The Initial Neolithic in the Near East: Why It Is So Difficult to Deal With ...

THE INITIAL IN THE NEAR EAST 1-18 Journal of The NEOLITHIC Israel Prehistoric Society 40 (2010),

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The Initial Neolithic in the Near East: Why It Is So Difficult to Deal With these PPNA… ANNA BELFER-COHEN & NIGEL GORING-MORRIS1 1

Department of Prehistory, Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 91905

Research on the initial Neolithic in the Near East was brought into perspective in the 1950’s around the excavations at Jericho and Jarmo, which are located respectively at either end of the Fertile Crescent (fig. 1; and see Rosenberg 2004 for a review of research in the southern Levant). In particular, the debate between the pioneering excavators, Kathleen Kenyon (Jericho) and Robert Braidwood (Jarmo), centered on the dates of the respective sites, the nature of their economies, and the issue of early urbanism (Kenyon 1956, 1957a, b, 1959; Braidwood 1954, 1957, 1974). The spectacular discoveries of the supposedly defensive tower and walls of Jericho were viewed as representing the earliest evidence of the future ‘city state’ (fig. 2). Since the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA – ca. 9,600-8,300 cal BC – see fig. 3) was (and, indeed, still is) viewed as a beginning of some sort, it was automatically accepted that it should be less than what was to follow. Thus the Jericho discoveries were considered as the pinnacle of PPNA developments rather than the rule. Nevertheless, recent data deriving from excavations in the middle Euphrates region of the northern Levant, at such sites as Jerf el-Ahmar and Göbekli Tepe (fig. 4), render considerations of the PPNA as simply ‘humble beginnings’ not only unlikely but veritably impossible (Peters and Schmidt 2004; Schmidt 1998a, b, 1999a, b, 2000a, b, 2001a, b, 2002a, b, 2004; Stordeur 1998, 1999, 2000a, b, 2004; Stordeur and Abbès 2002; Stordeur et al. 2001). This brings to mind the manner in which scholars formerly related to the phenomenon of Franco-Cantabrian Upper Paleolithic rock art. It was widely assumed that the beginnings of parietal art were humble; and that it developed gradually, growing in complexity and scope, with the most renowned sites of Lascaux and Altamira dating to the later stages of the Upper Paleolithic, ca. 13,000 cal BC (Bahn and Vertut 1997; Conkey 2001; Leroi-Gourhan 1982; and references therein). Yet, in recent years, that viewpoint has been turned upside down with the discoveries of Cosquer and Chauvet caves, the earliest phases in both dating to ca. 29-

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ANNA BELFER-COHEN & NIGEL GORING-MORRIS

Figure 1: Map of the Levant showing the principal sites and the delineation of PPNA provinces. Note the location of Jericho and Jarmo, respectively at either end of the Fertile Crescent.

26,000 cal BC (Bahn and Vertut 1997; Chauvet et al. 1996; Clottes 2003; Clottes and Courtin 1996). Both caves exhibit complexity and sophistication on a level quite unparalleled within the rest of the Franco-Cantabrian artistic corpus. Undoubtedly, we are prisoners of our own preconceptions. For example, being aware that the ‘Neolithic Revolution’ is tied in with profound changes in economic subsistence – the introduction of agriculture and the domestication of animals – we have tended to see these processes in a purely binary fashion, with the ‘domesticated realm’ directly replacing the ‘wild dominion’. Accordingly, it was almost universally assumed that the appearance of the complex architectural phenomena at Jericho necessarily went hand-in-hand with agricultural practices. Indeed, for quite a while, it was thought that actual domestication (of both plants and

THE INITIAL NEOLITHIC IN THE NEAR EAST

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Figure 2: The PPNA tower at Jericho (Photograph: David Harris).

