the natufian culture in the levant, threshold to the origins of

ARTICLES

The Natufian Culture in the Levant,Threshold to the Origins of AgricultureOFER BAR-YOSEF

As with other crucial thresholds incultural evolution, the impact of the‘‘Neolithic Revolution,’’ as it was la-beled by V. G. Childe,5 or the ‘‘incipientcultivation and domestication’’ as itwas defined by R. Braidwood,6 canonly be evaluated on the basis of itsoutcome. I begin with a brief descrip-tion of the cultural sequence of thelate hunter-gatherers who inhabitedthe Near East until about 13,000 B.P.7

These foragers, who had a variety ofsubsistence strategies and types of an-nual schedules, ranged from semi-sedentary groups to small mobilebands. The establishment of sedentaryNatufian hamlets in the Levant (Fig. 1)

marked a major organizational depar-ture from the old ways of life. This wasfollowed by a second major socio-economic threshold, characterized ar-cheologically by Early Neolithic culti-vators. This sequence of changes canonly be understood within the contextof the entire region and the shiftingpaleobotanical conditions of the Le-vant during this period.

I therefore begin with a brief descrip-tion of the Levant and its naturalresources during the terminal Pleis-tocene and early Holocene (18,000 to9,000 B.P.: uncalibrated radio carbonyears8). During this period, the land-scape of the Near East was not dry,barren, and thorny as it appears today.Using palynological, paleobotanical,and geomorphological data, we areable to propose instead a reconstruc-tion of the spatial distribution of anoak-dominated parkland and wood-land that provided the highest bio-mass of foods exploitable by humans.This vegetational belt mostly coveredthe Mediterranean coastal plains andhilly ranges, as well as a few oases.Recently published reports from theexcavated Late Paleolithic (or Epi-Paleolithic), Natufian, and Neolithic

sites, together with this reconstruc-tion of natural resources, allow us toanswer the questions of when andwhere the Neolithic Revolution oc-curred. However, we are still far fromproviding a definitive answer to thequestion of why it occurred.

Within the large region of the NearEast, recent archeological work hasdemonstrated the importance of thearea known as the Mediterranean Le-vant. Today it is one of the most re-searched parts of the Near East.1–4,9–18

It is therefore possible that the pictureI will draw is somewhat biased due tothe limited number of excavations else-where, such as in western Iran, north-ern Iraq, or southeast Turkey.19–22 How-ever, no field project outside of theLevant has yet exposed any indicationof a prehistoric entity that resemblesthe Natufian. As will become clear inthe following pages, such an entity canbe recognized through its combinedarcheological attributes, includingdwellings, graves, lithic and bone in-dustries, ground stone tools, ornamen-tation, and art objects, as well as theearly age of its sedentary hamletsamong all foragers societies in theNear East.

THE REGION: RESOURCES ANDPOTENTIAL FORAGING PATTERNS

The Mediterranean Levant, about1,100 km long and about 250 to 350km wide, incorporates a variety oflandscapes, from the southern flanksof the Taurus Mountains in Turkey tothe Sinai peninsula (Fig. 1). The vari-able topography comprises a narrowcoastal plain, two parallel continuousmountain ranges with a rift valley inbetween, and an eastward sloping pla-teau dissected by many eastward run-ning wadis. The region is character-

The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with an updated description of thearcheological evidence for the origins of agriculture in the Near East. Specifically, Iwill address the question of why the emergence of farming communities in the NearEast was an inevitable outcome of a series of social and economic circumstancesthat caused the Natufian culture to be considered the threshold for this majorevolutionary change.1–4 The importance of such an understanding has globalimplications. Currently, updated archeological information points to two othercenters of early cultivation, central Mexico and the middle Yangtze River in China,that led to the emergence of complex civilizations.4 However, the best-recordedsequence from foraging to farming is found in the Near East. Its presence warnsagainst the approach of viewing all three evolutionary sequences as identical interms of primary conditions, economic and social motivations and activities, and theresulting cultural, social, and ideological changes.

Ofer Bar-Yosef studies Middle and UpperPaleolithic sequences in the Near East, aswell as the origins of agriculture as ex-pressed in the archaeology of Epi-Paleo-lithic Neolithic sites. He has published pa-pers and co-edited volumes on variousprehistoric sites of Pleistocene and Holoceneage in the Levant. He is the MacCurdy Profes-sor of Prehistoric Archaeology in the De-partment of Anthropology, Harvard Univer-sity. E-mail: [email protected]

Key words: origins of agriculture; Levant; Natu-fian; Early Neolithic

Evolutionary Anthropology 159

ized by marked seasonality: wintersare cold and rainy, summers are hotand dry. Mediterranean woodland andopen parkland vegetation developwhere annual precipitation reaches400 to 1,200 mm a year. Shrub land,steppic vegetation (Irano-Turanian),and arid plant associations (Saharo-Arabian) cover the areas where annualprecipitation is less than 400 mm (forthe current situation see Zohary23).

Today, two annual patterns of win-ter storm tracks prevail. One carrieshumidity from the Mediterranean Seato the southern Levant; the secondarrives from northern Europe andturns to the northern Levant, leavingthe southern portion dry. Chemicalstudies of the beds of Lake Lisan, anUpper Pleistocene lake in the JordanValley, and the early Holocene distribu-tion of C3 and C4 plants in the Negev

demonstrate that the geographic pat-tern of annual rainfall during the latePleistocene and the early Holocenewas similar to today’s.24 Decadal and

centennial fluctuations of precipita-tion, more than temperature changes,were responsible for the expansionand contraction of the vegetational

belts as reflected in the palynologicalsequences.16,25

Floral resources in the Levant areseasonal, with seeds most abundantfrom April to June and fruits fromSeptember to November. Tubers arerare. Among the three vegetationalzones, the Mediterranean is the rich-est, with more than one hundred ed-ible fruits, seeds, leaves, and tubers.23

The faunal biomass graduallydwindles away from the Mediterra-nean core area. Dense oak forests,where precipitation surpasses 800 mm,maintain a lower biomass than doopen parklands. Thus the mosaic asso-ciations of Mediterranean vegetation,bordering the Irano-Turanian shrubland, are the most optimal in terms ofcarrying capacity.26,27 It is along theprehistoric position of this belt that

. . . no field projectoutside of the Levant hasyet exposed anyindication of aprehistoric entity thatresembles the Natufian.

Figure 1. A map of the Near East indicating the territories of the Early Natufian homeland, the expansion of the Late Natufian culture, and thearea of the Harifian culture, a desertic adaptation of the Late Natufian to the cold, dry conditions of the Younger Dryas.

