Archaeology 100-D200

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Archaeology 100-D200 Ancient Peoples and
Places Archaeology and the Study of
Prehistory Week 6 THE NEOLITHIC NEAR EAST,
THE AMERICAS AND THE WORLD. INCREASING SOCIAL
COMPLEXITY WITH DOMESTICATION February 20th
22nd 2012 Dr. Alvaro HiguerasSimon Fraser
University, Spring 2012
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• Agenda of Week 6
• The Middle East and the Neolithic
• Early agriculture in other parts of the world
• Political structures and increasing complexity
  in human organization.

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Those 15 points for Session 4 5 A. Population
of the Americas. B. The Magdalenian on the way
to the Mesolithic. C. "Sampling and sampling.
D. The sequence of political evolution. E.
Differences between Chiefdom and State? F.
"Qualitative" aspects of the political forms. G.
What are empires for? H. The most variable stage
in the evolution?
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I. Redistribution and its evolution. J.
Decline, small vs. large scale societies. K. The
Mesolithic and the environment. L. What is there
to love about the Magdalenian? M. Megafauna and
the evidence. N. Symbiosis of humans and animals
towards domestication. O. The most important
factor in the formation and consolidation of
state-level societies?
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Chiefdoms Redistribution in simple
chiefdoms Other mechanisms in more complex
ones without R gt Accumulation (then
gifts) Concentration of power and goods, used
of them in strategic ways Chiefdom as a
non-existent or short stage in some areas Or
archaeologists have not been able to document it
in the archaeological record of some regions
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State gt Cooperation and good teamwork, as a
cluster of chiefdoms gt Sustainable resources,
dense population, and (further) evolution of a
hierarchy gt Physical environment where it
controls the activities aspect of social
organization such as farming, irrigation,
buildings gt Resolution of Conflict/competition
in densely populated societies is the factor, as
the state is thereon needed for conflict
resolution and management of the land.
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• The center of it all The Fertile Crescent
• It is an area of Mediterranean climate
  characterized by dry summers and winter rains
  with enough precipitation to support vegetation
  ranging from woodlands to open park woodland
• South and east of the Fertile Crescent, the open
  park woodlands give way to steppes and true
  deserts
• It environment today is much drier that at the
  onset of the domestication process

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Historical context for the development of
agriculture gt Spatial continuity formation of
mounds
Jericho
Çatalhöyük
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• Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran
• These sites identified by characteristic stone
  tools bladelets
• Most sites are remains of small camps made by
  highly mobile hunter-gatherers
• Burials at these sites are rare
• No evidence of plant or animal domestication
  during this period
• Plant remains recovered include wild grasses,
  fruits, nuts, and animals

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The Natufian Sedentary hunter-gatherers
foraging for food such as emmer wheat, barley and
almonds, and hunting gazelle, deer, cattle,
horse, and wild boar. For at least part of the
year, Natufian people lived in communities, some
quite large, of semi-subterranean houses. These
semi-circular one room structures were excavated
partly into the soil and built of stone, wood and
perhaps brush roofs.
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(No Transcript)
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They located their settlements at the boundaries
between coastal plains and hill country, to
maximize their access to a wide variety of food.
They buried their dead in cemeteries, with
grave goods including stone bowls and dentalium
shell. The largest Natufian communities (called
base camps) found to date include Jericho, Ain
Mallaha, and Wadi Hammeh 27. Smaller,
short-range dry season foraging camps may have
been part of the settlement pattern, although
evidence for them is scarce.
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• The Natufian tools
• Characteristic stone tool is the lunate, a
  crescent-shaped bladelet served as hunting tools
  or as parts of tools made of multiple small
  pieces

Michael Chazan
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• Natufian settlements
• People began the transition to village life
  during this period
• Structures are ovals or open semicircles
• Structures consist of undressed stones piled to
  form walls up to 1 metre high
• Structure floors covered with refuseincluding
  stone tools and animal bones
• The stone walls are thought to have supported
  superstructures made of wood and brush
• Not clear what function structures served

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• Natufian burials
• Burials are commonly found on Natufian sites
• In some cases, the skull has been removed prior
  to burial
• Some Natufian burials include shell necklaces and
  head coverings

