Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:37:07.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Trevor Watkins
Trevor Watkins*
Affiliation:
*School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, The Old High School, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LT, UK (Email: [email protected])
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Shortly after his retirement from a distinguished career in the Department of Archaeology at Edinburgh, the author gave the Rhind Lectures for 2009, bringing together his thoughts about the Neolithic revolution, and comparing Childe's ideas with today's. These lectures, summarised here, announced the modern vision to a wide audience. It is a reversal of the old: Epipalaeolithic people came together in the first large, permanent communities, to form extensive settlements which only later needed to be fed by farming.

Keywords

south-west AsiaNeolithic revolutionGordon Childespiritualitymonumentalityagriculture
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 325 , September 2010 , pp. 621 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

References

Aiello, L. & Dunbar, R.. 1993. Neocortex size, group size and the evolution of language. Current Anthropology 36: 184–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allaby, R.G., Fuller, D.Q. & Brown, T.A.. 2008. The genetic expectations of a protracted model for the origins of domesticated crops. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105(37): 13982–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Braidwood, R.J. 1960. The agricultural revolution. Scientific American 203: 130–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Braidwood, R.J. & Willey, G.R.. 1962. Conclusions and afterthoughts, in Willey, G.R. & Braidwood, R.J. (ed.) Courses towards urban life: archaeological considerations of some cultural alternatives: 330–59. Chicago (IL): Aldine.Google Scholar
Byrd, B.F. & Banning, E.B.. 1988. Southern Levant pier-houses: intersite architectural patterning during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. Paléorient 14(1): 65–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, A.P. 1985. The symbolic construction of community. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colledge, S. 2002. Identifying pre-domestication cultivation in the archaeobotanical record using multivariate analysis: presenting the case for quantification, in Cappers, R.T.J. & Bottema, S. (ed.) The dawn of farming in the Near East: 141–52. Berlin: Ex Oriente.Google Scholar
Connerton, P. 1989. How societies remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coqueugniot, E. 2000. Dja'de, Syrie: un village á la veille de la domestication (seconde moitié du IXe millénaire av. J.-C.), in Guilaine, J. (ed.) Premiers paysans du monde: naissances des agricultures: 63–79. Paris: Errance.Google Scholar
Davis, S.J.M. 2005. Why domesticate food animals? Some zoo-archaeological evidence from the Levant. Journal of Archaeological Science 32(9): 1408–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donald, M. 1991. Origins of the modern mind: three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Donald, M. 1998. Hominid enculturation and cognitive evolution, in Renfrew, C. & Scarre, C. (ed.) Cognition and material culture: the archaeology of symbolic storage: 7–17. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Donald, M. 2001. A mind so rare: the evolution of human consciousness. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R.I.M. 1997. Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language. London: Faber.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R.I.M. 1998. The social brain hypothesis. Evolutionary Anthropology 6(3): 178–90.3.0.CO;2-8>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, C. 1998. Palaeolithic society and the release from proximity: a network approach to intimate relations. World Archaeology 29(3): 426–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, C. 1999. The Palaeolithic societies of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goring-Morris, N. 2000. The quick and the dead: the social context of aceramic Neolithic mortuary practices as seen from Kfar HaHoresh', in Kuijt, I. (ed.) Life in Neolithic farming communities: social organization, identity, and differentiation: 103–64. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.Google Scholar
Goring-Morris, N. & Horwitz, L.K.. 2007. Funerals and feasts during the pre-pottery Neolithic B of the Near East. Antiquity 81: 902–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goring-Morris, N., Ashkenazi, H., Barzilai, O., Birkenfeld, M., Eshed, V., Goren, Y., Horwitz, L.K., Oron, M. & Williams, J.. 2008. The 2007-8 excavation seasons at Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Kfar HaHoresh, Israel. Antiquity 82. Available at: http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/goringmorris318.htm (accessed 20 April 2010).Google Scholar
Guerrero, E., Molist, M., Kuijt, I. & Anfruns, J.. 2009. Seated memory: new insights into Near Eastern Neolithic mortuary variability from Tell Halula, Syria. Current Anthropology 50(3): 379–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardy-Smith, T. & Edwards, P.C.. 2004. The Garbage Crisis in prehistory: artefact discard patterns at the Early Natufian site of Wadi Harnmeh 27 and the origins of household refuse disposal strategies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23(3): 253–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I. 2006. Çatalhöyük: the leopards tale: revealing the mysteries of Turkey's ancient ‘town’. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Kuijt, I. 2000a. Keeping the peace: ritual, skull caching and community integration in the Levantine Neolithic, in Kuijt, I. (ed.) Life in Neolithic farming communities: social organization, identity, and differentiation: 137–62. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.Google Scholar