160 Evolutionary Anthropology ARTICLES

the major cultivating communitiesemerged.28

Game animals included the moun-tain gazelle (Gazella gazella), a station-ary antelope with a small home rangethat varies from a few to as many as 25square kilometers.29 A larger homerange can be inferred for Gazella sub-gutturosa, the dominant species in theSyro-Arabian desert. Other mammalsincluded wild cattle (Bos primigenius),fallow deer (Dama mesopotmaica), roedeer (Capreolus capreolus), and wildboar (Sus scrofa). The rare wild goat(Capra aegagrus) occupied parklandareas while the ibex (Cabra ibex) inhab-ited the cliffy, drier landscapes.27,30

The optimal foraging pattern of latePleistocene hunter-gatherers, one thatcombined both residential and logisti-cal movements, was probably the mostefficient. Topography made antici-pated moves of social units or taskforces along east-west transects easier,for this route took advantage of thenorth-south layout of mountain rangesand vegetational belts. The optimumterritory for a band of hunter-gather-ers within the Mediterranean vegeta-tional belt is estimated to be about 300to 500 square kilometers.2 In contrast,foragers in steppe or desert regionswere required to monitor an area of500 to 2,000 square kilometers as abuffer against annual fluctuations.

In this system, decreasing annualprecipitation and shifts in the distribu-tion of rains that diminished yields ofwild fruits, seeds, and game animalswould place stress mainly on the steppeand desert belts.31 In contrast, re-sources in the Mediterranean beltwould have been more stable. Levan-tine foragers would have had manyways to alleviate short- and long-term stresses: population aggregationin the Mediterranean core areas; so-cial and techno-economic reorganiza-tion within the same territories thatwould affect the core area; immigra-tion to adjacent regions northward orsouthward along the coastal ranges; orthe use of warfare to take over territo-ries, especially where bands did notbelong to the same alliance.28 Each ofthese strategies or a combination ofseveral would have resulted in theemergence of new spatial alignment ofthe population, which would have beenexpressed in adjusted ideologies.

THE PALEOCLIMATIC RECORDPaleoclimatic information is often

derived from the records of oxygenisotope fluctuations registered in icecores, deep sea cores, and terrestrialvegetational reconstructions based onpollen cores from lakes. The followingsequence emerges when such data setsare supplemented with informationfrom geomorphological sequences,bio-geographic interpretations of fluc-tuating faunal spectra, incomplete ar-cheo-botanical records, and pollenfrom archeological sites:2–4,16,17,32,33

1. During the Late Glacial Maxi-mum, dated to ca. 20,000 to 14,500B.P. the entire region was cold and dry,but the hilly coastal areas enjoyedwinter precipitation and were coveredby forests.

2. Precipitation over the entire re-gion slowly increased beginning about14,500 B.P. and more rapidly from13,500 to 13,000 B.P. The rate of pre-cipitation peaked around 11,500 B.P.in the southern Levant.

3. Rainfall decreased during theYounger Dryas period (ca. 11,000 to10,000 B.P.).

4. Pluvial conditions returnedaround 10,300 B.P., indicating a verywet early Holocene in the northernLevant and Anatolia, but did not reachthe previous peak in the central andsouthern Levant.16,25

5. A gradual rise in sea level after theLate Glacial Maximum until the mid-Holocene reduced the flat, sandy

coastal plain of the Levant by a stretch5 to 20 km wide and 500 km long.Given the poor aquatic resources inthis section of the Mediterranean sea,the rise in sea level mainly affected thesize of foraging territories and thecollection of marine shells often usedfor decoration.

FROM MOBILEHUNTER-GATHERERS TOSEDENTARY FORAGERS

The archeology of the late Paleo-lithic foragers is relatively well-known.1,34,35 Social units have beenidentified based on selective analysisof stone artifacts combined with otherattributes such as site size and struc-ture, the distribution of settlements,and the reconstructed pattern of sea-sonal mobility.1–4,11,28,34,36–41 For in-stance, the Kebaran (ca. 18,000 to14,500 B.P.) sites were limited geo-graphically to the coastal Levant andisolated oases due the prevailing cold,dry climate. Geometric Kebaran forag-ers took advantage of the climaticamelioration around 14,500 to 13,000B.P., expanding into the formerly deser-tic belt, which had became a lushersteppe.39–41 Ground stone mortars,bowls, and cupholes, which first ap-peared in the Upper Paleolithic, areconsidered to indicate vegetal foodprocessing.42 The invention of thesetools marks a revolutionary departurefrom Middle Paleolithic methods ofplant food preparation. It not onlyheralds the ‘‘broad-spectrum exploita-tion’’ that was conceived as a prerequi-site for the agricultural revolution, butalso is supported by the recent discov-ery of carbonized plant remains in awater-logged site, Ohallo II, dated to19,000 B.P.43 The assemblage containsa rich suite of seeds and fruits, alreadyknown to scientists from the basallayers of Abu Hureira.44 Both collec-tions reflect intensified gathering ofr-resources from a variety of habitatsand plant associations. Fallow deer,gazelle, and wild boar were hunted inthe central Levant, whereas gazelle,ibex, and hare were the common gamein the steppic belt. Wild goat andsheep were common in the Taurus andZagros mountains.

The climatic improvement after14,500 B.P. seems to have been respon-sible for the presence of more stable

. . . the mosaicassociations ofMediterraneanvegetation, borderingthe Irano-Turanian shrubland, are the mostoptimal in terms ofcarrying capacity. It isalong the prehistoricposition of this belt thatthe major cultivatingcommunities emerged.

ARTICLES Evolutionary Anthropology 161

human occupations in the steppic anddesertic belts. Groups moved into ar-eas that were previously uninhabited,from the Mediterranean steppe intothe margins of the Syro-Arabian de-sert. Others came from the Nile valley,creating an interesting social mo-saic.1,11,35,40,45

THE EMERGENCE OF THENATUFIAN CULTURE

The emergence of the Natufian cul-ture around 13,000 or 12,800 B.P. wasa major turning point in the history ofthe Near East.1,28 Originally defined byGarrod and Neuville on the basis ofthe lithic, bone, and ground stone

industries, as well as burials uncov-ered in their excavations in caves inMount Carmel and the Judean hills,the Natufian culture has continued toattract the attention of archeolo-gists.5,46–48 Excavations during the1950s in Ain Mallaha (Eynan), whichexposed semi-subterranean houses, re-ferred to as pit-houses in the Americanterminology, led J. Perrot to interpretthe site as the remains of a village.Additional excavations were done atNahal Oren,49 Hayonim Cave and Ter-race,50–53 Rosh Zin54 and Rosh Hore-sha,55 Wadi Hammeh 27,56 Wadi Ju-dayid,1 and the lower layers at Beidha,5

providing a wealth of new data. These

data have led to the recognition that aNatufian ‘‘homeland’’ existed in thecentral Levant (Fig. 1) and that theNatufians were secondary foragersand, perhaps, the earliest farmers. Thisinformation led to the recognition thatthe Natufian culture played a majorrole in the emergence of the earlyNeolithic farming communities, orwhat is known as the AgriculturalRevolution.1–4,12,28,58

The main attraction of the Natufiancultural remains is the wealth of infor-mation uncovered in every site. Asidefrom settlement size, the dwellingstructures, graves, and art objects inmore than one site resemble the re-mains of Neolithic villages. In addi-tion, lithics, elaborate bone industry,pounding and grinding tools, largequantities of marine shells, and ani-

mal bones have furnished the requiredinformation for a better reconstruc-tion of past lifeways. Each of theseaspects provide the basis for the vari-ous interpretations of the socio-eco-nomic system of the Natufian culture.