animals) had already occurred during the PPNA (e.g. Kenyon 1970a, b; Clutton-Brock 1971; Clutton-Brock and Uerpmann 1974; Kislev et al. 1986). Still, the recent evidence of the early colonization of Cyprus at the beginning of the PPNB conclusively demonstrate a much more subtle and diffuse set of economic circumstances (see papers in: Guilaine and le Brun 2003; Peltenberg and Wasse 2004; Swiny 2001; Vigne and Guilaine 2004; and see also Keeley 1995 for an overview of intermediate stages of plant manipulation by hunter-gatherers). Species, including some that have never been domesticated, were brought over to Cyprus from the mainland in requisite numbers to sustain viable herds. These animals included sheep, goat, cattle, fallow deer, and cat, some of which have never been domesticated (fig. 5). Indeed it is interesting to note that there are no morphological indications of domesticated species in the fauna retrieved from PPNA/B Göbekli Tepe in the middle Euphrates region (Helmer et al. 1998, 2004; Peters and Schmidt 2004). Over the past few years the supposed presence of domesticated plants and animals in PPNA contexts have mostly been refuted, at

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Figure 3: Chronological outline of cultural developments in the Levant at the end of the Pleistocene and the early Holocene (after Bar-Yosef 2001).


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Figure 4a: Aerial view of Jerf el-Ahmar (after Stordeur 2000a).

least in the southern Levant, with each purported domesticate having a somewhat different story, e.g. Jericho, Netiv Hagdud and Aswad (Clutton-Brock and Uerpmann 1971 vs. Davis et al. 1982; van Zeist and Bakker-Heeres 1985 vs. Stordeur 2003; Kislev et al. 1986 vs. Kislev 1997; and see Horwitz et al. 2000; Garrard et al. 1996; though see Colledge 2004 concerning the status of Iraq ed-Dubb). For the northern Levant, along the middle Euphrates and upper Tigris, the situation remains somewhat ambiguous (Colledge 2004; Colledge et al. 2004; Garrard 1999; Gopher et al. 2001; Helmer et al. 1998, 2004; Lev-Yadun et al. 2000; Moore et al. 2000; Redding and Rosenberg 1998; Stordeur and Abbès 2002; Wilcox 2001, 2004, in press). Another issue that has complicated matters has been the brevity of the PPNA – a mere 1300 calendric years (fig. 3). Thus it has taken quite a while to accumulate the critical mass of published evidence needed to relate to the PPNA phenomena on their own merits. This paucity of PPNA data rendered it necessary, in order to obtain a coherent picture, to relate it to the more obvious, better known materials of the preceding and succeeding periods (Natufian and PPNB, respectively). An illustrative example is House 47 at Mureybet, which was originally thought to represent a normative dwelling unit (see Cauvin 1978); now, in light of

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Figure 4b: Plan of Göbekli Tepe (after Schmidt 2004).


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Figure 5: Map of Cyprus and faunal species introduced by the Neolithic from the mainland. They include cattle, fallow deer, sheep, goat, boar, dog, fox, cat, genet and mouse.

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the architectural findings at Jerf el-Ahmar, it clearly relates to other communal ceremonial structures, somewhat akin to the Southwestern USA kivas (fig. 6; see Cordell 1994; Stordeur 1999; Stordeur et al. 2001). Moreover, the archaeologically short duration of the PPNA lies at the heart of the on-going debate concerning its chronological subdivision into discrete cultural entities in the southern Levant and perhaps further north, too. While some claim the existence of two distinct successive entities, namely the Khiamian and the Sultanian, others see the PPNA comprising but one archaeological entity, the Sultanian, which develops through time, differing according to environmental settings, site functionality and intra-site variability (Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar-Yosef and Bar-Yosef Mayer 2002; Bar-Yosef and Gopher 1997; Bar-Yosef et al. in press; as opposed to Garfinkel and Nadel 1989; Kuijt in Kuijt and Goring-Morris 2002). Since we believe that the southern Levantine PPNA phenomena are mostly endemic developments, there should have been a brief intermediate phase between the preceding Natufian and the PPNA in its ‘full bloom’. Indeed, whether Khiamian characteristics are restricted to that particular entity, or are found in different settings, together with classic Sultanian traits and thus fail to differentiate between the two, is ultimately of limited significance. As an aside it is of interest to note the striking morphometric similarities between the more or less contemporaneous rhomboidal Harifian ‘Harif’ points and Nemrikian ‘Nemrik’ points. Given evidence for probable colonization of Cyprus at the end

Figure 6: Plans of communal structures at Jerf el-Ahmar and Mureybet. Note that the latter was originally interpreted by the excavator as a normative habitation (after Stordeur et al. 2001).