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• Natufian subsistence
• Natufians practised a broad-spectrum subsistence
  strategy
• They exploited a wide range of wild plants
• Most plant species do not show any evidence of
  having been domesticated
• Hunting focused on a single species, gazelle
• No herd animals were domesticated
• Burials indicate that dogs were part of human
  society and being domesticated

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• The Early Neolithic
• Early Neolithic is divided into two major
  periods
• Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
• Dates between 12,000-10,800 years ago
• Corresponds to end of the Younger Dryas
• The Big Freeze, was a geologically brief (1300
  70 years) cold climate period between
  approximately 12800
• Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
• Dates between 10,800-8,500 years ago
• Corresponds to a period of improved climate

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• The Early Neolithic technology
• A shift away from tools made on
• bladelets
• This periods toolkit is made on
  blades with an emphasis on
  arrowheads
• Toolkit includes sickles,
  ground stone axes,
  and adzes
• Grinding stones for processing grains found in
  extremely large quantities
• Pre-Pottery B sites exhibit highly developed use
  of plaster

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• Pre-pottery A Neolithic
• Settlement size increased during this period
• First evidence of communal structures appears
• Most impressive of these structures is Jericho
  tower9 m high, made of undressed stone and mud
  brick, attached to the inside of a massive wall
• Houses continue to be circular, but settlements
  larger than Natufian ones

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• Pre-pottery B Neolithic
• Round houses give way to rectangular ones
• Settlement size increases significantly
• Rectangular houses allow sites to be more densely
  packed than previously
• Villages often show high degree of planning
• No sense that the regular layout of the sites
  reflects presence of centralized authority

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• Early Neolithic Ritual
• Many ritual objects were hiddenin pits, under
  floors, in cavestheir functions are unknown
• Most striking hidden objects are plastered skulls
• Human skulls on which plaster faces have been
  molded
• Plaster figures have been found in pits
• A cache of ritual objects were found in a cave
• includes a cap, a bag, beads, bone tools,
  arrowheads, a painted stone mask, and a human
  skull with a net pattern on the cranium

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Chinchorro burial, Northern Chile
Plastered Skull, Jericho
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• Early Neolithic Domestication
• Earliest evidence of plant domestication is seen
  in contexts from the Pre-Pottery A
• Farming developed during the Pre-Pottery
  Neolithic B period
• A wide range of domesticated crops is found
  including
• Cerealsemmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley
• Pulseslentils, peas
• Legumesbitter vetch, chick peas

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• The Late Neolithic
• Characterized by the development of pottery
  manufacture
• Stone tools, expedient tools, made on local
  materials with minimal energy investment
• Characterized by a limited number of large sites
  and small dispersed
  hamlets
• Large sites are not
  densely packed
• Symbolic artifacts
  tend to be stylized
  animal figurines

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• Late Neolithic subsistence
• Importance of hunting continuously declines
  throughout period
• Evidence for animal domestication includes
  changes in the shape of goat horns
• Despite symbolic emphasis on bulls, main source
  of meat was domestic goat
• People still relied on the full range of plants
  domesticated in the Early Neolithic

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• Tabaqat el-Buma
• Directed by University of Toronto
• archaeology professor Ted Banning
• Part of the Wadi Ziqlab Project survey of this
  area of Northern Jordan
• Late Neolithic site
• Characterized by a number of dwellings that make
  up a small community
• Banning suggests that these small, dispersed
  communities may have replaced the larger
  nucleated villages of the Early Neolithic

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• The cereals used at the Natufian site of
  Mureybet... may not have been growing locally
  but... may have been imported or introduced
  from farther north... Transport of raw materials
  across considerable distances is well known in
  the Near East, adding weight to the argument that
  cereals were also transported (Willcox 2005,
  539).
• We need not imagine this to be the result of an
  institutionalized market in cereal futures
  (Bernstein 1996) in order to ask whether
  microeconomic tools will help us to understand
  how differential valuation in zones of production
  and consumption, balanced against the transaction
  costs associated with such movements of goods,
  rights, and/or consumers, will further analysis
  and explanation.