Site Size and Settlement PatternAll Natufian base camps in the

‘‘homeland’’ area were located in thewoodland belt, where oak and pista-chio were the dominant species (Fig.2).1,25 The undergrowth of this openforest was grass with high frequenciesof cereals. The high mountains ofLebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, thesteppic areas of the Negev and Sinai,and the Syro-Arabian desert in theeast accommodated only small Natu-fian occupations due to both theirlower carrying capacity and the pres-ence of other groups of foragers whoexploited this vast region. In general,Natufian sites fall into three size cat-egories: small (15 to 100 m2), medium(400 to 500 m2), and large (greaterthan 1,000 m2). Only during the LateNatufian were several larger sites es-

. . . the Natufians weresecondary foragers and,perhaps, the earliestfarmers.

Figure 2. A map of the Levant with the location of most of the sites of the Natufian culture (afterBar-Yosef and Meadow4).


tablished within the steppic belt. Evenso, none of the larger sites ever reachedthe size of a large Early Neolithicvillage.

Natufian base camps are character-ized by semi-subterranean dwellings(pit-houses). The foundations werebuilt of stone and the upper structurewas probably brush and wood. Thereis no evidence of the use of mud bricksor wattle and daub. Fine examples ofNatufian houses were uncovered inAin Mallaha (Fig. 3), Wadi Hammeh27, and Hayonim Cave and Terrace.Every base camp suggests the rebuild-ing of houses, indicating temporaryabandonment of the settlement.

Domestic structures were about 3 to

6 m in diameter, with either roundedor squarish fireplaces. Although thefills of the dwellings contained richassemblages, identifying specific floorswas not easy. A rare case is the semi-circular house 131 in Ain Mallaha(Fig. 4), which is 9 m in diameter,where a series of post holes was pre-served. In certain areas of the floor,clusters of artifacts were uncovered.Worth noting is a small building in AinMallaha in which a rounded benchcovered with lime plaster was pre-served. This house is different fromthe domestic one and could have beenused for ritual purposes by the leaderor shaman of the group.

In Hayonim Cave, there is a series of

small adjoining oval rooms inside thecave, each 2.5 to 3.5 m in diameter andbuilt of undressed stones. There was ahearth or two in each room exceptone. Finds from the lower fill of everyroom indicated its domestic use, al-though this function seems to havechanged subsequently: one room wasfirst a kiln for burning limestone andlater was the site of bone tool produc-tion.

Late Natufian sites have producedincomplete information. At NahalOren Terrace, elongated enclosurewalls were uncovered. In a lower levelof this site, a series of postholes sur-rounded a large fireplace amid a cem-etery area.49 Circular structures wereexposed in Rosh Zin.54 One room hada slab pavement and a limestonemonolith 1m tall erected at its edge.This could just have been a domesticstructure, but it is also possible that itserved specific ritual purposes. At JebelSaaıde, a Late Natufian site in theBekaa Valley of Lebanon, the remainsof collapsed walls were identified, de-spite much destruction caused by mod-ern terracing.60

Despite expectations to the contrary,storage installations are rare in Natu-fian sites. The few examples include apaved bin in Hayonim Terrace61 and

Figure 3. A: The Early Natufian habitations, primary and secondary burials, of the upper layers atAin Mallaha. Note the special pit-house in the left upper corner. B: A cross section along the A-Bline demonstrating the entire stratigraphy of Ain Mallaha. Note the dug-out pits (after Perrotand Ladiray157).

Figure 4. The large Natufian house in Ain Mal-laha with a proposed reconstruction of itsupper structure. Note the series of postholesand the number of hearths that seem to havebeen used for communal activities (afterValla59).


several plastered pits at Ain Mallaha,which could have served as under-ground storage facilities.62 It is pos-sible that baskets were used for above-ground storage. Indirect evidence forbasketry comes from the special bonetools known from ethnographic stud-ies to have been used in such activity.63

Graves and BurialsThe Natufian population has been

identified as being of Proto-Mediterra-nean stock.64 Graves were uncoveredin all base camps in the Natufian heart-land as well as in smaller sites.65,66

Stratigraphic indications from Hay-onim Cave and Ain Mallaha demon-strate that graves were dug in deserteddwellings and outside of houses, butnot under the floors of active house-holds. Graves were in pits, either shal-low or deep, and were rarely pavedwith stones or plaster. In several in-stances limestone slabs covered thegraves, but graves generally were filledin with sediment from the site itself.That sediment contained cobbles, lith-ics, broken mortars, and animal bones.Sealed graves were marked at NahalOren by deep mortars called stonepipes. In Nahal Oren and HayonimCave, small cupholes pecked in rocksmarked the location of graves.67 InNahal Oren, an exceptionally largefireplace, 1.2m in diameter and sur-rounded by limestone slabs, was placedin the center of a cluster of inhuma-tions.49

The burials demonstrate variabilityin mortuary practices. The pattern ofbody disposition in primary burials issupine, semiflexed, or flexed, with vari-ous orientations of the head. The num-ber of inhumations per grave variesfrom single to multiple. Collective buri-als are more common in the EarlyNatufian. Several cases of skull remov-als were observed in the Late Natufiancontext at Hayonim Cave, Nahal Oren,and Ain Mallaha,12,67 heralding a Neo-lithic practice. Secondary burials wereeither isolated or mixed with primaryburials. Secondary burials, which oc-cur more often in the Late than EarlyNatufian, are interpreted as evidenceof increased group mobility. Scatteredhuman bones occur within the occupa-tional deposits, indicating that theNatufians disturbed burials of theirown people. Children comprise about

one-third of the dead, indicating arelatively high mortality among thoseaged 5 to 7 years.68 This is interpretedas evidence of growing stress withinsedentary communities.12

A special type of mortuary practiceis indicated by the joint human anddog burials in two graves, one in AinMallaha69 and the other at HayonimTerrace.70 Both are interpreted asmarking a departure from the Paleo-lithic vision of the natural world as adichotomy between humans and wild-life.

Given the Natufians’ habit of plac-ing graves within their own sites andthen refilling them with material fromthe pit and surrounding areas, onlyobjects found attached to skeletonscan be securely identified as gravegoods. Common grave goods includedhead decorations, necklaces, brace-lets, belts, earrings, and pendants madeof marine shells, bone, teeth, andbeads. A few objects such as a bonedagger (Hayonim cave), a bone figu-rine of a young gazelle (Nahal Oren),and a small model of a human head inlimestone (El-Wad) were related by

excavators to the buried individuals. Itshould be stressed that decorated buri-als particularly characterize the EarlyNatufian. Finally, the suggestion thatdifferences in mortuary practicesshould be viewed as reflecting socialhierarchy have recently been found tobe untenable.71,72

Lithic AssemblagesThe production of stone tools is one

of the most conservative human activi-ties. Research on Upper Pleistocene

sites has demonstrated that it is al-most impossible to relate changes inlithic technology and the morphologyof artifacts to environmental changes.Therefore, specific characteristics ofknapping techniques, ways of snap-ping bladelets, and types of retouchamong assemblages of Terminal Pleis-tocene and Early Holocene age in theNear East are employed in the searchfor identifiable social entities.1,28 TheNatufian has thus been subdividedinto phases and regional groups basedon the presence or absence of prod-ucts of ‘‘microburin technique,’’ a spe-cialized blade-snapping method, andthe size and type of retouch of lunates(backing versus Helwan). The averagelength of lunates, which has also beenused as a chronological marker,73 hasrecently been refined to include theregional-ecological location of thesites.74

