54
Documenta Praehistorica XLVII (2020)
Conceptualizing the Neolithic
The region to the East of the Jordan Valley has often
been cast as marginal to the emergence of farming
societies associated with Neolithic lifeways, perceiv-
ed as located on, or beyond, the fringe of the core
Mediterranean zone where intensification in the ex-
ploitation of food resources was underway during
the Epipalaeolithic. It lies far away from the early
Neolithic ‘golden triangle’ of the northern Levant as-
sociated with the wild progenitors of plant and ani-
mal domesticates, as well as culturally rich in sym-
bolic art (Kozłowski, Aurenche 2005). In this con-
text, Neolithic innovations, even populations, have
Beyond the Jordan>
multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
Bill Finlayson1, Cheryl A. Makarewicz2
1 Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
wfinlayson@brookes.ac.uk
2 Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, Kiel University, Kiel, DE
c.makarewicz@ufg.uni-kiel.de
ABSTRACT – Recent excavations in Jordan have demonstrated a long sequence of development from
the late Pleistocene Epipalaeolithic through the early Holocene Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Superficially,
the growing body of social and subsistence evidence suggests Neolithic communities emerged from
traditions rooted in the early Epipalaeolithic. However, while developments such as the construction
of shelters, population aggregation, and subsistence intensification may be essential for the emer-
gence of a Southwest Asian Neolithic, they are typical of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies and
not inherently Neolithic. Notably, the Neolithic in Southwest Asia was not a homogenous entity, but
instead supported diverse expressions of subsistence, symbolic behaviours, and cultural trajectories
across the region. To understand the emergence and development of the Neolithic, we need to exam-
ine this richly diverse history and its many constituent pathways.
IZVLE∞EK – Nedavna izkopavanja v Jordanski dolini so pokazala dolgo sekvenco razvoja od pozno
pleistocenskega epipaleolitika do zgodnje holocenskega predkerami≠nega neolitika. Na prvi pogled
vedno ve≠ podatkov o dru∫bi in eksistenci ka∫e na to, da so se neolitske skupnosti razvile iz tradicij,
ki imajo korenine v zgodnjem epipaleolitiku. Medtem ko so pojavi, kot je postavitev zavetij, zdru∫e-
vanje ljudi in okrepitev na≠inov pre∫ivetja, klju≠ni za pojav neolitika v jugozahodni Aziji, gre ven-
darle za tipi≠ne vzorce sodobnih zdru∫b lovcev in nabiralcev in ti pojavi sami po sebi niso neolitski.
Neolitik v jugozahodni Aziji ne predstavlja homogene entitete, ampak vklju≠uje raznolike izraze pre-
∫ivetja, simbolnega vedenja in kulturnih poti na tem obmo≠ju. Za razumevanje pojava in razvoja
neolitika moramo preu≠iti to bogato raznoliko zgodovino in njene ∏tevilne sestavne poti.
KEY WORDS – Neolithic; Epipalaeolithic; Jordan; hunter-gatherer
KLJU∞NE BESEDE – neolitik; epipaleolitik; Jordanska dolina; lovci-nabiralci
Onkraj Jordana>
raznolikosti predkerami;nega neolitika
DOI> 10.4312\dp.47.4
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
55
logical approaches that try to identify successful
steps in the development process, ticking them off
against the shopping list represented by the pack-
age of Neolithic traits. Thirdly, it leads to a circular-
ity of argument in many synthetic accounts of the
Neolithic, where a ‘prime mover’, typically demogra-
phic pressure, has been argued as both evidence of
development and its cause (e.g., Binford 1968; Co-
hen 1977; Flannery 1969; Goring-Morris, Belfer-
Cohen 2008; Redding 1988; Rindos 1984).
This dislocation between evidence and narrative has
become more evident in the context of a substantial
growth in empirical knowledge of the Neolithic in
Southwest Asia that has taken place over recent
years, with the discovery of new sites, progressively
more refined excavation techniques, and the effec-
tive deployment of new archaeological scientific ana-
lytical approaches. It has become increasingly clear
that the process that led to the Neolithic was not
simply a single trajectory led by one centre of inno-
vation but entailed multiple pathways that involved
numerous geographic loci over time, including, for
example, the late Epipalaeolithic Mediterranean
woodland zone, the early Neolithic Middle Euphra-
tes, and later Neolithic Anatolia (Rollefson, Gebel
2004).
