Preface
This volume emerged from an increasing awareness among archaeologists that while researchers have explored some of the technological, subsistence, and economic dimensions of the Near Eastern Neolithic, far less attention has been paid to understanding the nature of social organization for this important period. In relation to other topics, it has only been in the last 20 years or so that researchers have started to study the nature of Neolithic social organization in any detailed fashion. Given...
Discussion
Consideration of broader cross-cultural patterns in the anthropological literature provides a context for strengthening insights into why the prehistoric communities in the southern Levant were organized in the manner proposed. There has been much discussion regarding the conditions that favor nuclear versus extended family social organizations. Wilk and Rathje 1982 noted that variation within categories of household function production, distribution, transmission, and reproduction produce...
Chapter The Quick and the Dead The Social Context of Aceramic Neolithic
from Kfar Kfar General Observations on Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene Mortuary Ritual Centers, Burial Grounds, and Cemetery Sites 116 Monitoring Human and Animal Burials RankingasIndicatedby SkullRemovalandFurtherTreatment. . . . 121 Use cf Lime Plaster to Integrate Profane and Symbolic Realms . . . 126 Early Holocene Ritual and Mortuary Practices in Levant 126 Codification of Funerary Practices through Time 128 Concluding References Chapter 6 Keeping the Peace Ritual, Skull Caching, and...
Brian F Byrd
The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene was a period of unprecedented economic change in portions of southwest Asia as semimobile hunters and gatherers became sedentary agriculturalists. Significant changes in social organization and ideology are predicted to be associated with the emergence of these novel community forms, and discussion has generally focused on new patterns of social interaction, increased social complexity, and the emergence of nascent elites e.g., Bender 1978, 1990 Hayden...
Chapter The Symbolic Foundations
of the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East 235 The Advent of The Ascendancy of Masculine Symbols and the Neolithic Conclusions References Chapter 11 atal Hoyuk in Context Ritual at Early Neolithic Sites in Central and Eastern Turkey 253 Defining Archaeological Context Hajji Firuz Tepe 255 Nature of the Hajji Firuz Sample Figurine Form Application of the Ucko Typology 256 Figurine Use and Disposal Patterns Magic and Meaning Gritille The Gritille Figurine Sample Interpretation of the Gritille...
Chapter The Pottery Neolithic Period Questions about Pottery Decoration
Symbolism, and The Yarmukian The Wadi Raba Symbolic Assemblages of the Pottery Yarmukian Pottery, Imagery, and Interpretations 298 Wadi Raba Pottery, Imagery, and Discussion Organization cf Design Space on Death and Ancestors in the Pottery References Chapter 13 Near Eastern Neolithic Research Directions and Social Process, Scale, and the Coexistence of Hierarchical and Egalitarian Elements 312 Neolithic Social Organization Heterarchy, Hierarchy, or Both 314 Future Frameworks of Governance and...
Mortuary Ritual Social Differentiation and Settlement Systems
While providing explorations of a range of material realms of the Neolithic, including mortuary practices, ritual, architectural systems, and settlement patterns, the chapters in this section share a common interest examining the possible ways in which different forms of material culture reflect growing social differentiation and the social use of ritual practices in Pre-Pottery Neolithic contexts. Traditional arguments for the emergence of social differentiation in the Neolithic have often...
Regional Issues Settlement Practices and Sedentism
Traditionally arguments of the nature of Neolithic social organization have been founded, in part, on considerations of regional settlement practices and an understanding of the process by which communities become increasingly sedentary in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods. Although limited by the relatively small number of excavated early Neolithic settlements in some of the larger countries in the Near East, such as Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, exploration of regional and interregional...
Other Factors Affecting Domestic Building Size and Organization
Thus, if household size did not change in a profound way during this time period including from the PPNA to the PPNB , what accounts for the temporal and spatial patterned variation in the size of structures I suggest that a series of factors influenced the size, internal organization, and sitewide spatial distribution of structures in this sample, and these factors varied in importance during this transition. These factors included natural aspects of individual site settings essentially as a...
Diachronic Trends Inthe Archaeological Record
With respect to the interior size of domestic structures, no clear cut pan-southern Levantine trends are discernible between cultural complexes from the Early Epi-Paleolithic through the PPNA. Subsequently, a major increase in size occurs during the PPNB. However, overall sample sizes are low. Regional or site-specific trends appear to be a major factor contributing to the difficulty of discerning broad diachronic trends. Site setting such as open air versus cave or hillside versus flat terrain...