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• Willcoxs The distribution, natural habitats
  and availability of wild cereals in relation to
  their domestication in the Near East multiple
  events, multiple centres
• (pattern shown as well at a world scale plants
  micro adapted to initial environmental features)
• The proximity of a perennial water source was the
  main priority when choosing a settlement
  location, not the proximity of wild cereal
  stands. Settlement sites are all situated near a
  river, spring or lake... Due to the patchy
  distribution of the two wild wheat species, many
  sites were situated at some distance from the
  wild stands.

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• The change from gathering to cultivation was a
  gradual process. Hillman suggests that it had
  already started on a small scale in the Natufian,
  and a knowledge of planting may go back even
  farther Mesolithic broad spectrum experiences
  
• During the initial stages early farmers may have
  been obliged to frequently replenish their seed
  stocks from wild stands, which would slow the
  domestication process. It is not until the end of
  the 9th millennium BC that we see the appearance
  of well established farmers with fully-fledged
  agriculture which produced conditions favourable
  for the selection of domestic traits

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• Microeconomic models for framing the question of
  agricultural origins in terms of risk,
  discounting, economies of scale, and transaction
  costs.
• Rather than a functional approach productive
  environment or inequality function to facilitate
  this transformation?
• Causal approach climate change, population
  growth, or feasting.
• Behavioral ecology economic concepts are
  applicable whatever the mode of production

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• Politics and Borders in Archaeology
• Politics and archaeology frequently intersect in
  the Middle East
• Archaeology has been an important tool for change
  in places such as Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and
  Syria
• However, Steven Rosen has shown that national
  borders have had a major influence on the
  reconstruction of the prehistory of the region

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• Problem
• Modern borders affect the limits of where
  archaeologists work or visit
• Israeli and Syrian archaeologists are unable to
  cross borders and visit each others countries
  for intellectual exchange
• Results
• Lack of communication and fragmentation of the
  archaeological record
• Distorts our view of the past

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• Progress
• gt Signing of a peace agreement between Israel and
  Jordan has eased travel between these two
  countries
• gt Outbreaks of violence keeps travel to a minimum
• gt But ease in travel has improved understanding
  of the connections between Israel and Jordan in
  prehistory
• gt Emphasis on understanding local archaeological
  developments from a global perspective is a
  useful counterbalance to tendencies to use
  archaeology to promote nationalist agendas

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• Domesticates in Europe
• Origins of domesticated plants and animals can
  be traced to the
  Middle East, the wave
• No evidence of indigenous domestication of plants
  or animals
• Unresolved questions about domestication in
  Europe include
• gt Did populations of farmers sweep across Europe
  bringing new crops and new lifeways with them
• gt Did Mesolithic hunter-gatherers adopt
  domesticated plants and animals to forge a new
  way of life?

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Sheep and goat, as well as some cereals (emmer
wheat and einkorn) and pulses (lentil, pea, chick
pea, and bitter vetch) had no wild ancestors in
Europe during the Holocene.
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A Feast of Diversity
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• Domestication in Africa
• There are 3 major regions where plants were
  indigenously domesticated in Africa
• 1. Northeast Africatef, finger millet, and
  coffee
• 2. Central Africapearl millet, sorghum
• 3. West AfricaAfrican rice
• Domesticated plants introduced from the Middle
  East include wheat, barley, lentils
• Domesticated animals introduced from the Middle
  East were sheep and goats
• Considerable debate surrounds the origin of
  domesticated cattle in Africa

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• The Sahara desert
• Today the Sahara desert is the most dominant
  feature of the North African landscape
• The current desert environment developed in the
  Sahara only within the last 4000-5000 years
• Between 14,000 and 4500 years ago there
  was considerably
  more rainfall in the Sahara
• Extensive human occupation of the region
  was possible before
  it became a desert

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• Hunter-gatherers villages
• Small villages of hunter-gatherers existed across
  northern Africa during the period of increased
  rainfall in the Sahara
• Such sites resemble Natufian sites in the Middle
  East in several ways
• Their size, the nature of the structures on them,
  the exploitation of a wide range of resources,
  the use of grinding stones
• African also differ from Natufian sites in
  significant ways
• Pottery and large numbers of storage pits are
  commonly found on African sitesnot in Natufian
  period

