D. Maricevic

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.

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.

Death and architecture: The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Burials at WF16, Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan

The neolithic of the Levant marks the earliest appearance of sedentary farming communities in the world. The transition from hunting-gathering to farming began between 20,000 and 10,500 years ago, the latter marking the start of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period, during which domesticated cereals, sheep, and goat begin to appear (Kuijt & Goring-Moris 2002 ). Whether there was a relatively rapid transition during the preceding PrePottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period (11,700–10,500 BP), perhaps as a response to the dramatic global warming that marks the end of the Pleistocene, or a more gradual emergence arising from long-term subsistence intensifi cation during the Epipalaeolithic (20,000–11,700 BP) remains an issue of contention (for general reviews see Mithen 2003 ; Barker 2006 ) . It is undisputed, however, that the transition to sedentary farming lifestyles encompassed all aspects of economy, technology, architecture, social organisation, ideology, and ‘culture’ in the widest possible sense. Archaeological evidence indicating that attitudes towards life and death were transformed as part of this process should not be surprising as the harvesting and then sowing of domesticated crops are fundamentally related to manipulating the process of regeneration. The documentation and interpretation of Epipalaeolithic, PPNA, and PPNB mortuary evidence is inevitably constrained by the quality and quantity of data available. This is notably limited for the PPNA period, which many see as the critical phase of transition from hunter-gatherer to farming lifestyles. In this contribution, we present new evidence concerning PPNA mortuary practices from the site of WF16 in southern Jordan. The number of burials located at this settlement is unusually high for a PPNA site. It stands at around forty burials found within the limits of the excavation ( Table 6.1 ), but the total number of burials must be higher, considering the spatial and stratigraphic extent of the unexcavated part of the settlement. The excavation report is still undergoing preparation, and osteological analysis has yet to be undertaken. As such, any interpretation of this data set remains both incomplete and provisional. But even from the evidence currently available, WF16 contributes greatly towards our knowledge of PPNA burial and the transformation in mortuary practice across the hunter-gatherer–farming lifestyle transition in southwestern Asia. We will show that the relationship between the living and the dead at WF16 was defi ned not only by the different ways in which the people were treated at death, but also through diverse attitudes towards their remains for a prolonged period post-mortem. The roles played by memory, curation, secondary intervention, and manipulation of human remains created multiple layers of mortuary practice at WF16, which was also part of the life of the settlement itself, with real consequences for its living community. This is best seen through the manner in which the dead continued to be part of the settlement through careful choreography of burials, the treatment of the human remains, and the repeatedly changing architectural make-up of the settlement the burials were positioned within.

Creativity in middle and late bronze age bird-shaped and bird-ornamented ceramic objects in the carpathian basin and the lower Danube region

Bird imagery is one of the most striking themes explored by Bronze Age potters in many parts of Europe, not least along the middle and the lower reaches of the Danube in the Carpathian Basin and Central Balkans. While the ideas and the symbolism at the root of this widespread manifestation were broadly shared and had their origin in the Bronze Age belief system, the way in which bird imagery was expressed in clay was highly variable. These variations offer an opportunity to explore the creative processes behind bird-shaped and bird-ornamented objects.