The Natufian lithic industry is char-acterized by extensively used coresand the production of small, short,wide bladelets and flakes. Among theretouched pieces, frequencies of endscrapers and burins fluctuate consider-ably. Backed blades grade into theretouched and backed bladelets, de-fined as microliths. Microliths and geo-metrics reach 40% or more in everyassemblage. In the Early Natufian, geo-metrics include Helwan and backedlunates, trapeze-rectangles, and tri-angles, but in the Late Natufian backedlunates generally dominate.12,34,73–76

Special tools that occur for the firsttime in the Natufian are picks andsickle blades. The first, considered theforerunner of the axe-adzes group ofthe Neolithic period, are 8 to 10 cmlong and bifacially or trifacially flaked.The second, the sickle blades or glossypieces as they are known today, areabundant in sites within the Natufianhomeland (Fig. 6). These blades bear agloss that covers a relatively wide areaon both faces. Experimental and mi-croscopic studies demonstrated thatthese were used for harvesting cere-als.77,78 The blades were hafted in boneor, probably more often, woodenhandles. It is quite possible that theycan be interpreted as tools used inearly experiments in cereal cultiva-tion. The use of sickles instead ofbeaters and baskets has the advantageof maximizing the yield harvested froma limited area.79–82 It seems that the

Research on UpperPleistocene sites hasdemonstrated that it isalmost impossible torelate changes in lithictechnology and themorphology of artifactsto environmentalchanges.


Natufians adopted the use of sicklesfor harvesting because of their need tomaximize yield and minimize time,the reason being the limited availabil-ity of fields of wild stands.3,82

Ground Stone ToolsSuch tools, including bedrock mor-

tars, portable mortars, bowls of vari-ous types, cupholes, mullers, andpestles, occur in large numbers inbase-camp sites, but are not as abun-dant in the more ephemerally occu-pied camps. The boulder mortars,sometimes called stone pipes, weighas much as 100 to 150 kg and are 70 to80 cm deep. When broken in theirlowermost part, these objects wereplaced in graves. An archeometricstudy has indicated that basalt objectsin the Mount Carmel sites werebrought from the Golan Heights,83

about 100 km away. Microscopic obser-vations have demonstrated that groundstone utensils were employed for foodprocessing as well as for crushingburned limestone and red ochre.41,84

Among the grooved stones are whet-stones made of sandstone, which wereused for shaping bone objects. Shaftstraighteners, identified on the basisof ethnographic comparisons, have adeep, parallel-sided groove and bearburning marks. These marks, whichresulted from straightening woodenshafts, indicate the use of bows by theNatufians.

Bone and Horncore IndustryThe Natufian is marked by a bone

industry that is far richer in quantityand contains more elaborate, variedmorphologies than does any earlier orlater Levantine archeological en-

tity.85–87 Objects were made of boneshafts and of teeth and horn-coresfrom gazelles, wolves, fallow deer, roedeer, and birds. Use-wear analysis indi-cates that bone tools were used forhideworking and basketry.63 Barbeditems have been reconstructed as partsof hunting devices (spears or arrows),hooks and gorgets for fishing, andhafts for sickle blades. Bone beads andpendants were shaped by grinding anddrilling.63 Many objects bear specificdecorations. Among these are thecarved hafts from El-Wad and KebaraCave with young ruminants at theedge and the pieces from HayonimCave bearing net patterns.47,58,88

Ornamentation and Art ObjectsBody decorations and ornamenta-

tions demonstrate variability between

and within sites, as well as changeover time. A variety of marine mol-luscs, bone, greenstone, limestone pen-dants, and beads were used by theNatufians in headgear, necklaces, belts,bracelets, and earrings (Fig. 6).

Marine shells for Natufian jewelrywere collected from the shores of theMediterranean Sea or, more rarely,were brought from the Red Sea. AinMallaha stands out for having a tuskshell from the Atlantic ocean and afreshwater bivalve from the Nileriver.41,89 Greenstone and malachitebeads were brought from as yet un-identified localities in the Levant. Otherrare items include pieces of Anatolianobsidian found at Ain Mallaha in aLate Natufian context. The noticeabledifferences in jewelry between the sitesis considered to indicate the existence

The Natufian is markedby a bone industry that isfar richer in quantity andcontains moreelaborate, variedmorphologies than doesany earlier or laterLevantine archeologicalentity.

Figure 5. An Early Natufian decorated skull from El-Wad, excavated by D. Garrod (photographby S. Burger, Peabody Museum).


of distinct group identities.67 Severallimestone slabs recovered from therounded structures inside HayonimCave are incised, mostly with the lad-der-pattern motif interpreted as theaccumulated effects of notationalmarks.90,91 On one large slab, the roughform of a fish is deeply incised. Largecarved limestone slabs with the mean-

der pattern, also known from carvedbasalt bowls, were uncovered in one ofthe houses of Wadi Hammeh.27,56,88

Portable naturalistic and schematicfigurines made of bone and limestoneinclude carvings on sickle hafts andisolated bone pieces (Fig. 7). Severalof these figurines depict young ungu-lates, possibly gazelles.88 A limestone

figurine from the Nahal Oren site hasan owl at one end and a dog’s head atthe other. An additional item is a horncore with a man’s head at one end anda bovid’s head at the other end. Thiscombination of human and animalmight have emerged from similar ideo-logical changes that led to the jointdog and human burials.70

Figurines that represent the humanbody or face are rare; only a few, madeof limestone, have been found.92 Theexception is the Ain Sakkhri limestonefigurine, interpreted as representing amating couple. Zoomorphic figurinesinclude a tortoise, a kneeling gazelle,and possibly a baboon.88 The attentiongiven to young ruminants93 and theirappearance as decoration on sickles israther curious, but perhaps representsa totemic group idol.

Particular decorative patterns foundon both bone and stone objects in-clude the net, chevron (or zigzag), andmeander patterns. Most appear onspatulas, stone bowls, shaft-straighten-ers, and the rare ostrich-egg shell con-tainers found as broken pieces in theNegev sites.54 Because these differ fromsite to site, they may further our iden-tification of different Natufian groups.For the time being, we know that theirfrequencies are highest within theNatufian homeland in the central Le-vant.94

SubsistenceMost Natufian sites were excavated

before the introduction, in the late1960s, of recovery techniques such assystematic dry sieving and floatation.However, even in recent excavationswater flotation has failed to retrievesufficient quantities of floral remains.In some cases, the few grains foundwere later dated by accelerator massspectrometry to recent times.95,96 Thepoor preservation of vegetal remainsin Natufian sites within the Mediterra-nean woodland resulted from the na-ture of the prevailing terra rossa soil.Occupational deposits in open-air sitesare soaked each winter, then dry upand crack in summer. In the process,plant remains are destroyed; charcoal,small bones, and even lithics are sub-jected to both downward and upwardmovements. Better charcoal preserva-tion is noted in the desertic loess in theNegev and drier deep deposits of sites

Figure 6. Natufian lithic, bone, and ground stone assemblage: 1, Helwan lunate; 2, lunate; 3,triangle; 4 and 5, microburins (products of a special snapping technique); 6, truncatedbladelet; 7, borer; 8, burin; 9, Helwan sickle blade; 10, abruptly retouched sickle blade; 11, pick;12 and 13, bone points; 14, decorated broken sickle haft; 15–19, bone pendants; 20, deco-rated bone spatula; 21, pestle; 22, mortar; 23, deep mortar made of basalt; 24, Harif point. Notethat the ground stone tools have different scales than do the lithics and bone objects.


in the Lower Jordan Valley. However,samples are still too small due to thelimited number and size of excava-tions. The paucity of carbonized mate-rial is also expressed in the relativescarcity of charcoal radiocarbon dates.

