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Summary: Communal buildings have been reported from a number of early Neolithic sites from the Levant and Anatolia, but none were known from the central Zagros. Here we report on the recent excavations at Asiab, Kermanshah province, Iran, and argue that the principal feature found during Robert Braidwood's excavation at the site in 1960 should be interpreted as an example of a communal building. We discuss the results of the previous and recent excavations, highlight the key features of this building, and the implications for our understanding of the early Neolithic in the 'eastern wing' of the Fertile Crescent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500 years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of "Neolithization" is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burial and commemorative rites form significant components of many routines and activities accompanying the disposal and remembrance of the dead in numerous past and present societies. Various artifacts seem to have had an important role in burial and commemorative rituals and may have been used to reflect social unity and strengthen group identity. Burial-related paraphernalia clearly gained special importance in the southern Levant with the onset of the Natufian culture (ca. 15,000-11,500 calBP), a culture exhibiting cardinal changes in subsistence economy, social behavior, and symbolism. One hallmark of this culture is the appearance of large boulder mortars, massive implements frequently associated with burials and burial grounds, long accepted as a manifestation of technological skill and petrological knowledge. We report the results of a new study of Natufian boulder mortars and their contexts and present novel relevant data. Our conclusions suggest that Natufian boulder mortars share specific traits that go beyond size as well as use contexts. We suggest that they reflect common practices pertaining to Natufian burial and commemorative ceremonies and can be held as indicators of a south Levantine tradition overriding a variety of territorial and group-specific social and symbolic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few prehistoric developments have received as much attention as the origins of agriculture and its associated societal implications in the Near East. A great deal of this research has focused on correlating the timing of various cultural transformations leading up to farming and village life with dramatic climatic events. Using rigorously selected radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites and palaeoenvironmental datasets, we test the predominate models for culture change from the early Epipalaeolithic to the Pottery Neolithic (c. 23,000???8000 cal. bp) to explore how well they actually fit with well-documented and dated palaeoclimatic events, such as the B??lling-Aller??d, Younger Dryas, Preboreal and 8.2 ka event. Our results demonstrate that these correlations are not always as clear or as consistent as some authors suggest. Rather, any relationships between climate change and culture change are more complicated than existing models allow. The lack of fit between these sources of data highlight our need for further and more precise chronological data from archaeological sites, additional localized palaeoclimatic data sets, and more nuanced models for integrating palaeoenvironmental data and prehistoric people's behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses social interaction in the Epipalaeolithic of southwest Asia. Discussions of contact, social relationships and social organization have primarily focused on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and are often considered to represent typical hallmarks of emergent farming societies. The hunter-gatherers of the final Pleistocene, in particular those of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic, have more rarely been the focus of such discussions. In this article we consider evidence for interaction from the Azraq Basin of eastern Jordan, to question the uniqueness of the Neolithic evidence for interaction. We argue that interaction between differently-constituted groups can be traced within the Early Epipalaeolithic of the southern Levant, suggesting that it is of far greater antiquity than previously considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Intact structures are extremely rare in the Early Epipalaeolithic. • Huts at Kharaneh IV indicate structured use of space, including for disposal of the dead. • The placing of a corpse on top of a house floor suggests an early connection between the dead and architecture. • Burning of the hut and its contents connects human death with the destruction of architecture. • This treatment of the dead was previously known only from the Neolithic. • Here we see an early expression of cremation-like practices and symbolic use of the built environment. The end of the Pleistocene in Southwest Asia is widely known for the emergence of socially-complex hunter-gatherers—the Natufians—characterized by a rich material culture record, including elaborate burials. In comparison, human interments that predate the Natufian are rare. The discovery and excavation of a hut structure at the 20,000-year-old Epipalaeolithic site of Kharaneh IV in eastern Jordan reveals the remains of an adult female intentionally placed in a semi-flexed position on one of the structure's floors. The structure was burned down shortly after her deposition, extensively charring the human remains. The burying of the dead within structures and the burning of domestic structures are well-known from later Neolithic periods, although their combination as a mortuary practice is rare. However, for the Early Epipalaeolithic, the burning of a structure containing the primary deposition of human remains is novel and signifies an early appearance for the intentional burning of bodies as a mortuary treatment and symbolic behaviors associated with the interrelated life histories of structures and people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) temporally overlaps with the range expansion of Homo sapiens populations in various parts of Eurasia and is often considered a key archaeological phase for investigating behavioral changes from the Middle Paleolithic. This paper reports upon new data from IUP occupations at Wadi Aghar, a rock shelter site in the southern Levant. In combining the results of radiometric dates and lithic analyses, we clarify the chronological and cultural position of Wadi Aghar assemblages in the Levantine IUP. As for the records about mobility, on-site activities, and resource procurement behaviors, we present analyses of lithic use-wear, tool-type composition, soil micromorphology, and marine shells. The lithic analyses and the optically stimulated luminescence (and subsidiary radiocarbon) dating of the Wadi Aghar materials suggest their chronocultural position in the IUP (45–40 ka for Layers C–D1; 39–36 ka for Layer B; possibly 50 ka for Layer D2), providing the southernmost location for the IUP in Eurasia. In the Levant, Wadi Aghar represents one of the few IUP sites in the inland areas. The results also indicate that the timing and technological sequences from the IUP to the following bladelet industries differed between the inland and coastal zones, likely reflecting geographically variable adaptive behaviors and/or cultural transmissions. One of the behavioral characteristics of IUP foragers at Wadi Aghar is the procurement of remote resources, represented by the transportation of marine shells from the Red Sea: Canarium fusiforme and Canarium cf. mutabile. Whether it was a direct procurement with increased mobility or a result of intergroup exchanges, it was not part of behavioral repertoires during the late MP in the same area. This can be understood as the expansion of resource procurement range, functioning as additional buffers from risk in the semiarid environments in the inland Levant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few cultural developments have taken on as much archeological significance as when people began living in villages and producing their own food. The economic, social, technological, and ideological transformations immediately preceding and following these changes were profound. Early models of culture change associated with pre-agricultural societies of the Levant focused on the sudden, late origin of settled farming villages triggered by climate change. Accompanying this new economic and living situation was durable stone-built architecture; intensified plant and animal use; a flourishing of art and decoration; new mortuary traditions, including marked graves and cemeteries; elaborate ritual and symbolic behavior-a new way of life. This new life style arguably had a slow start, but really took off during the Epipaleolithic period (EP), spanning more than 10,000 years of Levantine prehistory from c. 23,000-11,500 cal BP. The last EP phase, immediately preceding the Neolithic, is by far the best-studied in terms of its cultural and economic contributions to questions on the origins of agriculture.1-4 Recently, archeologists have considered the earlier parts of the EP to be more culturally dynamic and similar to the later phase (Natufian) than was previously thought.3-10 The earlier EP is increasingly seen as demonstrating the behavioral variability and innovations that help us to understand the economic, technological, and social changes associated with complex hunter-gatherers of the Natufian and farmers of the Neolithic. This paper traces the cultural and biological developments of the EP period leading up to the Natufian and considers the long-term trajectory of culture change, social complexity, and village life in the Near East., (Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)