankment until we could reconstruct the complete plan of one building. The basic architectural concept of the buildings in Area H is similar to that of the two buildings unearthed in Area E (Fig. 5). The completely excavated building here is composed of a large, open, central courtyard (A) surrounded by ten rooms. On the west is a row of four small rooms (B–E); one has a stone-paved floor (E) and another has a plastered floor (C). In the corner of Room D, a large granary jar was sunk into the floor. On the south is a large room (F) with a storeroom paved with small stones (G) attached to it. To the surface was renewed from time to time, Figure 5: east of the courtyard, two additional as evidenced by the finding of several Schematic plan rooms (H-I) border it. On the north, two layers. While the upkeep of the houses of Area H rooms were found in the northeastern was undoubtedly the responsibility of corner of the building (J–K). Room K is their residents, the streets’ maintenance partly stone-paved and a basalt mortar must have required the cooperation of was found on its floor. the entire community. This is the earli- In the north, the external closing wall est street system discovered in Israel; it of the building consists of a stone foun- shows that Sha‘ar Hagolan was a planned dation topped by mudbricks. A flat, settlement, in which houses were not stony area in the wall is the threshold of built randomly, but along streets. an entrance to the building’s courtyard. The street and the alley lead from To the north, beyond the closing wall, a inside the settlement toward the water street (1–1.5 m in width) runs east-west, source, the Yarmuk River. Each family on which we found several layers of would have needed a daily supply of plaster to a total accumulation of nearly water for drinking and food preparation. half a meter. A long, narrow depression One can imagine the Yarmukian women runs for nearly 7 m along the western walking down the streets with jars on part of the street and continues into the their heads to draw water from the river. unexcavated area. It is partly plastered Since the river is to the south of the and may have functioned as a drainage settlement, the streets run roughly at channel for rainwater. The orientation right angles to it, from north to south of the street in Area H is of interest: and from northeast to southwest. while the two streets in Area E run from During winter the site would have been north to south, from the settlement to flooded. It is clear that in such cases the the Yarmuk River, the street in Area H 106 107

106 runs perpendicular to them, suggesting a grid pattern of passageways at the site (Fig. 6). Fragments of at least four additional buildings have been found in Area H. To the west of the completely excavated building we have uncovered one room and an open area that may be the courtyard of another building. To the east we have uncovered a few walls, indicating the existence of an adjacent structure. The southern part of Area H is close to the corner of a modern fish pond, at the junction of two large embankments. Here we have found fragments of walls that do not form a clear architectural picture (the construction work on the embankment probably dug into the Neolithic levels, causing serious damage). Beyond the street on the north, another building was partly excavated. Only a very small segment of it, including one room paved with large, flat stones, has been unearthed. The picture obtained from Area H is that of a densely built-up settlement, characterized by large courtyard buildings built one against the other along paved streets. ed by the site survey (Miller 2002), Figure 6:

in the fields of Kibbutz Masada. This Reconstructed Area F spot was chosen in order to determine plan of the ancient Area F is ca. 500 m northeast of Area E, whether the site indeed extends to this settlement of in the fields of Kibbutz Masada. Deep 2 region. An area of 200 m was opened in Sha‘ar Hagolan ploughing carried out here in 1998 in 2004 and excavated from topsoil to vir- preparation for the planting of banana gin soil. Large parts of Tell Abu Nimel trees brought potsherds, flint and stone have been damaged over the years by vessels and utensils to the surface. In the ancient and modern activities, includ- short time at our disposal, we dug two ing a Moslem cemetery, modern mili- small test pits consisting of half a square tary fortifications and recent agriculture. (2.5 m x 5 m), 30 m apart. Despite the Nevertheless, it became clear that the small size of the pits, in each we uncov- Neolithic settlement extended all the ered massive stone walls similar to those way to this location. Two Neolithic phas- of the courtyard buildings of Area E. es were recognized, with part of a building in the eastern edge of the area. Most Area G of the area uncovered had functioned In Area G, ca. 50 m northeast of Area E, as an open area in the settlement, with we excavated a trial trench (5 m x 20 m), various installations, and the debris were with the intention of digging down to rich with flint, pottery, stone vessels and the earliest phase of the settlement. The animal bones. corner of a massive structure was found at the southern edge of the excavation. Discussion Most of the area functioned as an open Data collected during 11 field seasons space. At the bottom of Area G, in the at the Neolithic settlement of Sha‘ar open area, a water well was revealed. Hagolan clearly indicate the following: 1.The site is 20 ha in area. Area N 2. In each of the excavated areas (E, F, G, Area N (named after the Arabic name H, and N), architectural remains occur. Tell Abu Nimel) is located in the eastern 3. Dwellings consisted of courtyard struc- part of the ancient settlement, as detect- tures. The three courtyard complexes 106 107

