Foraging, Farming, and Social Complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A Review and Synthesis

The transition from foraging to farming of the Neolithic periods is one of, if not, the most important cultural processes in recent human prehistory. Integrating previously published archaeological materials with archaeological research conducted since 1980, the first half of this essay synthesizes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of world prehistory 2002-12, Vol.16 (4), p.361-440
Main Authors: Kuijt, Ian, Goring-Morris, Nigel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeology
Architecture
Asia
Communities
Excavations
Farming
Foraging
Funerary rituals
Ghazals
History
Human evolution
Middle East
Near East
Neolithic Age
Neolithic and chalcolithic
Pottery
Prehistory
Prehistory and protohistory
Residential architecture
Residential buildings
Skull
Social change
Social structure
Society
Wadis
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Description
Summary:The transition from foraging to farming of the Neolithic periods is one of, if not, the most important cultural processes in recent human prehistory. Integrating previously published archaeological materials with archaeological research conducted since 1980, the first half of this essay synthesizes our current understanding of archaeological data for the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 11,700—ca. 8400 B.P.) of the southern Levant, generally defined as including southern Syria and Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Autonomous Authority, Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. The second half of the essay explores how these data inform archaeologists about the processes by which social differentiation emerged, the nature of regional and interregional connections, and the mechanisms and processes by which the transition from foraging to food production first occurred in the Neolithic.
ISSN:0892-7537
1573-7802
DOI:10.1023/a:1022973114090