Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, new organizations. Recent excavations at Dhra' near Dead Sea Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built granaries predomestication context approximately 11,300-11,175 cal B.P., which support recent arguments deliberate cultivation of wild cereals this time. Designed with suspended floors air circulation...

The social construction of identity and memory can be expressed through public ritual. organization mortuary practices, the repetitive use imagery figurines, long‐term reuse human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic illustrate how household ritual linked living to dead. Secondary practices plastering painting as heirlooms served a form memorialization erasure within communities. deliberate focus on face both decoration was part shared system practices. Skull caching modification transcended...

In studying the origins of agriculture it is critical that we envision food production as a long-term human process centers on control and management cycles plant reproduction, including harvesting, storage, planting seed stock. Drawing upon growing body literature illustrating multiple trajectories pathways to agriculture, I see domestication developing through coevolution between beings resources they exploited. A more detailed understanding requires us disentangle complex knot different...

A broad synthesis of the archaeology Plateau region Pacific Northwest and evolution organization complex hunter-gatherers in general.

Palynological archives dating from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are scarce in arid zone of southern Levant. Anthracological remains (the carbonized residues wood fuel use found archaeological habitation sites) provide an alternative source information about past vegetation. This paper discusses new and previously available anthracological datasets retrieved excavated sites Levant to Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) period. The evidence indicates existence distinct arboreal floras growing...

The prehistoric development of food storage represents a major evolutionary transition, one potentially more important than the initial domestication plants. Researchers, however, have yet to really deal with some critical practical questions related materiality and decision-making. Drawing upon experimental research this paper seeks identify model interconnections between anticipated loss due spoilage, decision-making need for people store multiple years. Building on foundation, echoing...

Archaeological chemists compare the radiogenic strontium isotope ratios of humans to those environment in order assess paleomobility contexts across world, spanning from periods before modern current forensic applications. These methods rely on variability bioavailable that is typically attributed age and composition geology, among other environmental factors. One such factor, Sea Spray Effect, refers homogenizing impact marine found terrestrial settings are incorporated into human diet by...

Starting around 12.000-10.000 years ago, people living in the Near East started doing something quite remarkable: they developed new ways to store and prolong shelf-life of plant foods. I argue that this process with small-scale household decision-making, bringing about gradual changes. When viewed as an evolutionary trajectory covering Eastern Epipaleolithic Pottery Neolithic periods, transition exemplifies a shift from co-insurance self-insurance food risk management. Ultimately, it was...

Les archéologues ont longtemps considéré que le développement du système de stockage constituait une étape majeure dans processus socio-économique néolithisation, contribuant à la domestication des plantes, modes vie sédentaires allant en s’accroissant et nouvelle organisation sociale. Dans même temps notre compréhension matériel associé au aliments est restée peu développée nombreux cas les eu grandes difficultés quantifier façon significative l’importance nourriture travers temps. Cette...

Any investigation into the topics of greed and excess is necessarily hampered by inability to frame define these concepts for general application human behaviors. These terms carry significant moral, social, political, cultural weight, primarily used either as accusations sin, vice, social destruction or justified their virtues, rewards, good. In trying understand economic underpinnings behaviors we may term greedy excessive, recognize need also exploring why have almost universally been...

Discourse on the origins and spread of domesticated species focuses universal causal explanations or unique regional temporal trajectories. Despite new data as to context physical processes early domestication, researchers still do not understand types system-level reorganizations required transition from foraging farming. Drawing upon dynamical systems theory concepts attractors repellors, we develop an understanding subsistence a description variation in, emergence of, human systems. The...

This report of the discovery low walls running across slopes east Dead Sea presents an important landmark in history farming, for these were terrace put place to conserve soil and control water around 6000 cal BC. The authors point some implications what they see as early landscape modification at scale a small community or household.

Despite a long history of field research in the Neolithic Near East, archaeologists have remarkably poor understanding degree variation mortuary practices within and between major settlements. Such an is critical for reconstructing social, economic, ritual interconnections people villages and, by extension, how researchers model social organization early agricultural villages. Mortuary data from Middle Pre‐Pottery B (PPNB) components Tell Halula, large village middle valley Euphrates River,...

We present detailed accounts of the archaeobotanical remains recovered from excavations southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site Dhra', including metric and morphological analysis barley grains. Comparisons with other early Epi-Palaeolithic sites indicate that Dhra' grains are larger than recorded wild specimens, but fall at lower range domestic species, consistent intermediary pre-domestication cultivation status. contextualize these results in relation to associated evidence for...