This recognition of the importance of regional de-
velopments has not been accompanied by any sub-
stantive revision to the widely-accepted use of a
Childean concept of the Neolithic. Despite over a de-
cade of discussion regarding a multi-centred, poly-
centric, or uncentred Neolithic (Rollefson, Gebel
2004), synthetic descriptions of the Neolithic still
focus on the common factors that define the Neoli-
thic as a package. Even where variable local patterns
of development are identified, for example in the
processes of plant or animal domestication, those
that can be classified as components of the Neolithic
end-point are prioritized. This is seen, for example,
in the recent genomic research on barley domesti-
cation, which confirms multiple centres of domes-
tication within a mosaic pattern across the region
(Pankin et al. 2018; Poets et al. 2015). What does
not appear to readily contribute to the existing con-
cept of the Neolithic is downplayed. For example,
east of the Jordan, recognition of the ideological
component of Childe’s package has led to an em-
phasis on symbolic ritual where it can be identified,
as in the shrines and temples of ‘Ain Ghazal, but vir-
tually no mention is made of their absence from
every other Late PPNB site in the region (Rollefson
2004; 2005) (see Figure 1 for a map of all Neolithic
been often assumed to have arrived east of the Jor-
dan from either west of the Jordan or from the
northern Levant (Bar-Yosef 2000; Cauvin 2000;
most specifically in Late PPNB colonization: Gebel
2004). In contrast to such views, recent research has
shown that this area east of the Jordan was very
much an active part of the Southwest Asian Neolithic
transition, populated by indigenous communities
who appear to have been experimenting with their
own innovations (Finlayson, Makarewicz 2017).
Here, distinctive local developments engaged with
every part of the Neolithic transformation, including
subsistence, demography, society, and ideology, pro-
viding a useful counterpoint to established narratives
and thus highlighting the need for a re-assessment
of our perception of the Neolithic as a unitary pheno-
menon. As such, the region east of the Jordan Valley
contributes to our understanding of the fundamen-
tal change in the course of human history that is
termed the Neolithic.
The conventional and widely accepted idea of the
Neolithic is still based on Childe’s early 20th century
definition that it affected all parts of life, a subsis-
tence dimension comprised of a farming economy
based on domesticated plants and animals, as well
as storage of surplus and a system of delayed return
of resources, novel social developments to organise
larger, more sedentary populations with new mecha-
nisms for the coordination of collective activities,
and an ideological shift to focus on fertility (Childe
1934; Zeder 2009; Finlayson 2013). In a European
context, where this package largely arrived ready-
made, such a definition of the Neolithic as an archa-
eological phase remains relatively useful. However,
in Southwest Asia it has become an increasingly poor
match to the Neolithic as phase, a dislocation starting
from the mid-20th century identification of a ‘pre-
Pottery’ Neolithic (Kenyon 1959). Here, the defini-
tion provided by Childe becomes the endpoint of a
complex autochthonous development process where
different elements of the package evolved at diffe-
rent rates and times in different places. Childe him-
self was more concerned with process and revolution
than static endpoint, as he made “no distinction
between the origins of agriculture and the spread
of farming economies” (Brami 2019.30). Several
problems arise from the resulting tension between
definition and process. Firstly, much of the period
described as ‘the Neolithic’ in Southwest Asia does
not fully achieve the definition of the Neolithic as
described above, especially regarding a fully devel-
oped farming economy. Secondly, having a period
defined by its endpoint makes it hard to avoid teleo-
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
56
sites east of the Jordan Valley mentioned in text).
Similarly, the almost complete absence of plastered
skulls east of the Jordan is not taken as an interest-
ing variation on Neolithic behaviour that might cast
light on the social and ideological transformations
taking place, but has instead been largely ignored
within what is described as a broader Levantine de-
velopment (cf. Kuijt 2000; 2008b; Makarewicz, Fin-
layson 2018). In both these cases, the absence of
overt symbolism is not part of the anticipated pack-
age, is therefore not discussed, and thus evades fur-
ther scrutiny so that important regional variation is
smoothed over and even homogenized. This blend-
ing of regional developments into the conventional
paradigm of the Neolithic in effect subverts the con-
cept of a multi-centric Neolithization process. Our
understanding that there were multiple pathways re-
quires that we recognize diversity and do not focus
solely on developments that will subsequently coa-
lesce into a Neolithic package. The region east of the
Jordan provides a case study that emphasizes the
importance of diversity at the local, regional, sub-re-
gional, and even site scales.