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• African pastoralists
• Domesticated animals were introduced before
  domesticated plants in much of North Africa
• Cattle, sheep, and
  goats appear to have
  been incorporated into
  mobile
  hunter-gatherer
  societies
• Mobile societies with
  economies focused on
  maintaining herds of domesticated
  animals are called pastoral societies

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• Agriculture in New Guinea
• Today, agricultural societies of New Guinea
  emphasize the centrality of pigs and sweet
  potatoes for subsistence and for developing a
  social hierarchy
• The exchange of pigs is an essential element of
  political power
• Sweet potatoes are an important part of the diet
  of pigs therefore, mean political power
• Surprisingly, both sweet potatoes and pigs were
  introduced to New Guinea fairly recentlythey
  were domesticated elsewhere

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• New Guinea domesticates
• Genetic research indicates that a wide number of
  plants were indigenously domesticated in New
  Guinea
• These crops include yams, bananas, taro, and
  possibly sugarcane
• None of these crops are cerealsno seed crops
• Traditional agricultural processes in New Guinea
  involve transplanting suckers, cuttings, or
  shoots

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• The Andes environment
• Andes are the second highest mountain chain in
  the world
• The Andean highlands are divided into four zones
  based on altitude above sea level
• 1. Quechua zone 2300-3500 m, where corn grows
  well
• 2. Suni zone 3500-4000 m, where crops indigenous
  to the Andes are grown
• 3. Puna zone 4000-4800 m, open grassland for
  grazing alpacas and llamas
• 4. Cordillera zone above 4800 m, not used for
  agriculture

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• Andean domestication
• Domesticated beans
  from Guitarrero
  Cave
  have been directly
  dated to 4300 BP.
• Quinoa seeds have been found in layers 5700-4500
  years old at Panaulauca Cave
• The earliest evidence for domesticated potatoes
  dates to 4000-3000 BP.
• Probably not the earliest domesticate potatoes
  because they were found along the coast, not
  where wild potatoes grow

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• Andean domestication
• Llamas and alpacas (camelids) were domesticated
  beginning10,000-5000 years ago
• Llama as pack animal25 kg at most
• Vicuña and Guanaco are still wild camelids
• The other domesticated Andean animal is the
  guinea pig, when domesticated unknown, but
  perhaps after camelids

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• Preagricultural coastal villages
• By 8000 BP small settled villages developed along
  the Peruvian coast
• Houses were built of reeds and grasses over a
  wooden structure
• About 10 families lived in a village at any given
  time
• Burial data indicates that there were not higher
  status individuals

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• The Cotton Preceramic
• Prevalence of cotton seeds and absence of pottery
  on its sites
• These sites are often quite large and contain
  evidence of monumental architecture
• The flat-topped pyramid, Huaca de los Idolos,
  dates to 5500-4500 BP., the earliest known
  monumental architecture in the New World
• The bulk of the Cotton Preceramic diet consisted
  of fish and shellfish
• Populations obtained gourds, squash, chili
  pepper, beans, and jicima from wild plants
• The dominant crop species was cotton, also in the
  wild, used for making textiles and nets

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Caral, World heritage site, 2009
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• Preagricultural coastal villages
• Inhabitants of these villages were
  hunter-gatherers who relied heavily on the rich
  coastal marine resources
• A wide range of wild plant resources including
  seeds, fruits, and tubers were exploited
• Cultivated gourds were domesticated beans and
  squash may have been cultivated, but they were
  not significant parts of the diet

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• Pacific currents society
• Humboldt Current brings cool waters up from the
  south along the Andean coast
• Responsible for the wealth of marine resources
  that allowed villages to thrive without
  agriculture
• El Niño a severe reversal of the Humboldt
  Current occurs every 25-40 years
• When major El Niños occur, there is a massive
  decline in fish and shellfish populations on the
  coast

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• Pacific currents society
• Also causes torrential rains that cause massive
  flooding and mud slides
• Some argue that El Niños have only happened for
  about 6000 years
• The onset of the Cotton Preceramic and El Niño
  seem to correlate
• Perhaps climactic uncertainty played a role in
  the development of large centres with some
  reliance on agriculture