Kfar Hahoresh
Kfar HaHoresh is a 1-2 acre PPNB site located on a secluded north-facing slope in the uppermost reaches of a small, narrow wadi in the lower Galilee Nazareth Hills, north of the Jezreel Valley. Potential arable land is at a premium in the immediate vicinity of the site, as opposed to the settings of most PPNB villages in the region. Though secluded, the opposite hilltop provides a panoramic view from Mt. Carmel and the Mediterranean, across This is based on results through the 1996 field...
Prepottery Neolithic A Period Bp
Though of shorter duration than the preceding Natufian, the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period PPNA , dated to between ca.10,300and 9,300 years bp, represents a period of dramatic change, during which crucial phenomena appeared for the first time in human history for more detailed descriptions see Bar-Yosef 1991, 1992 Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989a Cauvin 1994 Kuijt 1995 Moore 1985 . The PPNA comprises two archaeological entities the Khiamian and the Sultanian Figure 3 , of which the...
Organizational Complexityand Sedentary Societies
The increased complexity typically evident in the social systems of sedentary hunter-gatherer and simple food-producing societies is largely due to two departures from typical mobile hunter-gatherer norms. The first is surplus collection or production, minimally on a seasonal basis, in the context of some form of delayed return system cf. Woodburn 1980, 1982, 1988 Southall 1988 see also Byrd 1994 .These seasonal surpluses, when coupled with storage, are what typically permit year-round...
Hallan emi and Early Village Organization in Eastern Anatolia
Michael Rosenberg and Richard W. Redding However one chooses to define cultural complexity e.g., Flannery 1972a Service 1978 McGuire 1983 ,there was a time not so long ago when expectations concerning Neolithic lifeways were that they were anything but complex. Thus, the large size of the then newly discovered Neolithic sites of Jericho Kenyon 1957 and CatalHoyuk Mellaart 1967 was genuinely surprising, as were the public structures they contained and the elaborate ritual life they evidenced....
Ian Kuijt
While previous research on the Near Eastern Neolithic has addressed many dimensions of food production and environmental change, relatively few studies have explored the social context of these processes, the nature cf political, economic, and religious practices in Neolithic communities, and how these specific patterns aid archaeologists and anthropologists in understanding some of the material and symbolic ways in which people were identified, how these are reflected through archaeological...
Domestic Building Sizes and Implications for Household Sizes
Examination of diachronic trends in prehistoric domestic structure size and organization have revealed that the most prominent changes occurred between the PPNA and the PPNB. No major changes are well documented prior to this period except for the site-specific exception of the Early Natufian at 'AinMallaha . Thus, the fundamental questions are What was the nature of social organization that characterized pre-PPNB settlements What do the changes from the PPNA to PPNB imply in terms of social...
Early Sedentism in the Near East
Anna Belfer-Cohen AND Ofer Bar-Yosef The emergence of sedentary communities in the Near East, as reflected in bioarchaeological data sets, occurred between 13,000and 10,000years ago. The process involved two major archaeological entities, the Natufian and the earliest Neolithic period, termed Pre-Pottery Neolithic A PPNA . These were followed by the cultural entities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period PPNB with extensive evidence for sedentary village communities as well as domesticates both...
Definitions And Approach Of The Study
Any study of prehistoric households requires constructing an approach for operationalizing their elucidation in the archaeological record. Households have been defined in a myriad of ways by social scientists. Depending on their definition and resulting social behavior, more than one household can be in a single building and one household can have several buildings Wilk and Netting 1984 Wilk and Rathje 1982 620 . For the purposes of this study, a widely used functional definition is employed. A...
Introduction
The end of the tenth and the entire ninth millennia bp uncalibrated represent a period of major transition in lifeways, from mobile hunter-gatherers to food production in the Mediterranean Levant Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1992 Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995 Horwitz 1993 Kohler-Rollefson 1989 Mellaart 1975 Moore 1985 Redman 1978 Rollefson and Kohler-Rollefson 1989 . This transformation is accompanied by a marked increase in overall population densities in the area and recolonization of adjacent...
References
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