In a similar manner, a Neolithic
that is largely defined in terms
of becoming Neolithic also in-
vites a search for the earliest
manifestation of the Neolithic
process. As such, any develop-
ment that with hindsight con-
tributes to neolithisation pro-
cesses is made part of the pro-
cess of becoming Neolithic and
prioritized in our accounts.
Consequently, Epipalaeolithic
developments are measured
against Neolithic traits to see if
they can be incorporated into
what is now described as a
long or slow Neolithic (Hodder
2018; Watkins 2018). For
example, recent research focus-
ing on the early Epipalaeolithic
site of Kharaneh IV east of the
Jordan Valley has argued that
traits conventionally associat-
ed with the Neolithic, such as
the scale and permanence of
community, began to develop
over a long period in the Late
Pleistocene, suggesting that
“this trajectory of intensifica-
tion culminated, inevitably, in
food production” (Maher et al. 2012.78). By de-
scribing such elements of Epipalaeolithic lifeways as
precocious elements that inevitably foreshadow the
Neolithic, the Neolithic as part of long-term human
evolutionary trajectories is, unsurprisingly, confirm-
ed. Furthermore, by extending the chronology of the
Neolithic to incorporate these early developments,
as proposed in the extended Neolithics of Ian Hod-
der or Trevor Watkins, risks declaring all change as
preparatory to the Neolithic. Instead, thinking about
such Epipalaeolithic behaviour should be considered
within the context of hunter-gatherer adaptations,
as it would be in other prehistoric contexts around
the world (and see Maher, Conkey 2019 for such an
approach). This would provide more fruitful avenues
to understanding human behaviour, rather than a
priori inclusion as part of a teleologically framed
Neolithic.
Our understanding of the Neolithic transition in the
southern Levant, including the area east of the Jor-
dan Valley has been largely directed by ‘prime-mo-
ver’ models that invoke demographic pressure, cli-
Fig. 1. Map showing all sites east of the Jordan mentioned in text.
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
57
mate change, and the solutions adopted to resolve
stresses induced by these factors (e.g., Binford 1968;
Cohen 1977; Flannery 1969; Goring-Morris, Belfer-
Cohen 2008; Redding 1988; Rindos 1984; Sterelny,
Watkins 2015). Flannery’s Broad Spectrum Revolu-
tion provided a central model for late Pleistocene
hunter-gatherer subsistence intensification, under-
stood as laying the grounds for the domestication of
plants and animals in parallel to additional demo-
graphic pressure on resources created by increasing
sedentism and population. More intensive resource
exploitation, which enabled population growth and
sedentism, was underpinned by the growth of social
complexity within hunter-gatherer societies (Flan-
nery 1972; Keeley 1988). The social and ideological
components captured by the term ‘complexity’ there-
fore became essential aspects of how the Neolithic is
conceptualized. The transition to food production
which lies at the core of the transformation allows
a distinction to be made between complex, intensi-
fying hunter-gatherers on the one hand, and farmers
and pastoralists on the other. Unfortunately, most
descriptions of complex hunter-gatherer societies
treat them as watered down versions of farming so-
cieties (e.g., Bender 1985). It has been convincingly
argued that the terminology has primarily been
used to move the boundary between hunting and
gathering and farming to absorb intermediate groups
as hunter-gatherers (Smith 2001). This places them
in a transitional evolutionary stage which masks the
potential range of behavioural adaptations within
hunter-gatherer societies independent of any evolu-
tionary connection to the Neolithic (Lightfoot et al.
2011). As argued by Artemova, no hunter-gatherer
society in the ethnographic present shows any signs
of making the sort of transitions seen in the Natu-
fian or early Neolithic (Artemova 2020), placing
these past societies outside our common contempo-
rary understanding of hunter-gatherers. Modern hun-
ter-gatherers, part of the modern world, make poor
analogues for the earliest developments in food pro-
duction.