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• Domestication in East Asia
• Rice was domesticated along the Yangtze and Huai
  River Valleys, China by 9000 BP.
• Millet was domesticated in the Yellow River
  Valley, China by the
  Peiligang culture,
  c. 8000 BP.
• Dogs, pigs, and water
  buffalo were domesticated
  in southern China
• Pigs and, possibly,
  chickens were domesticated
  in northern China

Pottery vessels from Banpo Village site, China.
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• Development of Chinese farming societies
• Yangshou culture developed out of the Peiligang
  culture of the Yellow River
• Yangshou villages consisted of both round
  semisubterranean houses and rectangular houses
  built on the surface
• Wild plants and animals were exploited
• Millet was fully domesticated as were dogs and
  pigs
• Pottery vessels were made in many forms with
  elaborate painted decorations

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Mesoamerica and North America
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• Mesoamerican domestication
• Squash (Curcurbita pepo) was the earliest plant
  domesticated in Mesoamerica
• Earliest squash seeds dated to 10,000-8300 BP.
• Ancestor of squashes eaten today including
  pumpkins, acorn squash, zucchini, spaghetti
  squash, etc.
• Maize was domesticated from teosinte, a wild
  grass found in the highlands of Mexico
• Earliest maize dated to 6250 and 5500 BP.

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• Mesoamerican domestication
• Beans were domesticated independently in
  Mesoamerica and in the Andes
• Earliest date for a Mexican bean is 2500 BP.
• It is very likely that beans were domesticated
  earlier, at the same time as maize

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• Maize in SW North America
• Maize and squash agriculture spread to northern
  Mexico and the southwestern U.S. about 3400 BP.
  in the Southwestern Late Archaic Period
• Initial impact of maize and squash varied across
  the region
• In some areas there was increased sedentism
• In other areas, agriculture did not substantially
  alter the lives of the Late Archaic
  hunter-gatherers

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• The Formative period
• The introduction of pottery into
  the American Southwest
  marks the beginning of the
  Formative period
• The introduction of pottery
• overlaps with the introduction of beans
• Sites with pit houses are common in this period
• Formative sites range in size from 1-2 houses to
  as many as 25-35one village site has 60 houses
• Regional variation in the impact of maize
  continues into the Formative

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• Optimal foraging model
• Assumes that humans act on the basis of rational
  self-interest to maximize efficiency in
  collecting and processing resources
• Archaeologists use this theory to explain the
  variation in adaptation to the introduction of
  maize agriculture
• According to optimal foraging theory, diversity
  exists in the uptake of maize agriculture as the
  result of rational decisions about the
  productiveness of the landscape and the returns
  from maize agriculture

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• Eastern North American domesticates
• Late Archaic peoples of eastern North America
  independently domesticated a variety of plants
• Including sunflower, marsh elder, chenopod, and
  squash
• Late Archaic peoples also narrowed their
  subsistence baseespecially in areas with rich
  supplies of shellfish
• Shell middens
• The impact of domesticates on subsistence in the
  Late Archaic was minimal
• Hunting and gathering continued to be the basis
  of Late Archaic subsistence

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• Adena
• Adena culture corresponds to the Early Woodland
  period of Eastern North America
• The Adena culture is found in the Ohio River
  Valley
• During the Adena
  period increasingly
  large burial mounds
  were constructed
  accompanied by
  increasingly
  
  elaborate burial
  practices

The Great Serpent Mound, Ohio.
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• The Hopewell
• In the Ohio River Valley, the Middle Woodland
  period corresponds to the Hopewella culture that
  built complex earthworks and had elaborate burial
  rituals
• Some Hopewell mounds were built over structures
• Massive earthworks were created in a number of
  forms including circles, squares, and octagons
• Some mounds were created over a variety of types
  of burials, other mounds had intrusive burials in
  them

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• The Hopewell
• The Hopewell exchange network moved exotic goods
  across huge distances
• Quantities of expertly crafted objects made from
  exotic materials in burials indicate the status
  of elites

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• Hopewell settlement
• According to the vacant centre pattern model,
  Hopewell earthworks served as the symbolic and
  ceremonial core of a community that lived across
  a wide area
• Evidence indicates that
  some earthworks were
  occupied
• Assessing the nature
  of Hopewell settlements
  is
  difficult because of
• The widespread modern destruction of the
  earthworks and their massive scale
• The low archaeological visibility of Hopewell
  habitation sites because of alluvial soil buildup