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of the Natufian, perhaps the postulation of some form of long distance connection between the Negev (Harifian) and the upper Tigris (Nemrikian) may not be completely far-fetched (Goring-Morris 1991; Kozlowski 1999; and see also Perlès [2005] concerning the probable origins of the Greek Neolithic from the Levant). Subsequently the main issue is whether one considers the following PPNB also as a primarily local development, interacting to a lesser or greater degree with knowledge, and ideas, or even people deriving from the outside (mainly the northern Levant). The alternative to the above is to see it as a largely self-contained, imported package of material culture and ideology, embraced, willy-nilly, by the local population under circumstances of stress (Edwards et al. 2004; Kuijt 2003). It is only recently that we have come to realize that the PPNA has tighter relations with the immediately preceding Epipalaeolithic world (in the southern Levant – the Natufian), rather than with the PPNB entities that followed it (e.g. Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris 2003; Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 2002 contra Cauvin 2000a, b; Watkins 2002, 2004). Obviously, though living in the present, PPNA communities behaved according to their own frames of reference. These, ultimately, were based on past experiences and recently accumulated knowledge. The future was but a dream, so perhaps we should not talk in retrospect about the Neolithic “birth of the gods”, i.e. a new cosmological order (and see Cauvin 2000a; Watkins 2002). Rather, we should consider the happenings, during and immediately after the PPNA, as reflecting more traditional worldviews, maybe in an intensified form, as part of the need to deal with new phenomena and previously unencountered pressures stemming from changing social structures and demographic growth. In this sense we can view the PPNA ‘umbilical cord’ as still being attached to the Paleolithic cosmological paradigm. The south-central Levantine PPNA mindset appears to be closer to that of the Natufian than to that of the PPNB ‘to come’ (both of the former represent complex hunter-gatherer societies, perhaps with the addition of cultivation in one, if not the other). Additionally, the crisis at the end of the PPNA was of greater amplitude in material culture terms than that of the Natufian/PPNA transition (notwithstanding considerable continuity at both ends of the scale). Perhaps one can view the earlier transformation (i.e. the Natufian/PPNA transition) as a story in terms of the distant provincial cousins or ‘country bumpkins’ from the periphery (Harifians, and their like) moving in to stay permanently, rather than for a short-term visit with their Late/Final Natufian relatives, thus setting the stage to PPNA life-ways. On the other hand, there is little, if any, settlement continuity in the southern Levant between the PPNA and the PPNB, and one can flippantly claim that the PPNA world was finally shattered by the introduction of a different ‘mindset’ (PPNB), represented by the symbiosis of local developments and external cultural elements deriving from the north and northeast. Still, it seems to have been mostly ideas rather than people that moved in

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from the north. Following the uncertainties of the brief Early PPNB interlude, these ideas subsequently jelled and began to be canonized with the onset of the Middle PPNB (fig. 3). The locals implemented the new ideas vis à vis their mundane existence, including changes in lithics, architecture, and subsistence based on domesticated plants and animals, in addition to continued hunting and gathering. There were also obviously brand new settlements (e.g. ‘Ain Ghazal, Munhata, Abu Gosh, etc.) as well as the re-occupation of previously abandoned sites (e.g. Jericho, Nahal Oren) (Kenyon and Holland 1983; Khalaily and Marder 2003; Lechevallier 1978; Perrot 1964, 1968; Rollefson 1998, 2000; Rollefson and Kafafi 1996; Stekelis and Yisraeli 1963). Nevertheless, the locals retained to some degree their ideologies, cosmological beliefs and ritual practices, as is most prominently reflected in the continuity of burial practices and other customs from the local PPNA (some of them originating even in the Natufian) unto the local PPNB (for comparative purposes see Perlès 2005: 286). Here it is perhaps relevant to note that the climatic episode of the Younger Dryas (ca. 10,800-9,600 cal BC), a global phenomenon, though it differed in its effects from region to region (Grosman and Belfer-Cohen 2002), should definitely be considered as a major influence on human adaptations. Here differences between the southern and northern Levant should be emphasized. For example, in the northern Levant the major river systems of the Euphrates and Tigris should be taken into account, whereby settlement systems were organized in a largely linear manner and the riparian settings would have considerably ameliorated the impact of deleterious environmental shifts. However, no such buffer existed further south (the River Jordan flowed at that time through the largely sterile sediments of the terminal Pleistocene Lisan formation). The story of the PPNA koine as a whole differs from one region to the next. There are at least three diachronic provinces (see fig. 1) – the south-central Levant (including and south from the Damascus basin); the northern Levant (comprising the Orontes valley across to the middle Euphrates); and the upper Tigris and Zagros province (Aurenche and Kozlowski 1999; Bar-Yosef and Bar-Yosef Mayer 2002; Cauvin 1989; Kozlowski 1999; Peasnall 2000; Rosenberg and Redding 2000; Watkins 1998). For the latter two regions we have, at best, spotty information concerning the equivalent of the Natufian; this seeming hiatus was immediately succeeded by a population explosion and the florescence of cultural innovations (most especially within the middle Euphrates province – e.g. Tell ‘Abr 3, Cheik Hassan, Mureybet, Jerf el-Ahmar – and see the complexity of the symbolically charged ‘pictograms’ from the latter site – fig. 7 [Yartah 2004; Cauvin 2000a; Stordeur 1998; and papers in Ozdögan and Basgelen 1999]). It seems that the differences among the various geographical provinces were there from the very beginning (whatever that may be – and for the northern Levant we enter the realms of a veritable terra incognita) and they grew further apart as time went by. In the past our