Demographic pressure, whether contributing to re-
source or social stresses, continues to be employed
by many scholars as an underlying causal factor in
the development of a Neolithic package. Several re-
cent influential models, developed largely on evi-
dence from the northern Levant and Anatolia, pre-
suppose that the principal drivers of these complex
economic and social changes arose from social, ideo-
logical, psychological, or cognitive developments, in
turn occurring largely as mechanisms to cope with
new demographic stresses produced by living close
to so many people (Cauvin 1994; 2000; Hodder
2005). Kim Sterelny and Trevor Watkins (Sterelny,
Watkins 2015) see demographic change pushing all
other subsistence and symbolic developments, and
they build their idea of cultural niche construction
on an understanding of a long-term rise in popula-
tion density and the scale of co-resident communi-
ties spanning the period from 22 000 to 8500 cal BP.
They draw heavily on the work of Robin Dunbar
(Dunbar 1998), who has argued that living togeth-
er in large groups (over 150 individuals), requires
new mechanisms to enable people to manage the
complexity of economic and social relations beyond
what can be achieved via one-to-one relations.
Evidence for this underpinning demographic explo-
sion has been argued as visible in the apparent
growth in number and scale of settlements through
the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic, and also in a trend
towards more substantial architectural forms gen-
erally assumed to equate to greater permanence of
settlement (Kuijt 2000; Goring-Morris, Belfer-Cohen
2011). Settlement size and the density of sites in the
landscape are explicitly treated as proxies for popu-
lation dynamics in Southwest Asian Neolithic archa-
eology although it is clear that throughout Southwest
Asia, Neolithic settlement distribution densities and
architecture varied over time in different areas
(Goring-Morris, Belfer-Cohen 2011). A fundamental
plank of these demographic arguments is the as-
sumption that Neolithic settlements are primarily
sedentary residential bases, where the principal ar-
chitectural components are houses, and that these
settlements have good analogues in the modern
Middle East, providing straightforward correlations
for population size estimates (Wilson 1988; Byrd
2000). Recent fieldwork has called into question the
assumption that such architecture is predominately
residential (e.g., Kuijt, Finlayson 2009; Finlayson et
al. 2011b), and the conception of the Neolithic as a
long transitional period makes any analogy with mo-
dern farming communities hard to sustain.
Here, we will use the evidence from east of the Jor-
dan Valley to argue that while this area was an ac-
tive part of the Southwest Asian transition to farm-
ing, for most of the period there is no clear evidence
for demographic pressure as either a causal or con-
sequent factor. The size of settlements here, as op-
posed to their structural permanence, did not mar-
kedly increase until almost the final phase of the Pre-
Pottery Neolithic. In contrast, we will suggest that
settlement concentration at focal points in the land-
scape was a desired cultural objective from the Natu-
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
58
fian onwards. People wanted to enhance their com-
munity’s place in the landscape and achieved this
through a combination of subsistence, social, and
ideological strategies. The concept of ‘home’ and at-
tachment to places in the landscape beyond imme-
diate economic value may have been developing in
hearth-centred base-camps for at least 125 000 years
(Kuhn, Stiner 2019), but from the Natufian the built
environment appears to have been actively used as
a mechanism to support this objective. Architecture
was employed to support a delayed-return storage
economy, and to sustain the social structures that
helped this economy function. The stone-built ar-
chitecture of the Natufian may not necessarily indi-
cate greater sedentism than in the preceding Epipa-
laeolithic (cf. Boyd 2006), but it indicates a greater
permanence of the constructions built not only to
serve as containers for stores, but also for the myths
and memories of society (Maher, Conkey 2019). Si-
milarly, the ideological changes we can infer from
architecture and mortuary evidence may arise as
means to bring communities together, rather than as
a coping mechanism to survive the accidental de-
mands and stresses of demographic pressure gene-
rated by burgeoning populations and settlements.
From Epipalaeolithic to Neolithic East of the
Jordan Valley
The rapid climate changes that characterized the
end of the Pleistocene have previously been invoked
as a forcing mechanism behind developments of cul-
tural and subsistence change, from the flourishing of
the Early Natufian during the warm Bølling-Allerød,
the subsequent and putatively more stressed mobile
Late Natufian in the cold Younger Dryas, and Neoli-
thic village life and farming starting with the Holo-
cene (Belfer-Cohen, Bar-Yosef 2000; Moore et al.