107 uncovered at Sha‘ar Hagolan constitute nized in groups, and at least seven clus- the earliest appearance of this type of ters can be distinguished (CF, EGHI, building, an architectural concept that is QPOR, STUV, WYX, NM, LK). Thus, still prevalent in traditional societies of this complex was probably used by a the Near East and in the vicinity of the large extended family, consisting of at Mediterranean Sea. least seven nuclear families. 4. The courtyard buildings are monumen- The building in Area H also consists tal in size, ranging from 225 to 700 m2. of a courtyard structure, with ten rooms 5. The courtyard buildings were densely around a large open courtyard. Some constructed, abutting one another. This of the rooms have paved floors, three was observed both in Area E, near the with flat river pebbles (E, G, K) and, in river, and in Area H, inside the settle- Room C, the floor was made of hard and ment. compact mud plaster. The pattern of a 6. The courtyard buildings were built storage room adjacent to a living area along streets. recurs here: four such units are clustered 7. The system of streets includes main (B-C, D-E, F-G, J-K). In addition, two roads and small alleys (Fig. 6). The rooms (H, I) are different: each has an streets were plastered from time to time. entrance and a regular beaten earth A plaza was found between three build- floor, but they do not have a storage ings in Area E. room nearby. 8. Some of the streets are oriented on a The architecture exhibits a tripartite north-south axis; the others on east-west division of space at Neolithic Sha‘ar axis. Hagolan. This suggests three levels of 9. Open areas were found in Areas G and social organization in the community, as N and are characterized by installations follows (Fig. 7). and rich debris. The main point in order to under- The Individual Household stand the social organization of ancient (The Nuclear Family) Sha‘ar Hagolan is the courtyard struc- The domestic space of a nuclear fam- Most of the area tures. Who lived in these monumental ily was quite limited (10-15 m2). One buildings? Were they used by nuclear or might question whether this would uncovered had extended families? The focus of analysis have been adequate for the use of a is Building I, consisting of one triangular nuclear family, but the size of other functioned as an courtyard surrounded by eight rooms. Pottery Neolithic structures, including There is a basic unit composed of two those at Munhata (Garfinkel 1992, Figs. open area rooms, one with a beaten-earth floor and 3, 7), Jericho (Kenyon 1981, Fig. 228), a doorway; and the other adjacent room Lod (Blockman 1997:6), and Jebel Abu in the settlement, without a doorway, but with carefully Thawwab (Kafafi 2001, Pl. 7a) is quite laid stone paving. Three such units sur- similar: these sites contain small round- with various rounded the courtyard (C–D, F–G and ed structures, usually 2-3 m in diameter, H–I). Inside the room that lacks an adja- their size not exceeding 15-20 m2. Thus, installations, cent storage room are two large paved it appears that nuclear families lived installations that could have served for in quite a limited space in the Pottery and the debris storage. This suggests that four nuclear Neolithic period. families lived in this complex. Living in As demonstrated by the analysis of were rich with flint, such proximity suggests a close kinship: Building I, each nuclear family had a probably an extended family. dwelling room and an adjacent stor- pottery, stone vessels The observation that the phenomenon age room. Storage facilities were found of extended families living together can inside the small rooms, either as paved and animal bones. be traced in the architecture of the Near closed rooms or as large granary jars East was suggested simultaneously, but below the floors. independently, in 2002 by Flannery 1.Ironically, an anonymous reviewer for a grant pro- and the present author (Flannery 2002, posal I submitted to the Israel Science Foundation in 2001, wrote: “Others (e.g., Flannery), however, would Garfinkel 2002).1 argue that the smaller rooms were occupied by individuals”. Yet, Flannery himself, after attending my lecture Building II is also a courtyard com- on the Sha‘ar Hagolan architecture and its social sig- plex. Although its ground plan differs nificance, delivered at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on 12th September 2002, wrote: “To whoever from that of Building I, the architectural it was that told you that Kent would call Building I a concept is clearly that of a courtyard residence for an “individual”, you have our permission to tell him he is wrong! You have wonderful data for building. It consists of 24 rooms, orga- extended families” (letter dated 25th October 2002). 108 109

