Drawing on both the results of recent archaeological research and anthropological theory, leading experts synthesize current thinking on the nature of and variation within Neolithic social arrangements. The authors analyze archaeological data within a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives to reconstruct key aspects of ritual practices, labor organization, and collective social identity at the scale of the household, community, and region.

This book presents a synthesis of the prehistory of South East, Central and Eastern Europe (7000 - 3000 BC).

Over recent years, a number of scholars have argued that the human mind underwent a cognitive revolution in the Neolithic. This volume seeks to test these claims at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey and in other Neolithic contexts in the Middle East. It brings together cognitive scientists who have developed theoretical frameworks for the study of cognitive change, archaeologists who have conducted research into cognitive change in the Neolithic of the Middle East, and the excavators of the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük who have over recent years been exploring changes in consciousness, creativity and self in the context of the rich data from the site. Collectively, the authors argue that when detailed data are examined, theoretical evolutionary expectations are not found for these three characteristics. The Neolithic was a time of long, slow and diverse change in which there is little evidence for an internal cognitive revolution.

The Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000 BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life, where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging, herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.

This volume substantiates the island of Cyprus as an important player in the history of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and presents new theoretical and analytical approaches. The Cypriot Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age are characterised by an increasing complexity of social and political organisation, economic systems and networks. The book discusses and defines how specific types of material datasets and assemblages, such as architecture, artefacts, and ecofacts, and their contextualisation can form the basis of interpretative models of social structures and networks in ancient Cyprus. This is explored through four main themes: approaches to social dynamics; social and economic networks and connectivity; adaptability and agency; and social dynamics and inequality. The variety and transition of social structures on the island are discussed on multiple scales, from the local and relatively short-term to island-wide and eastern Mediterranean-wide and the longue durée. The focus of study ranges from urban to non-urban contexts, and are reflected in settlement, funerary, and other ritual contexts. Connections, both within the island and to the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and how these impact social and economic developments on the island, are explored. Discussions revolve around the potential of consolidating the models based on specialised studies into a cohesive interpretation of society on ancient Cyprus and its strategic connections with surrounding regions in a diachronic perspective from the Neolithic through the end of the Bronze Age, i.e. from roughly the seventh millennium to the eleventh century BCE. Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Plant Food Processing Tools at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe reconstructs plant food processing at this key Pre-Pottery Neolithic (9600-8000 BC) site, with an emphasis on cereals, legumes and herbs as food sources, on grinding and pounding tools for their processing, and on the vessels implied in the consumption of meals and beverages.