2000; Byrd 2005a). However, the region to the east
of the Jordan Valley is particularly diverse, ranging
from Mediterranean woodland to desert and from
highland plateau to rift valley, so that global climate
change had variable, locally specific effects through-
out Southwest Asia at the end of the Pleistocene
(Contreras, Makarewicz 2016). Climate change
through the Epipalaeolithic and into the Neolithic
would have altered the location of the boundaries
between some of these zones, most substantially
with the eastward extension of savannah over areas
now known as arid desert (Contreras, Makarewicz
2016; Richter et al. 2017; Rollefson et al. 2011). Re-
cent analyses have generally downplayed the signi-
ficance of both Younger Dryas and early Holocene
climate change in the region, while our knowledge
of the precise effects of climate change, and its chro-
nological correlation with changes in human diet and
society, remains imperfect (Contreras, Makarewicz
2016; Flohr et al. 2016; Stein 2014; Torfstein et al.
2013; Richter et al. 2017). At present the scale, tim-
ing, and effects of climate change on human settle-
ment and subsistence remain difficult to assess.
The region east of the Jordan witnessed an Epipala-
eolthic to Neolithic succession similar to the rest of
the southern Levant, commencing with an early Epi-
palaeolithic (c. 21000–14900 cal BP), comprised of
various cultural or functional components largely
identified from chipped stone assemblage variabil-
ity. The Natufian (14 600–11750 cal BP), conven-
tionally divided into an ‘Early’ and ‘Late’, based on
perceived differences in settlement permanence and
mobility (e.g., Bar-Yosef 2000), may perhaps be a
single, heterogeneous phase east of the Jordan, il-
lustrating local historical diversity, as discussed be-
low. Recent work west of the Jordan has also sug-
gested that the conventional two-fold Natufian divi-
sion may have been overstated (Barzilai et al.
2017). The first phase that is labelled as ‘Neolithic’,
the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, appears to commence
before the end of the Natufian, especially in the
south of Jordan, where the site of WF16 may over-
lap with the chronological range of the Harifian, a
Late Natufian variant located in the Negev desert to
the West (Finlayson et al. 2011a). The sub-division
of the PPNA into a short initial Khiamian phase, fol-
lowed by a longer Sultanian (Byrd 2005a), is not
visible east of the Jordan. Instead, a long Early PPNA
(c. 12 000–10 800 cal BP) appears to have been fol-
lowed by a relatively short Late PPNA (10 800–
10 300 cal BP), chronologically parallel to the Early
PPNB, known from a small number of sites (Finlay-
son, Makarewicz 2017). The Middle PPNB (10 300–
9200 cal BP) is represented by relatively few sites
east of the Jordan Valley, but there is a dramatic
change in settlement visible during the Late PPNB
(9200–8700 cal BP) when the number and scale of
sites increases significantly.
Subsistence
A key feature of Epipaleolithic subsistence is the
assumed importance of cereals in hunter-gatherer
diets, a development frequently interpreted as a pre-
cocious move towards Neolithic subsistence strate-
gies that potentially promoted increased sedentism.
Both intensive cereal exploitation and sedentism
have been interpreted as critical ‘pre-adaptations’
leading to farming and village life (e.g., Bar-Yosef
1998; Byrd 2005a). Research at early Ohalo II awar-
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
59
ded significance to the use of small seeded grass
cereals in Epipaleolithic subsistence on this basis
(Piperno et al. 2004). Further reliance on cereals,
understood as supported by the purported appear-
ance of extensive stands of cereals in the core Medi-
terranean zone during the warm Bølling-Allerød, has
been argued to have underpinned Early Natufian
(14600–13700 cal BP) sedentism, followed by in-
creased mobility returning as the climate cooled –
and cereal stands decreased – during the Younger
Dryas (Bar-Yosef 2000). Unfortunately, evidence to
support this presumed dependence on cereals during
the Natufian has always been scant, with only sparse
palaeobotanical remains so far recovered. Further-
more, queries have been raised over such proxy evi-
dence as glossed ‘sickle’ blades (alternatively used
for cutting reeds: Maeda et al. 2016), grinding stones
(perhaps used for grinding acorns: McCorriston
1994; Mason 1995; Olszewski 1991), and the pos-
sible absence of cereal stands from the Mediterra-
nean woodland ‘core’ zone (Olszewski 1993).
Recent excavations at the Natufian site of Shubayqa
1 (14 600–12 000 cal BP) in north-eastern Jordan
provide clear evidence that the Natufian emerged
well to the east of the Jordan Valley at the same
time as it appeared in the woodland ‘core’ zone. The
Natufian was spread across diverse landscapes and
environments from its inception (Richter et al.
