From their research in Jordan, the authors show that the appearance of early farming and herding communities in western Asia coincided with a large expansion in stone bead production. This reflects a new social role for personal ornament.

•Ground stone tools at Çatalhöyük indicate both egalitarian features and social complexity.•Households had private property but some tools may have been shared.•Large millstones (querns) were “expensive” and possibly linked with certain buildings.•Cooking features suggest household equality; storage features and querns suggest inequality.•There are suggestions of intensification, specialization, inheritance taboos and emerging factional competition.

There has been surprisingly little systematic study by prehistorians of how in the distant past people cooked and consumed food. There are many unanswered questions. For example, how did cooking emerge and affect human evolution, how did it change with the advent of farming, when did kitchens first appear and who built the earliest known ovens? Research on Palaeolithic and Neolithic food preparation and consumption is now beginning to suggest answers to such questions.

What social groups were involved in Neolithic craft production? What was the nature of early forms of craft specialization, long before urban economies evolved? One way to look at this is to investigate manufacture of Neolithic prestige goods. Seasonal camps in Wadi Jilat (eastern Jordan) revealed unusually detailed evidence for manufacture of stone beads: debris, blanks, finished beads, and tools for drilling, sawing and abrasion. The material is 'Dabba Marble', a metamorphic rock of which the major source is nearby. This article describes lapidary technology at Jilat 13 and Jilat 25, equivalent in age to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC). Mineral-chemical characterization data on Dabba Marble are presented. These sites raise issues about early craft specialization. These beadmakers seem to have been master craftsmen/women. We suggest that these sites illustrate a particular form of 'site specialization', namely sites located in remote territories and focused on special materials and intensive production of prestige goods. However, these craft activities were also embedded in hunting, herding and, perhaps, ritual, as suggested by figurines and pillars.

the cultural-evolutionary perspective, and suggests that social complexity was born out of a sedentary lifestyle and the adoption of agriculture. Whilst it is possible to take issue with the theoretical perspective, this publication makes an invaluable contribution to the earlier prehistoric archaeology of Cyprus and the Levant. The perception of the Cypriot Neolithic and its part in the wider Neolithic of Anatolia and the Levant has been radically altered by each of these publications. The shifting of dates, both with regard to the discovery of ‘new’ sites and revision of existing chronologies (Todd in Néolithique), has led to a fuller appreciation and a far more coherent and productive understanding of this era in Cyprus’ prehistoric past. These publications will, no doubt, continue to stimulate lively debate and instigate reappraisals on a far more frequent basis. They mark the dawn of a new day for the Neolithic.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsCanhasan Sites. Vol. 1, Canhasan I: Stratigraphy and Structures. By David French.Katherine I. WrightKatherine I. Wright Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 106, Number 4October 2002 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/4126225 Copyright © 2002 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This paper explores social customs of cooking and dining as farming emerged in the earliest villages of Palestine and Jordan (12,650–6850 cal BC). The approach is a spatial analysis of in situ hearths, pits, bins, benches, platforms, activity areas, caches, and ground stone artefacts. Mortars, pestles, and bowls first appear in significant numbers in base camps of semi-sedentary Natufian hunter-gatherers. Elaborate and decorated, these artefacts imply a newly formal social etiquette of food-sharing. They were used within houses, near hearths, and in outdoor areas. The earliest farmers of the Khiamian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A used simple, mostly undecorated, ground stone tools. One-room houses were often fitted with a hearth and a small mortar in the centre, features that also occur in outdoor areas. In the Early and Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, firepits, milling stations, and storage features were placed on porches and outdoor areas near house doors. These areas formed a transition zone between house and community, where food preparation provided opportunities for social contacts. The most private rooms in houses were supplied with benches, platforms, and decorated hearths, and probably sheltered household meals. In the Late PPNB, when some villages grew to unprecedented sizes, storage, and cooking facilities were placed in constricted, private spaces comparatively hidden from community view. Numerous milling tools and multiple milling stations in individual houses suggest intensification of production of prepared foods. It is argued that adult women bore the brunt of the increased labour and that these activities placed them under new restrictions of daily activity and visibility in relation to village communities.

AbstractThis report presents results of a two month test excavation at Wadi Faynan 1OO, an eleven-hectare site in the centre of the valley. Four operations at the edges of the site all revealed in situ remains of the late fourth millennium B.C. (Early Bronze Age I, c. 3500–3000 B.C.) Evidence of Nabataean occupation is also present. The EBI occupation is characterized by rectilinear stone structures, courtyards, outdoor activity areas with pits, fire installations and ephemeral walls. These remains suggest domestic activities, including evidence of metalworking.

As a result of its geographical location between the Old World continents, its distinctive natural resources and its innovative cultural record, the Near East is of particular interest to scholars concerned with human developments through the Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Research has focused on the nature and timing of hominid dispersals from Africa into Eurasia, the adaptations of premodern humans to Near Eastern environments, the nature of neanderthal and early modern human societies, hunter-gatherer adaptations in the later Pleistocene and the emergence of village-based farming. However, in spite of considerable concern with these phenomena, our knowledge of the early prehistory of the Near East remains geographically restricted. The best known region for the Palaeolithic is the central and southern Levant. Limited work was undertaken in the Iraqi and Iranian Zagros in the 1950s–60s, but the northern Levant and Turkey remain poorly studied. Aceramic Neolithic research has been more evenly spread, having benefited from the dam salvage projects in the Tigris-Euphrates basins and work in the central Anatolian plateau. However there are still substantial gaps in our knowledge.

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Ground-stone tools and hunter-gatherer subsistence in late Pleistocene southwest Asia are examined in light of ethnographic and experimental data on processing methods essential for consumption of various plant foods. In general, grinding and pounding appear to be labor-intensive processing methods. In particular, the labor required to make wild cereals edible has been widely underestimated, and wild cereals were unlikely to have been ''attractive'' to foragers except under stress conditions. Levantine ground-stone tools were probably used for processing diverse plants. The earliest occurrence of deep mortars coincides with the glacial maximum, camp reoccupations, the onset of increasingly territorial foraging, and the earliest presently known significant samples of wild cereals. Two major episodes of intensification in plant-food processing can be identified in the Levant, coinciding respectively with the earliest evidence for sedentism (12,800-11,500 B.P.) and the transition to farming (11,500-9600 B.P.). The latter episode was characterized by rising frequencies of grinding tools relative to pounding tools, and suggests attempts to maximize nutritional returns of plants harvested from the limited territories characteristic of sedentary foraging and early farming. This episode was probably encouraged by the Younger Dryas, when density and storability of foods may have outweighed considerations of processing costs.

Recent excavations in the south-west Azraq Basin (Jordan) have shed significant new light on the origins of pastoralism, the “burin site” phenomenon and arid-land adaptations between the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and the Early Phase of the Late Neolithic. This article outlines results of excavations at four neighbouring sites in the Wadi el-Jilat which were occupied at stages between c. 7,500 and 5,500 B.C. uncalibrated.

Ground stone assemblages increase in number, size and diversity in the Neolithic of the Levant. The significance of this development is discussed in relation to the development of sedentary villages; the origins of agriculture and pastoralism; and the elaboration of craftsmanship. An increase in the frequency of grinding tools relative to pounding tools characterizes the early Neolithic sites by comparison to Natufian and earlier assemblages. Regional variations in Neolithic assemblages reflect differences in mobility and subsistence economies in the woodland and arid zones. An apparent decline in the diversity of certain “food processing” tools may be characteristic of Late Neolithic sites and this pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that more mobile subsistence economies were developing. Evidence from the PPNB and Late Neolithic also suggests that ground stone technology played a key role in the development of other crafts, including ceramics.

Comparative studies of ground stone artifacts have been limited, due to widely varying terminology and typological schemes restricted to material from one or two specific sites. Most interim site reports describe such artifacts only briefly. Yet ground stone has important implications for the development of prehistoric technology and therefore deserves at least as much attention as is routinely given to chipped stone tools. This article presents definitions of technological and morphological terms and a general classification applicable to prehistoric Levantine sites. While morphological typology should certainly not be the final goal of ground stone analyses, few would dispute the need for relatively standardized terminology that will permit communication of finds.