Tools for food acquisition, such assickles, and food processors, such asmortars, bowls, and pestles, are inter-preted as evidence for harvesting andprocessing wild cereals and legumes.The few available seeds support thecontention that pulses, cereals, al-monds, acorns, and other fruits weregathered.18 The list of species col-lected was probably even longer, ascan be deduced from the list of plant

remains from Ohalo II, the Late Paleo-lithic site mentioned earlier. Similarinformation comes from Tell Murey-bet97 and the Epi-Paleolithic layers ofAbu Hureyra,44 which are dated toLate Natufian age.

The idea that the Natufians were theearliest agriculturalists was first sug-gested by Garrod in 1932. Despitelater criticism, that idea was revivedby others80 and supported in partby experimental studies of sickleblades.77,78 It was also established thatsystematic cultivation would havecaused the unintentional domestica-tion of wheat and barley.98,99 However,even the degree of domestication of

cereals in the earliest Neolithic sites isstill questionable on the basis of themorphological characteristics of car-bonized seeds and rachis fragments.100

A more cautious interpretation of thesefindings is that Natufian communitiespracticed intensive and extensive har-vesting of wild cereals as part of ananticipated summer mobility pattern.

Good bone preservation in most siteshas made faunal evidence the subjectof numerous studies.101–106 Natufianshunted gazelle and other game, de-pending on the geographical locationof each site (Fig. 8). In the coastalranges, deer, cattle, and wild boar werecommon, while in the steppic beltequids and ibex were typical prey. Theattempt to explain the Natufian faunalassemblages as the result of net hunt-ing107 has not been well accepted,108

and does not conform to the ethno-graphic evidence, which indicates thatsuch a technique is best suited forforested areas where the degree ofvisibility is rather low.109

Water fowl undoubtedly formed partof the Natufian diet, especially in sitesalong the Jordan Valley, where bothmigratory and nesting ducks weregathered during the stress seasons.110

Freshwater species of fish were caughtseasonally in the Hula Lake, as indi-cated by thousands of fish vertebraeretrieved at Ain Mallaha.111 Fishingseems to have been less importantalong the Mediterranean coast. How-ever, fish remains, though scarce, to-gether with the presence of bone gor-gets and hooks, indicate that oldexcavation techniques often yield in-complete information.

THE NATUFIAN AND THEEMERGENCE OF NEOLITHIC

FARMER-HUNTER COMMUNITIESThe emergence of the Natufian en-

tity from a world of Levantine hunter-gatherers is seen as resulting fromboth economic and social circum-stances. On the one hand, climaticimprovements around 13,000 B.P. pro-vided a wealth of food resources. Onthe other hand, contemporaneouspopulation growth in both the steppicand desertic regions made any abrupt,short-term climatic fluctuation a moti-vation for human groups to achievecontrol over resources. The establish-ment of a series of sedentary Early

Figure 7. Natufian art objects: 1, decorated sickle haft (Kebara); 2, limestone human head(El-Wad); 3 and 4, schematic human heads (Ain Mallaha); 5, decorated sickle haft (El-Wad); 6,limestone figurines with two heads, a dog and an owl (Nahal Oren); 7, limestone animal head,possibly a baboon (Nahal Oren); 8, decorated limestone slab (Wadi Hammeh 27) (afterBar-Yosef58 and Noy88).


Natufian hamlets in a delineated home-land is seen as a reaction to an abruptenvironmental change that necessi-tated a shift of resource scheduling.Previous patterns of semi-sedentismamong Late Pleistocene foragers gaveway to the acquisition of a firmer holdover territories.

The circumstances surroundingNatufian sedentism are interpreted invarious ways. Some researchers con-tend that sedentism was enhanced bythe need to intensify cereal exploita-tion.1–4,112 Others suggest that sedent-ism itself increased the propagation ofsuch annuals as cereals.13 Unfortu-nately, as mentioned earlier, the stor-age practices of the Natufians arepoorly known.

Archeologically, the criteria for rec-ognizing sedentism include the pres-ence of human commensals, such ashouse mice, rats, and sparrows, athigher frequencies among microfau-nal assemblages than in foragersites.113–115 Another biological markeris the study of cementum incrementson gazelle teeth, which indicate thathunting by the inhabitants of Natufianbase hamlets took place in both winterand summer. In addition, semi-perma-nent hamlets can be noted by energyexpenditure, reflected in investments

in leveling slopes for building pur-poses, the construction of houses, theproduction of plaster, and the trans-port of heavy undressed stones intocave sites. Finally, the digging of gravesand rare underground storage pits, aswell as the shaping of large, heavymortars were activities that took placein such base camps, but generally notin locations that were exploited on ashort-term, seasonal basis.

The climatic crisis of the YoungerDryas (ca. 11,000 to 10,300 B.P.) re-sulted in environmental deterioration.This climatic change, now recognizedglobally, had an impact on the Natu-fian population. It is suggested thatthe two major outcomes of the coldand dry conditions were a decrease inthe natural production of C3 plants,such as the cereals,4 and a reduction inthe geographic distribution of naturalstands of wild cereals to the westernwing of the Fertile Crescent (Fig. 9).Environmental exploitation by seden-tary Late Natufian communities aswell as by their neighboring foragersfurther depleted plant and animal re-sources.115 Social reactions to thesenew conditions differed within theNear East (Fig. 9).

In the Negev and northern Sinai, theLate Natufian improved their hunting

techniques with the invention of theHarif point, an arrowhead that prob-ably was more efficient.36 Whereas thelithic and bone industries of Harifiansites are Late Natufian in nature, onlythe existence of the Harif point (Fig. 5)demonstrates the uniqueness of thisentity. Animal bones represent thehunting of local fauna: gazelle, ibex,hare, and perhaps wild sheep. Grind-ing tools, mortars, and cup-holes indi-cate the processing of unknown plantfood elements. Large collections ofmarine shells demonstrate tight rela-tionships with both the Red Sea andMediterranean shores.41 The overallterritory of the Harifian, as estimatedfrom surveys, is about 8,000 km, butcould have been as large as 30,000 to50,000 km2. However, given their ar-cheological disappearance within twoto three hundred years and the fact

that this area remained essentially un-inhabited for about one thousand ra-diocarbon years, the Harifian is inter-preted as the unsuccessful effort of thelocal Late Natufian population to adaptto the prevailing Younger Dryas condi-tions in their territory (Fig. 9).