108 Figure 7. Schematic table of village structure and its social organization.

A: open settlement B: condensed closed settlement

Village

Extended Family

Nulear Family

The Extended Family they consumed may have begun to accu- The open areas between the houses mulate wealth and may have had bigger in Neolithic villages were generally fields or flocks. In the material culture, used for cooking, storage in pits, and such households might be indicated by various other household activities. At the larger size of their dwellings, as well Sha‘ar Hagolan, however, the open area as the presence of exotic items such was integrated into the building as an as obsidian, seashells, beads and ala- enclosed courtyard. This placed the baster vessels. Even regular commodi- open area under tight control, limit- ties in such houses could be larger and ing access to approved persons. To this more elaborate in shape and decoration. day, personal belongings, wealth and Indeed, a comparison between Buildings women are protected in the enclosed I and 2 exhibits such differences (size of courtyard in some parts of the Near East. structure, percentage of decorated pot- In such traditional societies, women are tery, figurines), suggesting differences barred from public areas, and their main in the wealth or social status of the activity areas are confined to closed extended families that lived there. courtyards. Most of the finds — pottery, flint, animal bones, stone vessels, and The Community figurines — were found in the courtyard. The use of space by the community at Conjoinable flint items from the court- Sha‘ar Hagolan indicates site planning on yard of Building I indicate flintknapping a level unprecedented in the Neolithic activity (Matskevich 2002). Pits and vari- period in the Levant: ous installations were also found, includ- a. Formalized passageways. Movement in ing large basalt implements: mortars and the settlement occurred through formal- grinding slabs. These were the common ized passageways. A hierarchical system property of the entire extended family. of streets has been uncovered in the form Families that produced more than of a wide straight street and a narrow 108 109

109 curving alley. The main street at Sha‘ar wheat, barley, lentils, and peas for Hagolan was resurfaced from time to time food, but also raised flax for linen The main point with small river pebbles and mud plaster. and had added cattle and pig to the The street is clearly a communal place; herding of sheep and goats. A family in order thus, its maintenance reflects an orga- of 15-20 simply had more manpower nized communal effort. This phenom- to perform all the disparate tasks to understand the enon raises various questions concerning in such an economy, which could public decision-making: Who organized include some kind of craft produc- social organization the work? How often were the streets tion as well (Flannery 2002:424). repaired? Who carried out the work and In the context of the Pottery Neolithic of ancient who supervised it? period of the southern Levant, only the b.The river front. The street and alley site of Sha‘ar Hagolan presents such Sha‘ar Hagolan end at an open piazza at the riverfront. architecture. Mixed economy, as sug- This was an open area for the use of the gested by Flannery, appeared at all other is the courtyard entire community. sites as well, but they do not exhibit c. The well. This installation was found large courtyard buildings. On the con- structures. in an open area and not within one of the trary, many of them, such as Munhata, buildings’ courtyards. It seems that the Hamadiya, Habashan Street, Jebel Who lived in these energy required to dig and maintain a Abu Thawwab, Lod, Teluliyot Batashi, well was too great for an extended family Jericho and Ghrubba (Garfinkel 1999:16- monumental buildings? and required cooperation on a larger scale. 103) present only pits or small rounded Wells thus appear to have been public, huts of the type characterizing the very Were they used by rather than private, installations. early stages of the Natufian and early d. Public structures. In recent years it Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (but see Kafafi, nuclear or has become apparent that public struc- this volume). Thus, in this case, there is tures were built in the Neolithic settle- no direct link between the economy of extended families? ments of the Near East. Such examples a settlement and its physical and social have already been noted at Pre-Pottery structure. Neolithic A sites such as the tower of It seems that the critical issue in this Jericho (Kenyon 1981), and the rounded case is the size of Sha‘ar Hagolan, which building in Jerf al-Ahmar (Stordeur et presents a unique example of a mega- al. 2001), as well as in the Pre-Pottery settlement in the Pottery Neolithic peri- Neolithic B public structures, including od. How did this 20 ha densely inhabited the skull building of Çayönü (Ozbeck community adapt to the demographic 1988) and the plastered building at Nevali situation in which a few thousand people Çori (Hauptmann 1993). Such communal lived together? Ethnographic observa- buildings were probably built at Sha‘ar tions on human behavior under popu- Hagolan as well. We hope that future lation pressure indicate that they can excavations will locate and excavate such change various aspects of their behavior. structures. Studies of population density have con- Large Neolithic structures, which could cluded that: be the dwellings of extended families, scalar stress refers to the stresses were found at a number of sites dated inherent in large population aggre- to the later part of the Neolithic period gations, which must be reduced (late Pre-Pottery Neolithic or Pottery through strategies as diverse as Neolithic): Bouqras, Basta, Tell as- increasingly hierarchical social Sawwan, Zaghe, and Hassuna (Garfinkel organization, group fission, and and Ben-Shlomo 2002, Flannery 2002). increasing incidence of group ritual Flannery has attributed these develop- (Carneiro 1967; also Johnson 1982; ments to the increasing economic com- Friesen 1999). plexity: Construction of large modular houses for married sons remain attached to the the use of extended families, as a direct household of their father because response to population pressure, has also the combination of two tasks – been observed among the Inuit tribes of cereal agriculture and the grazing of North America during their aggregation herd animals – requires a division period (Friesen 1999). The large court- of labor beyond the capacity of a yard buildings at Sha‘ar Hagolan reflect a nuclear family. By 5500 B.C. many new method of adaptation to population Near Eastern villages not only grew pressure in the ancient Near East. 110 111