2017), confirming that Natufian communities were
not dependent on any individual habitat or specific
plant food source. Instead, they developed locally
appropriate strategies of food procurement that
enabled them to use multiple resources while at the
same time maintaining low mobility. Along these
lines, the exploitation of clubrush tubers, but not ce-
reals, at Shubayqa 1 points to heterogeneity in Natu-
fian subsistence strategies (Arranz-Otaegui et al.
2018). The limited direct archaeobotanical evidence
from the Natufian indicates subsistence was not (and
certainly not uniformly) reliant on cereals or legu-
mes, the ‘founder-crops’ of Neolithic farming. Less
than 10% of the palaeobotanical remains identified
represent elements of the founder-crops, indicating
that Natufian strategies did not provide an early
stepping stone on a direct route to cereal domestica-
tion (Arranz-Otaegui et al. 2018). On the contrary,
the Natufian patterns of intensified resource exploi-
tation of selected plants and animals are similar to
those adopted by hunter-gatherers around the world
(Woodburn 1982; Rowley-Conwy 2004; Yeomans,
Richter 2018) and as described explicitly, for exam-
ple, by Andrew M. T. Moore et al. (2000) and Brian
Hayden (2004).
Additional evidence for the origins of a delayed re-
turn plant food economy, transitional to food pro-
duction, has also been sought in storage technology.
However, it remains unclear how far storage had
developed in the Natufian. Storage pits have been
reported from a number of sites, including Nahal Ein
Gev II east of the Jordan (Grosman et al. 2016), but
it is generally accepted that early estimates of Natu-
fian storage were considerably overestimated (Bar-
Yosef 1998; Olzsewski 1991). Taking into conside-
ration these aspects, the ‘Early’ and ‘Late’ Natufian
were not so much different adaptations to hypoth-
esized climate change, but more likely at least par-
tially contemporary variations resulting from Natu-
fian adaptations to local resources. Intensification of
local food procurement, supported by the new tech-
nology of large mortars, appears as part of a wider
strategy that reflected choices in ways of inhabiting
the landscape that involved a stronger commitment
to specific locations rather than food sources.
The PPNA palaeobotanical record suggests that peo-
ple inhabiting landscapes east of the Jordan Valley
were active in the development of new skills and
technologies that are seen widely throughout early
Neolithic Southwest Asia, by now increasingly con-
verging on cereal exploitation. From early within
the Neolithic east of the Jordan Valley there is evi-
dence of a new local and indigenous move towards
food production, with a notable increasing focus on
cereals (Colledge et al. 2018). Cultivation of wild
cereals in the Early PPNA is also strongly suggested
by the installation of granaries, as seen at Dhra’,
which contained cereal phytoliths, and at WF16, as
well as the volumes of chaff used as temper in mud
constructions at Dhra’ and possibly at WF16 (Kuijt,
Finlayson 2009; Flohr et al. 2015). The presence of
both small- and large-sized barley (Hordeum sp.)
grains with a smooth abscission scar present on bar-
ley rachis remains recovered from Late PPNA el-Hem-
meh and Zaharat edh Dhra’ 2 (ZAD2), and seeds
from potential weedy taxa, suggest pre-domestica-
tion cultivation had become established by the Late
PPNA (Edwards et al. 2004; Meadows 2004; White,
Makarewicz 2012). The relative importance of
founder-crops was variable between PPN communi-
ties, representing less than 10% of the palaeobota-
nical remains at ZAD2, but almost 60% at el-Hem-
meh, followed by a general increase throughout the
Levant during the Early PPNB, when on average
these plants represent just over 40% of recovered
palaeobotanical remains (Arranz-Otaegui et al.
2018).
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
60
The construction of buildings designed for storage
and food processing in the PPNA (Kuijt, Finlayson
2009) illustrates the development of storage eco-
nomies, and hints at new social pathways for food,
where use of collective storage facilities suggests an
emphasis on the sharing of foods. Sharing is consi-
dered as archetypal hunter-gather behaviour, usually
rigorously enforced especially with high value hunt-
ed foods (Woodburn 1982; Bird-David 2005). The
construction of collective storage may indicate the
transfer of this hunter-gatherer sharing ethos into
the delayed-return economies of early low-level food
producing communities. The shift of emphasis onto
the sharing of plant foods may also indicate that in
the Neolithic the new harvests gained the dietary
and social value previously held by meat.