In other areas, Natufian communi-ties responded to the climatic changesby becoming more mobile, probablyreturning to a more flexible schedul-ing of resources. Several communitiesmaintained social relationships withtheir original hamlets and returnedthere to bury their dead, as shown bythe large number of secondary buri-als.53,72 The first experiments in system-atic cultivation most likely occurredduring the Younger Dryas. The firstNeolithic large villages, up to 2.5 hect-ares in size, seem to have relied, if not

The establishment of aseries of sedentary EarlyNatufian hamlets in adelineated homeland isseen as a reaction to anabrupt environmentalchange thatnecessitated a shift ofresource scheduling.

Figure 8. Frequencies of large and medium size mammals in Natufian and Neolithic sites. Notethe dominance of gazelle in Natufian and PPNA sites and the shift to caprovines during thePre-Pottery Neolithic B.


on domesticated barley and wheat,18

then on planting their wild progeni-tors.100 No one claims today that theseearly farmers were new people. Infact, ample evidence demonstrates thatthey were the descendants of the localNatufian population, which had under-gone changes in material culture, so-cial organization, and daily life ways.

THE EARLY NEOLITHIC ENTITIES‘‘Neolithic,’’ meaning ‘‘new stone

age,’’ was first used with respect to theNear East in the twentieth century.Jericho was a key site: it was there thatthe excavations of K. Kenyon exposeda Neolithic sequence without pottery,which led to new terminology. Be-cause all the other components, andespecially the stone industry, re-sembled the European assemblagesfrom which the designation ‘‘Neo-lithic’’ had originated, Kenyon sug-gested the taxon Pre-Pottery Neolithic.She further subdivided it on the basisof the Jericho stratigraphy into Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B.116 At thesame time, R. Braidwood suggestedan anthropologically oriented termi-nology, which incorporated excavatedassemblages within a socio-economic

interpretation; e.g., ‘‘level of incipientcultivation and domestication’’ and‘‘level of primary village-farming com-munities.’’117,118 Finally, the Frenchschool from Lyon adopted a subdivi-sion by time horizons.119,120

Early Neolithic farming communi-ties in the Levant were geographicallydistributed along today’s boundary be-tween the Mediterranean and theIrano-Turanian steppic vegetational-belts. However, the environmental con-ditions during the early Holocene wereentirely different from those of today.Hence, these sites were located withinthe Mediterranean woodland, whichwas, at that time, the richest in vegetaland animal resources (Fig. 10). Recog-nition that the early farming commu-nities were actually stretched along arather narrow north-to-south belt ledus to identify the Levantine Corridoras the locus of the origins of agricul-ture.28 On both sides of that corridor,in the coastal range on the west andthe steppic region in the east andsouth, small bands of foragers contin-ued to survive (Fig. 10). Sites of thesehunter-gatherers were excavated in theAnti-Lebanon mountains121 and insouthern Sinai.122 Both areas provide

ample evidence for the continuationof old life ways and the adoption ofspecific projectile tools from the neigh-boring farmers.

The first manifestation of the cul-tural change that heralded the ‘‘Neo-lithic Revolution’’ is known in the Le-vant as the Khiamian. This entity isstill poorly defined, in part because thetime span of its existence is hardly afew centuries of radiocarbon years,perhaps ca. 10,500 to 10,300/10,100B.P. In addition, the available informa-tion on the Khiamian was obtainedfrom very limited soundings and siteswhere mixing with earlier layers islikely to have occurred.123–126 The lithicindustry of the Khiamian comprisesthe aerodynamically shaped el-Khiamprojectile points, asphalt-hafted sickleblades, some microliths, and high fre-quencies of perforators, a typical Neo-lithic feature (Fig. 11). Bifacial or pol-ished celts, considered to be Neolithic‘‘markers,’’ are absent from the Khi-amian contexts.

THE SULTANIAN ENTITYWe identify between 10,300 and

9,300 B.P. a few geographically delin-eated entities. The Sultanian, the onein the Jordan Valley, which includesthe neighboring hilly ranges on bothsides, is better known than thosefarther north. The main sites (Fig. 11)are Jericho,127 Gilgal,128 Netiv Hag-dud,129,130 Gesher,131 Dra,65 and severalin the hilly region, including Hat-oula,125 Iraq ed-Dubb,65 and NahalOren.49 In the northern Levant, some-what similar contexts represent othercultural entities. The main sites areMureybet and Jerf el Ahmar(Syria),97,120 Qermez Dereh (Iraq),132

and the lower level at Cayonu (Tur-key).133 The following brief overview istherefore based mainly on the Sulta-

The first manifestation ofthe cultural change thatheralded the ‘‘NeolithicRevolution’’ is known inthe Levant as theKhiamian.

Figure 9. A reconstructed vegetational map of the Younger Dryas period. The hatched areadelineates the belt in which wild cereals were present. Note the location of a few selected LateNatufian and Early Neolithic sites. Data are based on Hillman.31 The location of lake pollencores is also shown.


nian sites, with additional informa-tion from settlements elsewhere in theNear East.

Site Size, Intrasite Variability, andSettlement Pattern

The largest Neolithic sites, amongthem Mureybet, Jericho, Netiv Hag-dud, Gilgal, and Dra, are at least threeto eight times larger than the largestNatufian sites.2,4 Intrasite variabil-ity indicates that there are clear dif-ferences between the large villagesand the small hamlets. For example,in Netiv Hagdud the dwellings arelarge and oval, and each house-

hold is probably made of two rooms.There are open spaces between thehouses where some of the domesticactivities took place.129,134 Similar ob-servations can be made for Jerichoand Mureybet. Nahal Oren, however,represents a small site where therounded houses are clustered togetherlike a compound of an extended fam-ily.

Sultanian and other PPNA housesare pit-houses, with stone foundationsand superstructures of unbaked mudbricks, often with a plano-convex crosssection (Fig. 12). The use of mud bricksalong with considerable amounts oforganic substances resulted in the

rapid accumulation of deposits in Neo-lithic mounds. Therefore, Neolithic de-posits generally have low frequenciesof artifacts per volume-unit when com-pared to the previous Natufian sites.

Domestic hearths were small andoval with cobble floors. The use ofheated rocks in cooking resulted inabundant fire-cracked rocks, whichwere uncommon in Natufian sites. Si-los, either small stone-built bins orlarger built-up mud-brick structures,were found in every site.

The best example as yet of commu-nal building efforts are the walls andtower of Jericho. Kenyon116 inter-preted these as parts of a defensesystem against raids. However, Kenyonignored the fact that a tower that ispart of a defense system is usuallybuilt on the outer face of the walls toenable the protectors to shoot side-ways at the climbing attackers. Analternative interpretation suggests thatthe walls were erected mainly on thewestern side of the site to protect thesettlement against mud flows and flashfloods135 (Fig. 12). In addition, a topo-graphic cross section through the en-tire tell indicates that there was prob-ably only one tower. Although itsfunction is unknown, it could haveaccommodated a small mud-brickshrine on the top. Although unequivo-cal evidence for public ritual is miss-ing, the open space north of the towermay have been similar to the ‘‘plaza’’ inCayonu (Turkey), which served as aplace for public gatherings.133

Sultanian Tool KitsLithic technology exhibits cultural

continuity from the Khiamian.136

Blades were manufactured essentiallyfor sickles and other cutting objects.Projectiles included el-Khiam pointswith additional varieties; perforatorsare frequent. Axes-adzes with a work-ing edge formed by a transversal blowand polished celts made their firstappearance during this time (Fig. 11).

