Archaeology

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Ain Mallaha

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-Israel
- Natufian Period (11000-9000 BC)
- Jean Perrot

-emergence of permanent communities, round houses
- More elaborate material culture and early trade
- early evidence of plant domestication
- burials under houses

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Abu Hureyra

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-Euphrates River, Syria – tell
- Natufian (10,500-9000 BC) and Early Neolithic (9000-6000 BC) site
- A.M.T. Moore

-Emergence of early agriculture *
- plant domestication
- Trade and exchange took place
- Domesticated rye appears along with more emphasis on tools for processing grain
- ground stone implements and milling equipment.
- domesticated lentils, legumes and wheat.
- transformation from Mesolithic to Neolithic economy

Front 3

Jericho

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- Jordan Valley of Israel
- Early Neolithic settlement (8500-7600 BC)
- Dame Kathleen Kenyon.
- famous plastered skulls.
- Indicative of status differences/social differentiation.
- a walled town of mud-brick houses, which is amongst the earliest permanent settlements known.
- one massive stone tower.
- Elisha's Fountain, the spring at Jericho, has flooded the area beneath it and supports an oasis in the hot, arid Jordan Valley.
- trade occurred over long distances.
- The reasons for such exchange probably lie in the importance of contacts with neighboring communities and in the accumulation of status items for some portion of the community.
- Around 7,500 B.C., major changes in architecture, artifacts, and animals occurred at Jericho.
-The design of houses changed.
- Domesticated animals became important at this time.

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Çatalhöyük

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- Turkey
- a huge Neolithic site
-James Mellaart
-the first city

-houses & furniture
- burials under floors
-shrines
- The inhabitants depended heavily on wild flora and fauna.
- Important plant foods included both wild and domesticated varieties, Cattle were an important part of the diet, but it is not yet certain if they were domesticated.
- Domesticated sheep and other species were eaten.
- obsidian trade.

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The Archaic Period (Mesolithic)

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Trends:
- Decreasing mobility (sedentism)
- Population growth
- Little or no fired clay (Poverty Point is an exception)
- More cultivated plants in the diet (gourds, squash, sunflowers, chenopodium, -and marsh elder)
- Some monumental construction
- Emergence of long distance trade
- Burials and burial goods begin to reveal
- differential access to resources
- emergence of social hierarchies (ascribed vs. achieved status)
- Increasing cultural differentiation (Clovis, Folsom —> distinct regional traditions)

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Guilá Naquitz

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- Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico
- A Preceramic site
-seasonality
- collection and processing pf plant foods, butchering and consumption of animals, manufacture of tools, digging of pits to store acorns, use of fire pits to prepare food, collection of leaves for bedding cave

Front 7

Guitarrero Cave

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- Peru
- Preceramic Period (c 12,500-6000 years ago) and continued through later ceramic periods
- origins of domestication in the high Andes
- textiles
- communication and exchange between different environmental areas
- manipulation and eventual domestication of the llama and alpaca
- contains bone and wood artifacts, basketry an loosely woven textiles, and the willow-leaf projectile point.

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Sedentism

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- a way of life in which people remain settled in one place throughout the year; permanent settlement at one location. It is settlement based in a single location rather than involving moving camp at regular intervals.

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Teosinte

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- a tall annual grass, native to Mexico and central America, closest relative of maize

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Seasonality

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- The changing availability of resources according to the different seasons of the year.

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Oasis Hypothesis

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- C Gordon Childe
-humans, plants, and animals clustered in confided areas near water
-only successful situation for food would be for humans to domesticate and control the animals and plants
-domestication began as a symbolic relationship between humans, plants, and animals at oases during the desiccation of Southwest Asia at the end of the Pleistocene

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Natural Habitat Hypothesis

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- Robert Braidwood
-based on the proposal that the earliest domesticates should appear where their wild ancestors lived.
- Robert Braidwood excavated the "hilly flanks" of the Fertile Crescent in Southwest Asia.
- Evidence from the early farming village of Jarmo in northern Iraq supported the hypothesis.
- The technology/culture existed by the end of the Pleistocene and humans were familiar with the plant and animal species.
- However, Braidwood did not offer an explanation as to why domestication occurred.

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Population Pressure Hypothesis/ Edge Hypothesis

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- Lewis Binford
- population increase in Southwest Asia upset the balance people and food, forcing people to turn to agriculture as a way to produce more food.
- The theory that the need for more food was initially felt at the margins of the natural habitat of the ancestors of domesticated plants and animals; a revised version of the population pressure hypothesis.
- agriculture was a last resort.
- Binford believed increasing human population led to agriculture — a way to get more food per acre of land.
- asserted that the effects of increased population pressure would be felt first in environmentally marginal areas, rather than in the natural habitat zone
- places like Mesopotamia proper (steppe and desert) rather than the surrounding uplands (cooler and moister environments)

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Social Hypothesis

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- Barbara Bender
- The theory that domestication allowed certain individuals to accumulate food surplus and to transform those foods into more valued items, such as rare stones or metals, and even social alliances.
- These surpluses can be turned into things like precious stones, metals, etc.
- Advocates of this theory argue this is how egalitarian societies evolved into hierarchical societies as social inequalities emerged.
- The social hypothesis was based on the argument that the transition to farming, food storage, and surplus could not be understood simply in terms of environment and population.
- The success of food production may lie more in the ability of certain individuals to accumulate a surplus of food and to transform that surplus into more valued items.
- Therefore, agriculture was the means by which social inequality emerged.