The Earliest Neolithic of Iran: 2008 Excavations at Sheikh-E Abad and Jani
The Earliest Neolithic of Iran: 2008 Excavations at Sheikh-E Abad and Jani

Author: Wendy Matthews

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2013-11-29

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 1782972242

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Over a period of several millennia, from the Late Pleistocene to the Early Holocene (c. 13,000-7000 BC), communities in south-west Asia developed from hunter-foragers to villager-farmers, bringing fundamental changes in all aspects of life. These Neolithic developments took place over vast chronological and geographical scales, with considerable regional variability in specific trajectories of change. Two vital and consistent aspects of change were a shift from mobile to sedentary lifestyles and increasingly intensive human management of animal and plant resources, leading to full domestication of particular species. Building on earlier campaigns of archaeological investigation, the current phase of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project is designed to explore these issues in one key region, the Zagros zone including central west Iran. Two Early Neolithic mounds were excavated: Sheikh-e Abad in the high Zagros and Jani, in the foothills of the Mesopotamian plains, each comprising up to 10 m depth of deposits indicating occupation spanning over 2000 years, and providing great scope for diachronic and spatial analyses. These two sites make major contributions to knowledge regarding the origins of sedentism and increasing resource management in Southwest Asia, and associated developments in social, cultural and ritual practices in this formative region of human cultural development.

The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent
The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent

Author: Roger Matthews

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2020-07-31

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 1789255279

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The Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000 BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life, where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging, herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.

The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire
The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Achaemenid Empire

Author: Roger Matthews

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-06-30

Total Pages: 1239

ISBN-13: 1000570916

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The Archaeology of Iran from the Palaeolithic to the Archaemenid Empire is the first modern academic study to provide a synthetic, diachronic analysis of the archaeology and early history of all of Iran from the Palaeolithic period to the end of the Achaemenid Empire at 330 BC. Drawing on the authors’ deep experience and engagement in the world of Iranian archaeology, and in particular on Iran-based academic networks and collaborations, this book situates the archaeological evidence from Iran within a framework of issues and debates of relevance today. Such topics include human–environment interactions, climate change and societal fragility, the challenges of urban living, individual and social identity, gender roles and status, the development of technology and craft specialisation and the significance of early bureaucratic practices such as counting, writing and sealing within the context of evolving societal formations. Richly adorned with more than 500 illustrations, many of them in colour, and accompanied by a bibliography with more than 3000 entries, this book will be appreciated as a major research resource for anyone concerned to learn more about the role of ancient Iran in shaping the modern world.

Climate Changes in the Holocene:
Climate Changes in the Holocene:

Author: Eustathios Chiotis

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 658

ISBN-13: 1351260227

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This book highlights climate as a complex physical, chemical, biological, and geological system, in perpetual change, under astronomical, predominantly, solar control. It has been shaped to some degree through the past glaciation cycles repeated in the last three million years. The Holocene, the current interglacial epoch which started ca. 11,700 years ago, marks the transition from the Stone Age to the unprecedented cultural evolution of our civilization. Significant climate changes have been recorded in natural archives during the Holocene, including the rapid waning of ice sheets, millennial shifting of the monsoonal fringe in the northern hemisphere, and abrupt centennial events. A typical case of severe environmental change is the greening of Sahara in the Early Holocene and the gradual desertification again since the fifth millennium before present. Climate Changes in the Holocene: Impact, Adaptation, and Resilience investigates the impact of natural climate changes on humans and civilization through case studies from various places, periods, and climates. Earth and human society are approached as a complex system, thereby emphasizing the necessity to improve adaptive capacity in view of the anthropogenic global warming and ecosystem degradation. Features: Written by distinguished experts, the book presents the fundamentals of the climate system, the unparalleled progress achieved in the last decade in the fields of intensified research for improved understanding of the carbon cycle, climate components, and their interaction. Presents the application of paleoclimatology and modeling in climate reconstruction. Examines the new era of satellite-based climate monitoring and the prospects of reduced carbon dioxide emissions.

The Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the Eastern Fertile Crescent
The Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the Eastern Fertile Crescent

Author: Tobias Richter

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-30

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1000813347

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This volume brings together the latest results and discussions from research carried out in the eastern Fertile Crescent, the so-called hilly flanks, and adjacent regions, as well as providing key historical perspectives on earlier fieldwork in the region. The emergence of sedentary food producing societies in southwest Asia ca. 10,000 years ago has been a key research focus for archaeologists since the 1930s. This book provides a balance to the weight of work undertaken in the western Fertile Crescent, namely the Levant and southern Anatolia. This preference has led to a heavy emphasis on these regions in discussions about where, when and how the transition from hunting and gathering to plant cultivation and animal domestication occurred. Chapters assess the role of the eastern Fertile Crescent as a key region in the Neolithization process in southwest Asia, highlighting the key and important contributions people in this region made to the emergence of sedentary farming societies. This book is primarily aimed at academics researching the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in southwest Asia. It will also be of interest to archaeologists working on this transition in other parts of Eurasia.

Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life
Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life

Author: Ian Hodder

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2018-07-02

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1607327376

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This volume explores the role of religion and ritual in the origin of settled life in the Middle East, focusing on the repetitive construction of houses or cult buildings in the same place. Prominent archaeologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion working at several of the region’s most important sites—such as Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Körtik Tepe, and Aşıklı Höyük—contend that religious factors significantly affected the timing and stability of settled economic structures. Contributors argue that the long-term social relationships characteristic of delayed-return agricultural systems must be based on historical ties to place and to ancestors. They define different forms of history-making, including nondiscursive routinized practices as well as commemorative memorialization. They consider the timing in the Neolithic of an emerging concern with history-making in place in relation to the adoption of farming and settled life in regional sequences. They explore whether such correlations indicate the causal processes in which history-making, ritual practices, agricultural intensification, population increase, and social competition all played a role. Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life takes a major step forward in understanding the adoption of farming and a settled way of life in the Middle East by foregrounding the roles of history-making and religious ritual. This work is relevant to students and scholars of Near Eastern archaeology, as well as those interested in the origins of agriculture and social complexity or the social role of religion in the past. Contributors: Kurt W. Alt, Mark R. Anspach, Marion Benz, Lee Clare, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Morris Cohen, Oliver Dietrich, Güneş Duru, Yilmaz S. Erdal, Nigel Goring-Morris, Ian Hodder, Rosemary A. Joyce, Nicola Lercari, Wendy Matthews, Jens Notroff, Vecihi Özkaya, Feridun S. Şahin, F. Leron Shults, Devrim Sönmez, Christina Tsoraki, Wesley Wildman

Environment, Archaeology and Landscape: Papers in honour of Professor Martin Bell
Environment, Archaeology and Landscape: Papers in honour of Professor Martin Bell

Author: Catherine Barnett

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1803270853

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Dedicated to Martin Bell (University of Reading), this book outlines how wetland and inland environments can be related and investigated using multi-method approaches. Papers fall under three themes: coastal and intertidal archaeology; mobility and human-environment relationships; heritage resource management, nature conservation and rewilding.

The Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Adjacent Regions
The Archaeology of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Adjacent Regions

Author: Konstantinos Kopanias

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2016-06-23

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1784913944

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Conference proceedings presenting the first opportunity for leading figures in the burgeoning area of archaeological research in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq to gather and present all the key new projects which are revolutionising our understanding of the region.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Diet
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Diet

Author: Julia Lee-Thorp

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-07-09

Total Pages: 785

ISBN-13: 0191071013

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Humans are unique among animals for the wide diversity of foods and food preparation techniques that are intertwined with regional cultural distinctions around the world. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Diet explores evidence for human diet from our earliest ancestors through the dispersal of our species across the globe. As populations expanded, people encountered new plants and animals and learned how to exploit them for food and other resources. Today, globalization aside, the results manifest in a wide array of traditional cuisines based on locally available indigenous and domesticated plants and animals. How did this complexity emerge? When did early hominins actively incorporate animal foods into their diets, and later, exploit marine and freshwater resources? What were the effects of reliance on domesticated grains such as maize and rice on past populations and the health of individuals? How did a domesticated plant like maize move from its place of origin to the northernmost regions where it can be grown? Importantly, how do we discover this information, and what can be deduced about human health, biology, and cultural practices in the past and present? Such questions are explored in thirty-three chapters written by leading researchers in the study of human dietary adaptations. The approaches encompass everything from information gleaned from comparisons with our nearest primate relatives, tools used in procuring and preparing foods, skeletal remains, chemical or genetic indicators of diet and genetic variation, and modern or historical ethnographic observations. Examples are drawn from across the globe and information on the research methods used is embedded within each chapter. The Handbook provides a comprehensive reference work for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and for professionals seeking authoritative essays on specific topics about diet in the human past.

The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent
The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent

Author: Roger Matthews

Publisher: Central Zagros Archaeological

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 1789255260

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Analysis of the transition to sedentary farming in the Fertile Crescent and the establishment of Neolithic culture based on major excavations in Iraq