A shift from the Natufian is evidentin the abundant pounding tools, in-cluding slabs with cupholes, handstones, and rounded, shallow grindingbowls. Only the rare mortar or deepbowl continued the previous traditionof heavy-duty kitchen equipment (Fig.11).

Figure 10. A map of the Levant showing the distribution of known Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites,the area of the Levantine Corridor, and the presence of other socio-economic entities.


Mortuary Practices and ArtObjects

Most burials are single with no gravegoods. Skull removal, a practice begunduring the Late Natufian, was per-formed only on adults; child burialswere left intact. The separated craniawere sometimes found in domesticlocales or special-purpose buildings. Acurrent interpretation views these skullcaches as having been formed throughpublic ritual aimed at negotiatingequality among the inhabitants ofthese villages.137 The differentiationalong age lines probably reflectschanges in attitudes toward the dead

within the Early Neolithic society, andperhaps is evidence for the venerationof ancestors.120 In sum, it seems that along-term social value was attributedto adults, as shown by the conserva-tion of their skulls, but not to children.

Additional changes in society areexpressed by the shaping of humanfigurines from either limestone or clayalong gender lines (Fig. 13). Severaldepict a kneeling female, while othersare of the ‘‘seated woman’’ type.138

Common interpretation views thisspecification of gender, not evident inthe Natufian, as indicating the emerg-ing role of women in a cultivating

society. It is assumed that this majorshift brought about the cult of the‘‘mother goddess’’ in later centuries.

SubsistenceFlotation procedures at sites in the

Levantine Corridor have producedhigh frequencies of carbonized seedsof barley, wheat, legumes, and otherplants.18,97–100,139,140 Unfortunately,there is no agreement on the methodshumans used to acquire the seeds,whether by intensive collection in the

wild, cultivation, or gathering animaldung as fuel.18,99,100,141 The debate fo-cuses on the frequencies of certainmorphological features that are con-sidered to be signs of domesticatedspecies and whether these are, in fact,the results of parching harvested wildcereals when still green. Regardless ofwhether they were cultivators or har-vesters, the geographic shift in settle-ment pattern and the increasing sitesize during the Early Neolithic aresound indicators of a major socio-economic departure from the Natu-fian way of life.

Early Neolithic village inhabitantscontinued to gather wild fruits andseeds and to hunt. Gazelle, equids, andcattle were hunted in the middle Eu-phrates area (Fig. 8); gazelle, fox, a fewfallow deer, wild boar, and wild cattle

Figure 11. A typical assemblage from a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in the southern Levant: 1 and2, Khiam points; 3 and 4, Hagdud truncations; 5, awl on blade; 6, a tranchet bifacial axe; 7, asickle blade (type Beit Ta’amir); 8, grooved stone or a ‘‘shaft straightener’’; 9, limestone slabwith cup holes; 10, a limestone celt (after Bar-Yosef and Gopher129).

Flotation procedures atsites in the LevantineCorridor have producedhigh frequencies ofcarbonized seeds ofbarley, wheat, legumes,and other plants.Unfortunately, there is noagreement on themethods humans used toacquire the seeds,whether by intensivecollection in the wild,cultivation, or gatheringanimal dung as fuel.


were the main game animals in theJordan Valley. Large numbers of birds,especially ducks, were trapped by occu-pants of all sites.130 Lizards and tor-toises were gathered as well. The over-all picture is that of a ‘‘broad-spectrum’’subsistence strategy similar to that ofthe Natufians.

Long-distance exchange is demon-strated by the central Anatolian obsid-ian found in Jericho and in smallerquantities in Netiv Hagdud, NahalOren, and Hatoula. No obsidian wasfound in Gilgal or Gesher. Marineshells were brought from the Mediter-ranean coast and fewer from the RedSea. There is a clear shift in the typesselected for exchange. Glycymeris andcowries become important, but Den-talium shells, where excavated depos-its were sieved, are still common, as inNatufian sites.

DISCUSSIONMost readers are familiar with the

different hypotheses that have beenoffered as explanations for the emer-gence of agriculture in the Near East.The following is a brief summary. Oneof the first proposals was made byRaphael Pumpelly, an American geolo-gist who hypothesized that the warm-ing climate of the Holocene forcedpeople to settle near drying lakes. Thisidea led him to initiate excavations atthe site of Anau in Turkmenistan, Cen-tral Asia.3,141 The same idea was pickedup by V. G. Childe, who proposed whattoday is called the ‘‘oasis hypothesis.’’Childe asserted that the Holocene post-glacial warming resulted in increasingdensities of humans and animals inriver valleys, thereby motivating a newsubsistence strategy based on animal

domestication and cultivation.141 Rob-ert Braidwood and his associatesshifted their focus from the river val-leys to what today is the nuclear zonein which wild cereals and legumesgrow,18,142 often referred to as the ‘‘hillyflanks.’’ They excavated sites in north-ern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.Braidwood proposed that within theevolving cultural contexts, technologi-cal progress led to village life and theensuing domestication of plants andanimals. The climatic factor was omit-ted from Braidwood’s model as a re-sult of field observations made byH. E. Wright. Wright, a palynologistand limnologist, recently concededthat these observations were errone-ous and agreed that a greater roleshould be attributed to climatic fluc-tuations.143 At the time, however,Braidwood accepted the notion thatclimatic fluctuations played only a mi-nor role, and therefore suggested thatfood production did not begin at anearlier period because ‘‘culture wasnot ready.’’144

The role of increasing human popu-lations at the end of the Pleistoceneand the reaction of groups surviving inmarginal areas to climatic fluctua-tions were prime stimuli in the writ-ings of Binford,145 Flannery,146 Co-hen,147 Smith and Young,148 Hassan,149

and others. The idea of demographicpressure, which had originated inChilde’s writings, was explicitly ex-pressed within a cultural ecologicalmodel. Evidence to support the impor-tance of this relative increase in hu-man population densities was derivedfrom new surveys and excavations ac-complished in the 1950s and 1960sacross the Near East.

Other scholars have attempted moregeneral explanations. Thus, D. Rin-dos150 viewed the emergence of agricul-ture and the domestication of plantsas a long process of mutualism thatbegan with incidental domesticationand terminated with a fully developedagricultural system. However, if thisprocess were truly a basic pattern ofbehavior for all foragers, then agricul-ture would have emerged indepen-dently in every region of the world.The evidence does not support thishypothesis. Another approach pro-posed by Hayden,151 termed the ‘‘com-petitive feasting’’ model, emerged froma growing interest in social factors.

Figure 12. PPNA pit houses excavated in Netiv Hagdud. The darker circular building in thecenter was built of mud bricks and could have been a large silo.