Intensification in plant husbandry developed further
throughout the PPNB (10 500–8700 cal BP) east of
the Jordan Valley, as evidenced by wheat remains
bearing domesticated phenotypes alongside pre-do-
mestication cultivation of barley (White, Wolff 2012),
and the replacement of PPNA cup hole mortars by
PPNB querns that more efficiently process cereals in
bulk. Storage features were increasingly internalized
within PPNB residential structures, eventually beco-
ming hidden in small basement compartments by
the Late PPNB, showing that the unit of sharing had
changed to the household, rather than the entire
community (Kuijt 2008a). This shift in the nexus of
storage has been discussed in the context of delayed-
return hunter-gatherer economies, allowing for the
control and accumulation of goods, and is not a prac-
tice limited to farming societies (Hayden 2004). The
potential for control of subsistence stores provides
an equivalent potential for the development of so-
cial stratification and the rise of ‘aggrandizers’ with-
in the community (Hayden 2004), but so far no PPN
sites east of the Jordan have provided any evidence
for such social stratification. One recently discovered
burial at Late PPNB Ba’ja may indicate the presence
of individuals with non-hereditary influence within
what has been interpreted as an increasingly hete-
rarchical society (Benz et al. 2019).
In southern Jordan during the PPNA, there was a
unique focus on hunting goats rather than gazelle,
which were heavily exploited elsewhere in the south-
ern Levant. The extent to which this reflects adapta-
tion to local animal availability, or cultural choices,
is unclear. By the Middle PPNB there is a notable
change in animal exploitation, as at Beidha, where
ongoing work by Cheryl Makarewicz suggests that
age and sex-specific goat-harvesting practices are con-
sistent with those of managed herds (also see He-
cker 1982). By the Late PPNB domestic breeds of
goats and sheep, likely imported from the northern
Levant, were heavily exploited, although morpholo-
gically wild forms of goat were still hunted (Maka-
rewicz 2013). Recent analysis of faunal assembla-
ges from Late PPNB sites, including es-Sifiya, el-Hem-
meh, Tel Tif’dan, Ba’ja, Basta, and ‘Ain Jammam, in-
dicates a varied and complex pattern of caprine ma-
nagement strategies were employed, with people
not only using their animals for meat but possibly
also for dairy and potentially for wealth accumula-
tion (Makarewicz 2009; 2013). The Late PPNB ex-
pansion of people dependent on domestic animals
into eastern Jordan illustrates how the new techno-
logy was being developed and adapted to new en-
vironmental contexts (Fujii 2009), although it is
likely that hunting continued to be an important ac-
tivity in the badia long after the development of pa-
storalism, as can be seen in the numerous desert
kite hunting traps (Abu-Azizeh, Tarawneh 2015;
Wilkinson 2003; Helms, Betts 1987).
Subsistence strategies east of the Jordan were tuned
to local environmental conditions and resource avai-
lability, with an increasing management of food re-
sources over the course of the Epipalaeolithic and
Neolithic. However, it is not clear that any change in
subsistence before the end of the Natufian can be in-
terpreted as on an inevitable track to the Neolithic.
Intensification, delayed return, and the possible li-
mited use of storage are not uniquely Neolithic traits
but are all aspects that are present within the range
of hunter-gatherer behaviours. In contrast, in the
PPNA there are clear developments in the produc-
tion and storage of plant foods. The development of
granaries in Jordan is at the cutting edge of Neoli-
thic subsistence economic developments. The extent
to which PPNA communities depended on these new
cultivated and stored resources is less clear. In the
PPNB the focus of subsistence innovation moves to
animal resources when, after initial innovation in
herd management, domesticated breeds are intro-
duced to the area. Again, the moment when people
began to depend on domesticates and food produc-
tion remains uncertain.
Society and settlement
The Neolithic transformation entails major changes
in society, the novel social mechanisms required to
structure life facing the demographic challenges of
the larger and more sedentary settlements assumed
to emerge in parallel with the development of farm-
ing (Sterelny, Watkins 2015). Our understanding of
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
61
social change is closely entangled with evidence for
settlement, sedentism, architecture, and population.
Most early Epipalaeolithic sites are small, relatively
temporary campsites. This confirms exactly what
would be expected of the ‘simple hunter-gatherers’
assumed to represent human societies before the in-
tensification of subsistence associated with complex
hunter-gatherers, or low-level food producers (i.e.
