Farming transformed societies globally. Yet, despite more than a century of research, there is little consensus on the speed or completeness of this fundamental change and, consequently, on its principal drivers. For Northern Europe, the debate has often centered on the rich archaeological record of the Western Baltic, but even here it is unclear how quickly or completely people abandoned wild ...

Three plastered skulls, dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, were found at the site of Yiftahel, in the Lower Galilee (Israel). The skulls underwent refitting and restoration processes, details of which are described herein. All three belong to adults, of which two appear to be males and one appears to be a female. Virtual cross-sections were studied and a density analysis of the plaster was ...

Perhaps nowhere in European prehistory does the idea of clearly-defined cultural boundaries remain more current than in the initial Neolithic, where the southeast-northwest trend of the spread of farming crosses what is perceived as a sharp divide between the Balkans and central Europe. This corresponds to a distinction between the Vinča culture package, named for a classic site in Serbia, with...

From the 1800’s and onwards, pottery sherds have been found at a number of Neolithic occupation sites in Rogaland County, Southwestern Norway. In this paper, assemblages from nine contexts are analyzed order to produce an interpretative chronology. Typological analysis is combined with correspondence Bayesian modelling radiocarbon dates. The result coherent chronological model that accounts for...

The present study investigates the occurrence of wild grasses at Epipalaeolithic and aceramic Neolithic sites in the Near East in order to assess their role in subsistence economies alongside the emergence of cereal cultivation. We use Chogha Golan in the foothills of the central Zagros Mountains (ca. 11.7-9.6 ka cal. BP) as a case study, where the archaeobotanical data suggest the frequent exp...

Population growth, or, more specifically, pressure, is often viewed as being critical to the development of food production in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East. It is surprising, therefore, to recognize how little detailed archaeological research has explored the rates of population growth and how they might be related to social crowding in early village social environments. Combining...

The South East region contains a complete ceramic sequence, although overall the distribution of various ceramic styles is varied, with marked concentrations along the coastal regions of Sussex and Kent, and along the corridor of the Thames (Surrey). Since the 1990s the impact of developer funded archaeology has added significantly to the number of known assemblages, although the distribution o...

One of the more intractable problems that archaeobiologists struggle with is how to characterise ancient subsistence systems when the plant and animal remains that we study are incommensurate in so many ways. Three examples from the upper Euphrates and Iran illustrate how changes in plant remains are associated with changes in animal exploitation. Two of them consider the agropastoral continuum...

The commonly held belief that the emergence and establishment of farming communities in the Levant was a smooth socio-economic continuum during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 12,000-9,000 cal BP) with only rare minor disruptions is challenged by recently obtained evidence from this region. Using a database of archaeological radiocarbon dates and diagnostic material culture records from a series...