Unfortunately, the archeological rec-ord of the Levant indicates that thesurplus of food and precious commodi-ties needed for potlatch competitionwas not available before the develop-ment of agriculture but was, instead,an outcome of that development.Hayden’s model would better fit theevidence for competition from the fol-lowing Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period(ca. 9,300 to 7,800 B.P.) when large,well-established villages occupied theFertile Crescent and beyond.

The explanatory model used in thispaper and others2–4,28,152 follows the‘‘historical narrative explanation’’ pro-posed by Flannery.153 It not only takes

into account the unique geographicconditions of the Levant, but also com-bines the archeological history of for-agers, their reconstructed social struc-ture, and their subsistence strategieswith environmental changes. The re-sulting sequence makes the emer-gence of cultivation, under these givenconditions, the optimal strategy forsemi-sedentary and sedentary huntergatherers. The regional conditions dur-ing the Late Pleistocene included theavailability, predictability, and accessi-bility of numerous edible annual seedssuch as cereals and legumes (r-re-sources) and perennial plant resources,essentially fruits, and the presence of

mostly stationary medium-sized ungu-lates and cervids that did not requirethe monitoring of large territories. Theresult was dense spatial distribution ofcombined resources that enabled for-agers to survive in biologically viablepopulations in small territories.

The current trend to view climaticfluctuations as a mechanism for trig-gering cultural change is based on thegrowing understanding that environ-mental impacts are ‘‘screened’’ througha cultural filter. In each region at agiven time, societies of hunter-gather-ers have had their own cultural filtersas much as they have had their ownkinship systems, cosmologies, and eco-nomic and ideological adaptations toparticular features of their landscape.Cultural filters are constructed throughparticular group histories. Thus, differ-ent human populations may react dif-ferently in the face of environmentalcrises. There is no need to seek onesingle model to explain the origins ofagriculture.

Since the end of the Late GlacialMaximum (ca. 14,500 B.P.), peopleoccupied every eco-zone in theNear East. The Levant was the mostfavorably inhabited belt. Desert oasescontinued to accommodate hunter-gatherer groups, but these popula-tions were highly mobile and thinlydistributed. In the coastal Levant,semi-sedentism or severely reducedmobility was already an establishedsettlement pattern among foragers.Hence a short, cold, and abrupt crisisat about 13,000 B.P., which was imme-diately followed by an increase in pre-cipitation and an expansion of wood-land and parkland, had a majorimpact. It made sedentism within acertain ‘‘homeland’’ the most practicalsettlement pattern, resulting in theformation of the Early Natufian. Thetechnological innovations introducedby the Natufians, such as sickles, picks,and improved tools for archery, wereadditions to an already existing UpperPaleolithic inventory of utensils thatincluded simple bows, corded fibers,and food processing tools such as mor-tars and pestles. Demographic pres-sure was therefore the outcome whencertain groups of foragers became sed-entary while others remained mobile.This condition limited both groups intheir access to resources when furtherclimatic crises caused diminishing

Figure 13. Pre-pottery Neolithic A female figurines from Mureybet (1–3,5) and Netiv Hagdud (4).Note that they are in two positions, sitting (2,4) and standing (1,3,5) (after Cauvin158; Bar-Yosefand Gopher129).


yields in natural stands of cereals andfruits. The ‘‘packing of territories’’154

describes the Late Pleistocene archeo-logical situation, which is now wellknown from numerous surveys andexcavations of sites across the Levant.

Another major crisis was the ‘‘Youn-ger Dryas,’’ a period of cold, dry cli-matic conditions that lasted for centu-ries. Rapid reduction in the size of thelushest vegetation belts as well as re-duction in the yields of natural standsof C3 plants such as cereals forcedcertain human groups to change theirorganizational strategies, including theways they obtained carbohydrate re-sources. Experimental planting, shiftsin the location of settlements, and theclearing of land patches resulted inestablishment of the Early Neolithic(commonly labelled PPNA) villages,first in the western part, or the Levan-tine wing, of the Fertile Crescent. Othergroups in the steppic belt reacted tothese conditions by increasing theirmobility.

The rapid return of wetter condi-tions around 10,000 B.P. triggered theexpansion of numerous lakes andponds, which then facilitated the culti-vation of various annuals along theirshores, especially in the Levantine Cor-ridor. From that time onward, largevillages existed, with estimated popu-lations of 300 to 500 individuals. Eachof these villages was inhabited by anentire biologically viable population,thereby reducing the need to maintaina mating network that stretched overlong distances. Furthermore, withinsuch large communities, the need forsocial cohesion motivated the mainte-nance of public ceremonies in addi-tion to domestic rituals, the buildingof shrines, and the keeping of spacefor public activities.

Continued amelioration of climaticconditions during the PPNB (the nexttwo-and-a-half radiocarbon millen-nia) enabled not only socio-economicsuccess, but also the rather rapid ex-pansion of agricultural communitiesand groups of farmers into neighbor-ing regions. From that point on, the‘‘multiplier effect’’155,156 of technologi-cal, social, and economic build-upplayed an important role in the NearEast. The effects were numerous: thecreation of food surpluses, additionalpopulation increases, the erection oftemples in villages for public use, in-

creasing demands for precious com-modities, and possibly the eventualappearance of competitive feasting.

In conclusion, the ‘‘Neolithic Revolu-tion’’ cannot be understood withoutresearch into its origins in the Natu-fian culture. The emergence of farm-ing communities is seen as a responseto the effects of the Younger Dryas onthe Late Natufian culture in the Levan-tine Corridor. The beginning of inten-tional widespread cultivation was theonly solution for a population forwhom cereals had become a staplefood. Domestication of a suite offounder crops came as the uninten-tional, unconscious result of this pro-cess. In retrospect, the stability of Early

Natufian lifeways underwent rapidchanges during the Late Natufian.These changes were expressed in theabandonment of numerous sites andthe establishment of sites in the step-pic zone. Natufian groups on the Medi-terranean side of the hilly area wereharvesting wild cereals in naturalstands along the Jordan Valley on aseasonal basis. If yields of naturalstands decreased during the YoungerDryas, the motivation for intentionalcultivation could have increased. Es-tablishing sedentary communitiesalong the Jordan Valley and the Da-mascus basin enabled the first farmersto use flat alluvial lands as fields. This

shift in settlement pattern suggeststhat the primary consideration for sitelocation choice was related to cerealcultivation and permanant watersources, and not necessarily to theoptimal foraging of vegetal and ani-mal resources. The success of the Neo-lithic farming communities under thefavorable climatic conditions of theearly Holocene enabled them to ex-pand along the Levantine Corridorinto Anatolia and neighboring re-gions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI am grateful to A. Belfer-Cohen, N.

Goren-Inbar, N. Goring-Morris, E.Hovers, and E. Tchernov, my col-leagues at the Hebrew University, AviGopher (Tel Aviv University), my co-director for the excavations in NetivHagdud, F. Valla and R. Meadow (Har-vard University), with whom I recentlyco-authored a summary of the originsof agriculture in the Near East, for mymany useful discussions with them. Inaddition, I thank J. Fleagle, A. Belfer-Cohen, D. Henry, M. Fleischman, N.Ornstein, and three anonymous re-viewers for their comments. Needlessto say, I am the only one responsiblefor any shortcomings of this paper.

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