110 References Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew Kenyon, K.M. 1981. Excavations at Jericho, University of Jerusalem. Vol. III. London: British School of Blockman, N. 1997. The Lodian Culture 2002. The effect of population size on Archaeology in Jerusalem. (Jericho IX) Following the Excavation at the human organization at Sha‘ar Matskevich, Z. 2002. Notes on conjoinable Newe Yarak, Lod. Unpublished M.A. Hagolan. In Y. Garfinkel and A. M. Miller flint pieces. In Y. Garfinkel and A. M. thesis, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University. (eds.) Sha‘ar Hagolan Vol. 1. Neolithic Art Miller (eds.) Sha‘ar Hagolan Vol. 1. Carneiro, R. 1967. On the relationship in Context, pp. 257-262. Oxford: Oxbow. Neolithic Art in Context, 176-181. between size of population and 2004. The Goddess of Sha‘ar Hagolan. Oxford: Oxbow. complexity of social organization. Excavations at a Neolithic Site in Israel. Miller, A.M. 2002. The spatial distribution Southern Journal of Anthropology Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. of ancient human occupation: results of 23: 234–243. Garfinkel, Y. and Ben-Shlomo, D. 2002. an intensive surface survey and test Flannery, K.V. 1972. The origins of the Sha‘ar Hagolan architecture in its Near excavations. In Y. Garfinkel and A. M. village as a settlement type in Eastern Context. In Y. Garfinkel and Miller (eds.) Sha‘ar Hagolan Vol. 1. Mesoamerica and the Near East. A. M. Miller (eds.) Sha‘ar Hagolan Vol. 1. Neolithic Art in Context, 35-46. Oxford: In Ucko, P.J., Tringham, R. and Neolithic Art in context, pp. 71-84. Oxbow. Dimbleby, G.W. (eds.) Man, Settlement Oxford: Oxbow. Ozbek, M. 1988. Culte des crânes humains and Urbanism, 23-53. London: Garfinkel, Y. and A. M. Miller . (eds.) 2002. à Çayönü. Anatolica 15: 127-138. Duckworth. Sha‘ar Hagolan Vol. 1. Neolithic Art in Schmidt, K. 1998. Frühneolithische Flannery, K.V. 2002. The origin of the village revisited: From nuclear to Context. Oxford: Oxbow. Tempel: Ein Forschungsbericht zum extended households. American Hauptmann, H. 1993. Ein Kultgebäude in präkeramischen Neolithikum Antiquity 67: 417-425. Nevali Çori. In M. Frangipane, Obermesopotamiens. Mitteilungen der Friesen, T.M. 1999. Resource structure, H. Hauptmann, M. Liverani, P. Matthiae, Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin scalar stress, and the development of and M. Mellink, (eds.) Between the 130: 17-49. Inuit social organization. World Rivers and Over the Mountains, 37- 69. Stekelis, M. 1951. A new Neolithic Archaeology 31: 21–37. Rome: Universita di Roma. industry: The Yarmukian of Palestine. Garfinkel, Y. 1992. The Sha‘ar Hagolan and Johnson, G. 1982. Organizational structure Israel Exploration Journal 1: 1–19. Wadi Rabah Pottery Assemblages from and scalar stress. In C. Renfrew, Stekelis, M. 1972. The Yarmukian Culture Munhata (Israel). Cahiers du Centre de M. Rowlands, and B. Segraves, (eds.) of the Neolithic Period. Jerusalem: Recherche Français de Jérusalem 6. Theory and Explanation in Archaology, Magnes Press. Paris: Association Paléorient. 389–421. New York: Academic Press. Stordeur, D., M. Brent, G. der Aprahamian, 1993. The Yarmukian Culture in Israel. Kafafi, Z.A. 2001. Jebel Abu Thawwab (Er- and J.C. Roux, 2001. Les bâtiments com- Paléorient 19/1: 115-134. Rumman), Central Jordan. The Late munautaires de Jerf el Ahmar et 1999. Neolithic and Chalcolithic Pottery of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age I Mureybet horizon PPNA (Syria).

Southern Levant (Qedem 39). Jerusalem: Occupations. Berlin: ex oriente. Paléorient 26/1: 29-44.

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