Ancient Lives, New Stories: Current Research on the Ancient Near East - Introduction

Wood Use in the Ancient Near East

Wood. Forests were exploited from the very beginnings of Near Eastern civilization. Enough hints exist from such Aceramic Neolithic sites as Jericho in Israel and Çayönü, Asikli Höyük, Nevali Çori, and Hallan Çemi in Turkey to indicate that extensive forest use has a history in this region of at least ten thousand years. These sites provide ample burned evidence for architectural timbers used a...

Circumcision in the Ancient near East

FOR a long time, scholars have assumed a direct relationship between the Egyptian and West Semitic worlds in one matter of personal hygiene and, probably, of religious rites.' "Circumcision," stated Eduard Meyer, "was at home in Egypt from the earliest times, and from there it was adopted by the Israelites and by the Phoenicians."2 However, the evidence that one gleans from the Egyptian sources...

Seed Eaters of the Ancient Near East: Human or Herbivore

Agronomic conditions and crop evolution in ancient Near East agriculture

The appearance of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent propelled the development of Western civilization. Here we investigate the evolution of agronomic conditions in this region by reconstructing cereal kernel weight and using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures of kernels and charcoal from a set of 11 Upper Mesopotamia archaeological sites, with chronologies spanning from the onset o...

The chickpea, summer cropping, and a new model for pulse domestication in the ancient near east.

The widely accepted models describing the emergence of domesticated grain crops from their wild type ancestors are mostly based upon selection (conscious or unconscious) of major features related either to seed dispersal (nonbrittle ear, indehiscent pod) or free germination (nondormant seeds, soft seed coat). Based on the breeding systems (self-pollination) and dominance relations between the a...