14 Neolithic Lifeways Microstratigraphic Traces within Houses, Animal Pens and Settlements WENDY MATTHEWS, LISA-MARIE SHILLITO, SARAH ELLIOTT, IAN D. BULL AND JAMES WILLIAMS Introduction RECENT RESEARCH ON EARLY FARMING GLOBALLY has identified considerable local variation in community lifeways and relations with plants and animals (Barker 2006). For the Near East, Willcox (2005) argues that there were multiple local centres of domestication within the heartland of wild progenitor species of wheat, barley, sheep and goats. There is also, however, evidence for remarkable contact between communities across this region (Kozlowski and Aurenche 2005). Asouti and Fuller (2013) have recently argued that to understand these local variations and pathways in early farming we need to develop more contextual approaches that consider a wide range of evidence of different spheres of life and to integrate interdisciplinary analyses and ecological and social approaches. One of the challenges in integrating different data sets is that during routine excavation and bulk sampling, aspects of the diversity, context and association of bioarchaeological, artefactual and sediment residues from activities are irreversibly lost, bulked together or separated. In this process, finely stratified lenses, too thin and numerous to excavate separately, may be bulked together and the specific actions and timescales that they represent are irreversibly amalgamated and homogenised. Even when excavated and sampled as single depositional units, only selected materials are recovered in many analyses during processes of excavation, dry or wet sieving, flotation and extractions from spot or bulk samples of deposits. Each material is also often and necessarily studied separately. In addition, crucial information may also frequently be lost on the environment and history of deposi- tion and post-depositional alterations that are discernible from geoarchaeological analysis of sedimentary context. This loss of information in composition and of contextual relations has a direct impact on methodological and research issues in the study of early farming. Many Proceedings of the British Academy 198, 251–79. © The British Academy 2014. 252 Wendy Matthews et al. studies of early plant management and domestication are based principally on the study of charred plant remains recovered from bulk sampling and water-flotation and wet- or dry-sieving. Charred plant remains, however, only represent plants that have been burnt, and generally only those that have been burnt at low temperatures <500°C, which are exceeded in many domestic or other fires (Boardman and Jones 1990, Van der Veen 2007, W. Matthews 2010). To widen the range of plant materials analysed, other plant materials in archaeological deposits are increasingly being recovered, even in these semi-arid environments. Pollen has been recovered from on-site Epi-Palaeolithic-Neolithic deposits in the Zagros (Leroi-Gourhan 1969) and could be more widely studied. Plant silica phytoliths are increasingly being recovered by extraction from spot samples of deposits to provide information on non-burnt as well as burnt plant remains (Rosen 2005, Ryan 2011). Interpretation of the ecological and social significance of these separate plant materials, however, is not straightforward. First, these plant remains specimens are often disarticulated during extraction, making identification of plant anatomy, species and original configuration when deposited problematic, particularly in the study of phytoliths (Shillito 2013). Secondly, dissociation of these plant remains from their precise depositional context and associations makes it more difficult to interpret their diverse depositional and taphonomic pathways and thereby their ecological and social significance (Van der Veen 2007). The earliest stages in animal management, furthermore, may be problematic to detect in zooarchaeological assemblages as changes in bone morphology indicative of domestication may be delayed by 500–1,000 years, and studies of kill-off profiles are dependent on identification of indicators of sex and age, which are influenced by a range of factors including environment (Zeder 2005). New indications of environment, vegetation, animal diet and management practices are being provided by analysis of a range of stable isotopes in animal and human bone more widely (this volume). These analyses, however, do not provide information on specific plant species, critical to in-depth study of ecological niches and wild and domestic resources, and often represent bulk seasonal or indeterminate longer-term time fluxes. The presence of dung on archaeological sites is one potential independent marker of greater human proximity to animals and early management, as traces of dung