Kuijt, I. 2000b. People and space in early agricultural villages: exploring daily lives, community size and architecture in the late Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period mortuary practices. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19(1): 75–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuijt, I. 2008. The regeneration of life: Neolithic structures of symbolic remembering and forgetting. Current Anthropology 49(2): 171–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, D. & Hershkovitz, I.. 1991. New subsistence data and human remains from the earliest Levantine Epipalaeolithic. Current Anthropology 32: 631–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özdoğan, A. 1999. Çayönü in Özdoğan, M. & Başgelen, N. (ed.) Neolithic in Turkey. The cradle of civilization, new discoveries: 35–63. Istanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayınları.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1986. Introduction: peer polity interaction and social change, in Renfrew, C. & Cherry, J.F. (ed.) Peer polity interaction and social change: 1–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1998. Mind and matter: cognitive archaeology and external symbolic storage, in Renfrew, C. & Scarre, C. (ed.) Cognition and material culture: the archaeology of symbolic storage: 1–6. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Rollefson, G.O. 2000. Ritual and social structure at Neolithic ’Ain Ghazal, in Kuijt, I. (ed.) Life in Neolithic farming communities: social organization, identity, and differentiation: 165–90. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.Google Scholar
Schirmer, W. 1990. Some aspects of the building in the ‘aceramic Neolithic’ settlement at Çayönü Tepesi. World Archaeology 21(3): 363–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, K. 2006. Sie bauten die ersten Tempel. Das rätselhafte Heiligtum der Steinzeitjäger. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Searle, J. 1995. The construction of social reality. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Stiner, M.C., Munro, N.D. & Surovell, T.A.. 2000. The tortoise and the hare: small-game use, the broad-spectrum revolution, and Paleolithic demography. Current Anthropology 41(1): 39–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stordeur, D. & Khawam, R.. 2006. L'aire funéraire de Tell Aswad (PPNB). Syria 83: 39–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stordeur, D. & Khawam, R.. 2007. Les crânes surmodelés de Tell Aswad (PPNB, Syrie): premier regard sur l'ensemble, premiéres réflexions. Syria 84: 5–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stordeur, D. & Khawam, R.. 2009. Une place pour les morts dans les maisons de Tell Aswad (Syrie). (Horizon PPNB Ancien et PPNB Moyen), in Córdoba, J., Molist, M., Pérez, C., Rubio, I. & Martínez, S. (ed.) Procedings of the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: 561–90. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
Stordeur, D., Brenet, M., Der Aprahamian, G. & Roux, J.-C.. 2000. Les bâtiments communautaires de Jerf el Ahmar et Mureybet, horizon PPNA (Syrie). Paléorient 26(1): 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valla, F. 2008. L'homme et l'habitat: l'invention de la maison durant la Préhistoire. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar
Watkins, T. 1990. The origins of house and home? World Archaeology 21(3): 336–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, T. 2004. Building houses, framing concepts, constructing worlds. Paléorient 30(1): 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, T. 2005. Architecture and ‘Theatres of Memory’ in the Neolithic south west Asia, in DeMarrais, E., Gosden, C. & Renfrew, C. (ed.) Rethinking materiality: the engagement of mind with the material world: 97–106. Cambridge: McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Watkins, T. 2006. Architecture and the symbolic construction of new worlds, in Banning, E.B. & Chazan, M. (ed.) Domesticating space: construction, community, and cosmology in the late prehistoric Near East: 15–24. Berlin: Ex Oriente.Google Scholar
Watkins, T. 2008. Supra-regional networks in the Neolithic of southwest Asia. Journal of World Prehistory 21(1): 139–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, E., Wetterstrom, W., Nadel, D. & Bar-Yosef, O.. 2004. The broad spectrum revisited: evidence from plant remains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101(26): 9551–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiss, E., Kislev, M.E., Simchoni, O., Nadel, D. & Tschauner, H., 2008. Plant-food preparation area on an Upper Paleolithic brush hut floor at Ohalo II, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(8): 2400–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilk, R. 2004. Miss Universe, the Olmec and the Valley of Oaxaca. Journal of Social Archaeology 4(1): 81–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willcox, G., Fornite, S. & Herveux, L.. 2008. Early Holocene cultivation before domestication in northern Syria. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17(3): 313–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar