Bill Finlayson

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social organizations. Recent excavations at Dhra′ near the Dead Sea in Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built granaries in a predomestication context ≈11,300–11,175 cal B.P., which support recent arguments for the deliberate cultivation of wild cereals at this time. Designed with suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents, they are located between residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years.

Architecture, sedentism, and social complexity at Pre-Pottery Neolithic A WF16, Southern Jordan

Recent excavations at Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) WF16 in southern Jordan have revealed remarkable evidence of architectural developments in the early Neolithic. This sheds light on both special purpose structures and “domestic” settlement, allowing fresh insights into the development of increasingly sedentary communities and the social systems they supported. The development of sedentary communities is a central part of the Neolithic process in Southwest Asia. Architecture and ideas of homes and households have been important to the debate, although there has also been considerable discussion on the role of communal buildings and the organization of early sedentarizing communities since the discovery of the tower at Jericho. Recently, the focus has been on either northern Levantine PPNA sites, such as Jerf el Ahmar, or the emergence of ritual buildings in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B of the southern Levant. Much of the debate revolves around a division between what is interpreted as domestic space, contrasted with “special purpose” buildings. Our recent evidence allows a fresh examination of the nature of early Neolithic communities.

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Abstract Crop irrigation has long been recognized as having been important for the evolution of social complexity in several parts of the world. Structural evidence for water management, as in the form of wells, ditches and dams, is often difficult to interpret and may be a poor indicator of past irrigation that may have had no need for such constructions. It would be of considerable value, therefore, to be able to infer past irrigation directly from archaeo-botanical remains, and especially the type of archaeo-botanical remains that are relatively abundant in the archaeological record, such as phytoliths. Building on the pioneering work of Rosen and Wiener (1994), this paper describes a crop-growing experiment designed to explore the impact of irrigation on the formation of phytoliths within cereals. If it can be shown that a systemic and consistent relationship exists between phytolith size, structure and the intensity of irrigation, and if various taphonomic and palaeoenvironmental processes can be controlled for, then the presence of past irrigation can feasibly be inferred from the phytoliths recovered from the archaeological record.

An 11,600 year-old communal structure from the Neolithic of southern Jordan

The authors present a new type of communal and monumental structure from the earliest Neolithic in western Asia. A complement to the decorated stone pillars erected at Göbekli Tepe in the north, ‘Wadi Faynan 16 Structure O75’ in the southern Levant is a ritualised gathering place of a different kind. It serves to define wider western Asia as an arena of social experiment in the tenth millennium BC, one in which community seems to take precedence over economy.

Pottery Neolithic landscape modification at Dhra

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

Early Holocene woodland vegetation and human impacts in the arid zone of the southern Levant.

Palynological archives dating from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are scarce in the arid zone of the southern Levant. Anthracological remains (the carbonized residues of wood fuel use found in archaeological habitation sites) provide an alternative source of information about past vegetation. This paper discusses new and previously available anthracological datasets retrieved from excavated habitation sites in the southern Levant dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) period. The available evidence indicates the existence of distinct arboreal floras growing in different ecological niches, which occupied areas that today are either treeless or very sparsely wooded. The anthracological data provide independent confirmation of the hypothesis that early Holocene climate in the southern Levant was significantly moister than at present. Clear North–South and East–West precipitation and associated woodland composition gradients are evidenced. Far from deducing widespread anthropogenic degradation of the regional vegetation, it is suggested that woodland expansion in the semi-arid interiors of the Levant may be attributed to the intensive management of Pistacia woodlands for food, fuel and pasture.

The Dana-Faynan-Ghuwayr early prehistory project

Abstract This is the report of the 1997 and 1998 field seasons. Survey has located a number of aceramic sites in Wadis Dana, Faynan and Ghuwayr. Excavation has to date focussed on WF16, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site on a knoll above the confluence of Wadi Ghuwayr and Wadi Faynan. A sequence of construction and midden deposits has been located, along with the remains of human burial, faunal, floral, lithic and ground stone assemblages. Archaeological survey is linked to extensive geomorphological survey to provide the landscape context for the sites.

Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction at Beidha, southern Jordan (c. 18,000-8,500 BP): Implications for human occupation during the Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic

The Beidha archaeological site in Southern Jordan was occupied during the Natufian (two discrete occupation phases, c. 15,200–14,200 cal. BP and c. 13,600– 13,200 cal. years BP) and Pre-Pottery B Neolithic periods (c. 10,300–8,600 cal. years BP). This chapter reconstructs the palaeoenvironments at Beidha during these periods, using sedimentological observations and the stable isotopic composition (oxygen and carbon) of carbonate deposits. Age control is provided by uranium-series and radiocarbon dating. Detailed analysis of a carbonate stratigraphic section related to a fossil spring close to the site, and a sequence of carbonate nodules from a section on the western edge of the archaeological site, permits a reconstruction of climatic variations between c. 18,000 and c. 8,500 years BP. The results of the palaeoenvironmental study are compared with the archaeological evidence, to explore the relationship between human occupation and climatic variability at Beidha. The results indicate a marked correspondence between more favourable (wetter) environmental conditions and phases of occupation at Beidha, and provide clues to the likely sources of water that sustained the settlement during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

On the Edge: Southern Levantine Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic Chronological succession

Abstract The broad picture of the cultural and chronological succession from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic in the southern Levant is generally well understood. However, at a more detailed, local level, many questions remain unanswered. In this paper we examine the archaeological record of cultural developments in southern Jordan and the Negev. Focusing on a series of 14C dates from the early occupation of the PPNA site of WF16, we provide a critical review of dating evidence for the region. This review suggests that while the 14C chronology is ambiguous and problematic there is good evidence for a local historical development from the Harifian variant of the Natufian to the early PPNA, well to the south of any core Mediterranean woodland zone. This stresses the importance of considering developments at local scales of analysis, and that the Neolithic transition occurred within a framework of many interacting sub-regional provinces.

Early Neolithic woodland composition and exploitation in the Southern Levant: a comparison between archaeobotanical remains from WF16 and present-day woodland at Hammam Adethni

Abstract Excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of WF16 in the Southern Levant produced an archaeobotanical assemblage constituted by plant macro-fossils and wood charcoal. As with all such assemblages, its species composition will most likely provide a biased reflection of those within the Neolithic woodland that had been exploited owing to cultural selection and differential preservation. As a means of facilitating its interpretation, a survey was undertaken of a relatively undisturbed patch of gallery woodland associated with a permanent water course at Hammam Adethni, approximately four kilometres south-east of WF16. The substantial overlap of the species within this woodland and those in the archaeobotanical assemblage suggests that this present-day woodland provides an analogue for that of the Neolithic and may therefore indicate what other plant resources the inhabitants of WF16 may have exploited, but which have left no archaeological trace. The interpretation of the results is supported by a comparative study of wood charcoal from present-day Bedouin hearths in Wadi Faynan.