Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley Ian Kuijta,1 and Bill Finlaysonb aDepartment of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; and bCouncil for British Research in the Levant, Jubaiha, Amman 11941, Jordan Edited by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved May 15, 2009 (received for review December 16, 2008) Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social Valley once again adopted more sedentary residential practices. package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant do- Research at several PPNA sites within the Jordan Valley pro- mestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social or- vides evidence for the appearance of large settlements, with ganizations. Recent excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in buildings that required significant energy investment, and dras- Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built tically expanded development of food storage compared with the granaries in a predomestication context Ϸ11,300–11,175 cal B.P., Early and Late Natufian periods (Fig. 1) and increased manip- which support recent arguments for the deliberate cultivation of ulation of plant food sources. Excavations at Dhra', Gilgal I, wild cereals at this time. Designed with suspended floors for air Netiv Hagdud, and WF 16 illustrate that at the end of the circulation and protection from rodents, they are located between Younger Dryas climatic period for the first time, to our knowl- residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. edge, people started to live in larger communities that were The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relation- based, at least in part, upon systematic large-scale food storage ship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emer- of cultivated plants. These actions initiated changes in wild plant gence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by foods, and although not morphologically changed into domes- at least 1,000 years. ticated plants, some of the plants used in the PPNA were already undergoing changes as a byproduct of economic intensification Near East ͉ Neolithic ͉ forager-farmer transition and selection. The excavated remains provide new insight into increased ew archaeological work at the PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic human control of plants, the prehistoric storage of plant foods, NA; Ϸ11,500–10,500 cal B.P.) site of Dhra', located next to the earliest stages in material manifestations of plant manipu- the Dead Sea in Jordan, reveals clear evidence for large-scale lation leading eventually to domestication, and an important storage in sophisticated, purpose-built granaries before the stage in the development of the built landscape. To achieve domestication of plants. Evidence for PPNA food storage illus- enhanced resource stability, early Neolithic people constructed trates a major transition in the economic and social organization simple, yet effective granaries. Excavations at Dhra' indicate that of human communities. The transition from economic systems the granaries were located in extramural locations between other based on collecting and foraging of wild food resources before buildings. Starting at 10,500 cal B.P., food storage starts to be this point to cultivation and foraging of mixed wild and managed located inside houses, and by 9,500 cal B.P., dedicated storage resources in the PPNA illustrates a major intensification of rooms appear in Neolithic villages. This transition from extra- human-plant relationships. mural to intramural storage system may reflect evolving systems People in the PPNA were the first in the world to develop of ownership and property, with PPNA granaries being used and systematic large-scale food storage. In the Early Natufian period owned communally and with later food storage systems becom- (Ϸ15,000/14,500–12,800 cal B.P.), people used a remarkably ing part of household or individual based systems. The evidence wide range of wild plants and animals, lived in relatively large for granaries is most clearly seen in the excavations at, Dhra' (5), well-made semisubterranean buildings for much of the year, and but can be inferred at Netiv Hagdud and Gilgal I. Surprisingly, undoubtedly had a detailed knowledge of the seasonality and these granaries provided a means of storing cultivated plants, availability of these resources (1). Certainly the apparent in- and predate the appearance of morphologically domesticated creased degree of sedentism in the Early Natufian period cereals by a thousand years (6). suggests that people were able to reduce seasonal food risks to Archaeological excavations have revealed that by 11,500 cal the point where they could live in the same areas for 1 or more B.P. in the southern Levant PPNA people used at least 2 types seasons of the year. There is, however, surprisingly little direct of storage systems: small bins and larger storage silos. Excava- evidence for food storage (2, 3). The strongest is from 'Ain tions at Dhra' have uncovered the remains of 3 distinct types of Mallaha (4), where pits are often termed silos although their structures, 2 of which were used as food processing locations and specific function is unclear. There is indirect evidence in the residential buildings, and the third that served as a simple Natufian for plant food processing, including the presence of granary (Fig. 2). Excavations have identified at least 10 food sickles, mortars, and pestles. Although Natufian people probably processing/residential structures characterized by walls made of engaged in some form of low-level food storage, they also mud or upright stones, mud floors, and inset cupholes or situated their settlements where they were able to use high-yield grinding stones. Excavation of approximately 3% of the site, food resources from multiple natural ecotones in different which covers 6,500 m2, also revealed the remains of at least 4 seasons. With the onset of the climatic downturn of the Younger granaries that are interspersed between the oval/circular food Dryas, people in the Late Natufian period (Ϸ12,800–11,500 cal B.P.) returned to more mobile economic and subsistence strat- egies. Late Natufian people abandoned earlier settlements, Author contributions: I.K. and B.F. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, adopted new systems seasonal residential movement, and rarely and wrote the paper. built residential structures that required significant investment of The authors declare no conflict of interest. energy. This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. With the end of the Younger Dryas and with stabilization of Freely available online through the PNAS open access option. climate and increased precipitation, people within the Jordan 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]. 10966–10970 ͉ PNAS ͉ July 7, 2009 ͉ vol. 106 ͉ no. 27 www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0812764106 Downloaded by guest on September 25, 2021 and insects. This design was achieved by constructing an outer mud (or pise´)wall; where structures were terraced into a slope, the revetting wall was of stone. There is some evidence that the upper parts of the walls may have had a light weight organic frame (or wattle) to support the mud, although the walls appear 900 to have been more substantial than the wattle and daub screen walls of some of the processing structures. Although there are no 1200 in situ preserved remains of the roof, experimental research and Nahal Oren the lack of any central post holes suggests that the roof was Gesher probably flat and covered with a protective coating of mud to ‘Iraq ed-Dubb shed rain water. Remarkably well preserved remains from Structure 4, phase I, help us understand how these granaries were constructed at Salibiya IX Netiv Hagdud Dhra', and by extension, probably at Gilgal I and Netiv Hagdud. Gilgal I Hatoula Jericho The suspended-floor inside structure 4 was built by placing notched stones upright along a subfloor. The stones were placed between 1.0 and 1.2 m apart, in lines, so that wooden beams ‘Ain Darat Zahrat adh Dhra‘ 2 could be held in place along the notches (Figs. 3 and 4). Apart Dhra‘ from the upslope end of the structure, which is oriented per- 300 pendicular to the other beam lines, all of the beam lines were o 600 parallel. The floor slopes at a 7 angle. This design appears to be intentional, and would have been useful for storing and gathering loose material, but not helpful for either working or residential Wadi Fidan 16 purposes. Some of the 35–50-cm high upright stones were reused 300 grinding (quern) stones, whereas others were specially made. 600 Large pieces of burned wood recovered in situ, and lumps of 900 burnt mud with wood and vegetation impressions, suggest that this structure had a raised floor of wood, covered with smaller North plant matter and mud. Field and laboratory observations, in- 0 50 km cluding micromorphological analysis, indicate that the sediments recovered from inside the structure were linked to the collapse of the floor, roof, and walls. Micromorphology also shows numerous voids of straw and glumes, whose size indicates barley. Fig. 1. The location of the prepottery Neolithic A site of Dhra', other sites It appears that a temper has been incorporated into the mud, with granaries, and other significant sites from this period. highlighting both the careful manufacture of the building and large scale harvesting (5). Preliminary phytolith analysis shows a concentration of barley husks from the mud floor, not iden- processing/residential buildings. All of the granaries were circu- tified elsewhere on the site. A radiocarbon sample from an intact lar structures Ϸ3 ϫ 3 m on the outside and were built with wood beam associated with the burning and abandonment of the suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents phase I construction produced a radiocarbon date of 9,913 Ϯ 59 ANTHROPOLOGY Fig.