Hopewell bird claw.
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• Woodland subsistence
• Early Middle Woodland subsistence was based
  heavily on the cultivation of indigenously
  domesticated plants
• The earliest dates for maize in eastern North
  America are between 2000-1800 BP.
• Maize is rare in the Early/Middle Woodland and
  did not play a major role in the diet
• Throughout the Woodland period, hunting and
  gathering continued to be key elements of
  subsistence along with the cultivation of local
  domesticates

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• Maize Agriculture in Eastern North America
• By the beginning of the Late Woodland, maize is
  found as far north as Ontario
• Maize was cultivated throughout much of eastern
  North America by 1700 BP., however
• Isotope analysis of skeletal remains indicates
  that maize did not play a major role in the diet
  until about 1000 years ago
• Turkeys appear to have been domesticated during
  the Formative period
• Turkey domestication in the Southwest and in
  Mesoamerica were separate events

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• Domestication Bruce Smiths model
• A coevolutionary model for the indigenous
  domestication of plants in eastern North America
• Smith states that climate change led to increased
  permanence of human settlements
• The shift to more permanent settlements led to
  gradual ecological changes that resulted in the
  emergence of domesticated plants over a period of
  several thousand years

68

• Domestication Smiths model, in 5 major stages
• 1. Garbage heaps around long-term human
  occupations provided an excellent ecological
  niche for weedy plants. In these contexts, seeds
  that sprouted and grew quickly had an advantage
• 2. People tolerated edible plants and removed
  unwanted plants
• 3. People began to encourage and systematically
  harvest useful plants while weeding out useless
  ones
• 4. Seeds of the best useful plants were
  deliberately planted every year
• 5. Plants that were clearly morphologically
  domesticated emerged

69

• Domestication Prentices model
• Guy Prentice proposed that the domestication of
  plants might have been the result of intentional
  actions by individuals
• Prentice argues that the introduction of
  domesticated squash into eastern North America
  was carried out by male shamans who would have
  used the gourds as rattles
  or ritual containers

70

• Princess Point Complex
• Found in southern Ontario dates to 650900 A.D.
• Consisted of Algonkian-speaking hunter-gatherers
• Important to the debate about whether maize
  exploitation (agriculture) moved into the area
  via migration from the south during this time, or
  whether it was adopted by local groups
• Pottery is believed to have started 900 A.D.
  however, University of Toronto at Mississauga
  archaeologists David Smith and Gary Crawford have
  found evidence for both pottery and a degree of
  sedentism as early as 540 A.D. in the PPC
• Suggests perhaps both local adoption of
  agriculture and migration

71

• Gender Bias and domestication
• Watson and Kennedy link the seeming invisibility
  of people in the origins of agriculture to gender
  bias
• men are strong, dominant protectors who hunt
  animals women are weaker, passive, hampered by
  their reproductive responsibilities, and hence,
  consigned to plant gathering (Watson and Kennedy
  1991256)
• Smiths domestication model is an example of the
  passive form of biasagriculture just happened
  unconsciously

72

• Gender Bias and domestication
• Prentices domestication model is active but,
  tellingly, the agent is explicitly male
• Watson and Kennedy propose a model for the
  adoption of maize in eastern North America that
  emphasizes the active role of female gardeners
• They propose that women, who already had
  extensive experience growing indigenous
  cultigens, actively experimented with the
  Midwestern 12-row maize to develop a variety that
  was better suited to their region

73

• Gender Bias and domestication
• The result was the development and spread of
  eastern 8-row maize
• In this model, the adoption of maize in eastern
  North America was an achievement of the active
  intervention of women

74

• Summing up the evidence
• In eastern North America, hunter-gatherer groups
  had domesticated a number of plant species long
  before the introduction of maize agriculture
• Regional variability continued into the Formative
  period
• Archaeologists try to explain the pattern in
  terms of optimal foraging theory

75

• Early and Middle Woodland Adena and Hopewell
  cultures
• Massive earthworks constructed
• Evidence for specialized craft manufacture
• Long-distance trade in high status items
• Nature of settlement systems remains poorly
  understood
• Introduction of maize at the end of the Middle
  Woodland period had little impact of the diet