collected for fuel or from penning, for example (W. Matthews 2005a, 2010; Bull et al. 2005; Shahack-Gross 2011; Portillo et al. 2009; Shillito et al. 2011). Studies of dung and plant and microfossil content provide indicators of wider environment and vegetation (Ghosh et al. 2008) as well as animal diet and management practices at timescales of one to two days (Shahack-Gross 2011). These integrated studies are particularly important in the investigation of interrelations between environ- ment, early plant and animal management and sedentism. In addition, dung burnt as fuel is one major routeway for the presence of charred plant remains on archaeological sites, but remains difficult to identify (Charles 1998, Valamoti 2013). Charred dung pellets may be recovered by flotation, but many are difficult to identify NEOLITHIC LIFEWAYS 253 due to fragmentation either in antiquity during trampling in pens or dung-cake manufacture, for example, or during recovery in flotation. It is currently uncertain whether an increase in the diversity of charred plant species in the Epi-Palaeolithic to Early Neolithic sites represents a ‘broad spectrum revolution’ in human diet or plants consumed by animals and burnt as dung fuel (Miller 1996, Jones 1998). This chapter briefly reviews ways in which integrated approaches that include micro-contextual analysis of materials in situ within their microstratigraphic sequence in large resin-impregnated thin-sections may contribute to more precise data on the diversity and contextual significance of materials in early farming sites. It also examines ways in which micromorphological approaches can be linked to geochemical and phytolith analyses. The aim of this research is to develop integrated high-resolution micro- contextual approaches and to apply these first to evaluate how in situ analysis of diverse plant materials within their precise depositional context can contribute to understanding plant taphonomy and thereby their ecological and social significance. A second aim is to study dung as an indicator of animal management, especially in its earliest stages. The third aim is to examine the interrelationship between changes in plant and animal management and changes in activities, roles and relations at the scale of individuals/households and communities. This chapter begins with a review of the case studies and methodology. It then examines climate and environment as a key context for local and regional variation in early farming and sedentism, and then considers micro-contextual data on plant taphonomy and use; dung as an indicator of early management; and the nature and organisation of Neolithic activities, roles and relations. Case studies The case studies are selected from one of the key heartlands of early plant and animal management, in the central Zagros in the east of the Fertile Crescent. Selective comparison is made to Neolithic sites in central Anatolia, over 1,000km to the west where similar analyses have been conducted, in order briefly to examine local and regional variation in early farming strategies and lifeways. In the Zagros, many key interdisciplinary approaches and theories in the study of early farming were forged during field work in the 1950s–60s (Braidwood et al. 1961, Flannery 1969, Hole et al. 1969). Although subsequent research has identified earlier Neolithic sites and domesticated species in Cyprus, Anatolia and the Levant (Vigne et al. 2012), new research in the Zagros is re-emphasising the importance of this region in studies of local, regional and global options and pathways in the development of agriculture and more sedentary lifeways and early stages in this (Charles 2008, Zeder 2009, Riehl et al. 2013). A wide range of early Holocene sites have been identified by new surveys and excavations in the Iranian and Iraqi Zagros 254 Wendy Matthews et al. (R. Matthews and Fazeli-Nasheli 2013). In addition, recent analysis of modern DNA suggests that the Zagros may have been one area where barley and goat were domesticated (Morell and Clegg 2007, Naderi et al. 2008). This chapter examines results from new excavations and interdisciplinary research by the Central Zagros Archaeological Project to investigate local variation in ecology and lifeways at sites on a transect through different ecozones from the high to low Zagros mountains spanning 290km (Figure 14.1; R. Matthews et al. 2013). The two principal sites examined in this chapter are Sheikh-e Abad (9800–7600 cal BC) and Jani (c. 8000 cal BC) 90km apart in the high Zagros in Iran. Both are settlement mounds, c. 1 hectare in size, characteristic of many Neolithic sites (Baird 2005), and 10 and 8m high respectively. These sites were excavated, recorded and sampled in 2008 (R. Matthews et al. 2013). At Sheikh-e Abad, three