One of humanity’s most important milestones was the transition from hunting and gathering to food production and permanent village life. This Neolithic Revolution first occurred in the Near East, changing the way humans interacted with their environment and each other, setting the stage, ultimately, for the modern world. Based on more than thirty years of fieldwork, this timely volume examines the Neolithic Revolution in the Levantine Near East and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Alan H. Simmons explores recent research regarding the emergence of Neolithic populations, using both environmental and theoretical contexts, and incorporates specific case studies based on his own excavations. In clear and graceful prose, Simmons traces chronological and regional differences within this land of immense environmental contrasts—woodland, steppe, and desert. He argues that the Neolithic Revolution can be seen in a variety of economic, demographic, and social guises and that it lacked a single common stimulus. Each chapter includes sections on history, terminology, geographic range, specific domesticated species, the composition of early villages and households, and the development of social, symbolic, and religious behavior. Most chapters include at least one case study and conclude with a concise summary. In addition, Simmons presents a unique chapter on the island of Cyprus, where intriguing new research challenges assumptions about the impact and extent of the Neolithic. The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East conveys the diversity of our Neolithic ancestors, providing a better understanding of the period and the new social order that arose because of it. This insightful volume will be especially useful to Near Eastern scholars and to students of archaeology and the origins of agriculture.

Product Description: The Palaeolithic is the only period in archaeology that can be studied globally. In the last half century one prehistorian, Sir Paul Mellars, has changed the shape and direction of such studies, adding immeasurably to what we know about humanity's earliest origins and the timing of crucial transitions in the journey...read more

Product Description: The aim of this journal is to publish lengthy site reports with many illustrations and other data-based articles. Contents: O. Joris, D. S. Adler, and S. W. G. Davies: Setting the Record Straight: Toward a Systematic Chronological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Boundary in Eurasia; E...read more

Using cemetery data, scientists have identified a demographic process linked to the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies. The shift is called Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT), and this book fully explores NDT on a global scale.

Product Description: This journal is a joint venture endorsed by the American School of Prehistoric Research at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Poland. The aim of this journal is to publish lengthy site reports with many illustrations and other data-based articles on aspects of the palaeolithic and neolithic of Eurasia...read more

Product Description: The Gilgal sites, as surveyed, tested, and excavated from 1973 until 1994 by the late Tamar Noy, who served as the Curator of Prehistory in the Israel Museum, are of great importance since their study directly relates to the study of the crucial period when the transition to agriculture occurred in the Levant...read more

The Levantine corridor sits at the continental crossroads of Africa and Eurasia, making it a focal point for scientific inquiry into the emergence of modern humans and their relations with Neanderthals. The recent excavations at Kebara Cave in Israel, undertaken by an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers, has provided data crucial for understanding the cognitive and behavioral differences between archaic and modern humans. In this first of two volumes, the authors discuss site formation processes, subsistence strategies, land-use patterns, and intrasite organization. Hearths and faunal remains reveal a dynamic and changing settlement system during the late Mousterian period, when Kebara Cave served as a major encampment. The research at Kebara Cave allows archaeologists to document the variability observed in settlement, subsistence, and technological strategies of the Late Middle and early Upper Paleolithic periods in the Levant.

This journal, which is a joint venture endorsed by the American School of Prehistoric Research at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Poland, aims to provide the rapid publications of site reports, articles and syntheses on aspects of the palaeolithic and neolithic of Eurasia.

Product Description: In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars—Czech and American archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, geologists, and biologists—report on the results of the investigations from 1980 through the 1990s at Stránská skála, a complex of open-air loess sites on the outskirts of the Brno Basin in the Czech Republic...read more

Product Description: This brand new journal, which is a joint venture endorsed by the American School of Prehistoric Research at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the Institute of Archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Poland, aims to provide the rapid publications of site reports, articles and syntheses on aspects of the palaeolithic and neolithic of Eurasia...read more

Product Description: During the Middle Paleolithic, various populations ancestral to modern Hone sapiens inhabited Africa, while Europe was homeland to the Neandertals. Recent archaeological investigations have provided data showing that the abrupt transition from the Middle to the Upper Neolithic, during which these populations met and interacted, was a fast-moving period of change for both groups...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The "Neolithic Revolution" in Southwestern Asia involved major transformations of economy and society that began during the Natufian period in the southern Levant and continued through Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and into Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)...read more

Product Description: During the Middle Neolithic, various populations ancestral to modern homo sapiens inhabited Africa, while Europe was homeland to the Neanderthals. Recent archaeological investigations have provided data showing that the abrupt transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, during whic...read more

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Product Description: This large volume presents virtually all aspects of the Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture in a series of chapters that cover recent results of field work, analyses of materials and sites, and synthetic or interpretive overviews of various aspects of this important prehistoric culture...read more