Figure 7: Symbolically charged ‘pictograms’ from PPNA Jerf el-Ahmar (after Stordeur 2004).

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database was very limited in scope, so that there was a tendency to ‘lump’ them according to the shared aspects of material culture, rather than ‘splitting’ them by differences from one region to the next. Nowadays, it is quite clear that these provinces initially differed in more than just single cultural attributes, i.e. architecture, lithics, symbolic repertoire, etc. What dictated the specific affiliations of a particular PPNA group? And who were its immediate allies? Even though in the PPNA there are self-contained (community size-wise) settlements (e.g. Jericho or Netiv Hagdud), it stands to reason that the long entrenched tradition of exogamy continued as part of the security web, or “bad year politics” (see papers in O’Shea and Halstead 1989). Indeed, in discussing the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition Gilman (1984) claimed that the ‘independence’ of human groups rose through the improvement of both control over the environment and the devices employed to exploit it. It seems to us that, although PPNA communities were on the verge of becoming competent farmers, they were still at an incipient stage, being totally dependent upon the vagaries of weather and the surrounding environment. Undoubtedly, they were not ready to give up the safety of ties with other groups, close and far, and so continued to sustain some sort of reciprocal relations. This may account for the emergence, by at least the end of the PPNA, of central ritual localities such as Göbekli Tepe, and even the tower of Jericho (Peters and Schmidt 2004; Bar-Yosef 1986; Naveh 2003; Ronen and Adler 2001; Schmidt 2004). We believe that a significant shift in the human ‘mindset’ took place beginning with the Natufian, and that by the time of the PPNA things were considerably different from the situation earlier in the pre-Natufian Epipalaeolithic. Still, even later, at the end of the PPNA and the PPNA /PPNB transition, the worldviews of communities in the southern Levant were partly new and partly shared with their predecessors. While by the PPNB, most clearly during its middle phase, one can observe the plethora of innovations that were part and parcel of the full fledged agricultural ‘New Order’, it seems that the PPNA represents a transitional stage in the true sense between the old and the new. The PPNA is thus difficult to comprehend through the regular avenues of archaeological exploration. This period comprises a mosaic of features, new and old, in different combinations, and there are no short cuts to understanding it, but through the accumulation of new data and the detailed research of both core areas and marginal zones. It seems that for the PPNA, at least presently, one can employ most justifiably the old archaeological adage of “… further investigations should enable a better understanding of these phenomena…”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is 35 years since we both sat in the “Introduction to Prehistory” class that Ofer gave to freshman students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since then he has been our teacher, mentor and friend, whether in the classroom, the lab, or in more informal settings in the


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field throughout the entire course of our studies, and since then. Ofer’s incessant enthusiasm has always been contagious, while his breadth and depth of knowledge, and insightful observations and inquisitiveness concerning all matters related to the Prehistory of the Near East and beyond, have never ceased to inspire. We are delighted to be able to dedicate this essay to him – “ad meah ke esrim!” (when you’re one hundred, you’ll be as twenty…). We also thank Jim Philips for arranging the 2004 SAA session in Montreal and subsequently for prodding us to complete this manuscript.

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