Smith 2001). Field survey in the Jordanian badia,
where flint scatter sites are readily visible on de-
flated desert surfaces, has located numerous small
Epipalaeolithic sites (Betts 1999). Only two sites,
Kharaneh IV and Jilat 6, have a markedly different,
larger footprint. These sites are widely understood
as aggregation locations with extended periods of
intermittent but repeated occupation (Richter et al.
2011). There are brushwood shelters at Kharaneh
IV, containing renewed floors and hearths, that have
been argued to represent a growing relationship to
place (Maher et al. 2012). The duration of their pe-
riodic use is even more marked than their overall
size. Kharaneh IV extends to c. 2ha and was repeat-
edly occupied for over a thousand years during the
Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran, while Jilat 6, ex-
tending to 1.8ha, contains Nebekian, Qalkhan, and
Nizzanian cultural material with occupation lasting
thousands of years (Richter et al. 2013). The full
areal extent of the occupations at any given moment
is unknown, but was probably considerably small-
er than the full surface area of the sites, which ac-
cumulated as long-term palimpsests. These large ag-
gregation sites with their shelters are comparable
to examples ranging from the Palaeolithic to the eth-
nographic present, such as the !Kung San aggrega-
tion sites of the Kalahari (Lee, DeVore 1968), or
the construction of log dwellings by the Yamana of
Tierra del Fuego, despite their previous description
as the most ‘primitive’ of hunter-gatherers (Lothrop
1928; Vidal 1999). As such, neither aggregation sites
nor shelters indicate any significant, or inevitable
steps on a trajectory to the Neolithic in the early Epi-
palaeolithic. They are examples of common patterns
of hunter-gatherer residence and mobility, often sea-
sonal, where flux in the composition of residential
groups is common, and while the same people rarely
occupy one location permanently, long-term occupa-
tion of a site is relatively common (Ingold 1999; Ste-
ward 1955; Turnbull 1968).
The subsequent late Epipaleolithic Natufian is con-
sidered a ‘complex hunter-gatherer’ society that, de-
spite its long duration, is implicitly understood as in-
herently unstable due to the deteriorated climate
conditions associated with the Younger Dryas and
has acquired the status of a temporary transitionary
period in the Neolithic process (Belfer-Cohen, Bar-
Yosef 2000). Natufian sites remain rare east of the
Jordan Valley, and the excavated examples including
Early Natufian Wadi Hammeh 27, multi-phase Shu-
bayqa 1, and Late Natufian Nahal Ein Gev II, are all
small, between c. 1200 to 2000m2 (Edwards 2012;
Richter et al. 2014; Grosman et al. 2016), although
a halo of artefactual material around the main mound
of Shubayqa may indicate the site was larger (Rich-
ter et al. 2014). While other small sites have been
identified around the Qa’ Shubayqa, there is no in-
dication they were occupied simultaneously (Betts
1999). These rare, small sites that between them
span the entire Natufian period provide no evidence
of either an increase in the scale or frequency of
sites in the landscape, or any indication of rising de-
mographic pressure during the Natufian east of the
Jordan. Population appears unlikely to have been dri-
ving social change at this time.
However, while population may not have increased,
the sharp change in the form of architectural con-
struction at Natufian settlements from the earlier Epi-
palaeolithic shelters suggests a transformation in the
nature of settlement was taking place, which may in-
dicate that social changes were occurring. Natufian
sites exhibit a range of architectural forms and con-
struction techniques, but all share substantial stone-
built circular architecture. The presence of one very
large building at Wadi Hammeh 27 (c. 13m diame-
ter) with standing stones and one decorated stone
slab, and at Nahal Ein Gev II, where benches were
installed along with well-constructed hearths and
storage features internal to the structures, together
indicate that these structures served as much more
than the simple shelters of the earlier Epipalaeoli-
thic. Whilst recognizing that earlier populations un-
doubtedly lived in highly socialized landscapes, re-
turning to the same places both many times and po-
tentially for extended periods (Maher, Conkey
2019), the amount of labour required from the Na-
tufian onwards to prepare the building sites, pro-
cure construction materials, build, and maintain the
structures, represents a significant increase over the
investment in the earlier shelters. There has been a
long-standing debate on the nature of sedentism in
the Natufian, and in general there is no reason to
assume it must have been significantly greater than
in the earlier Epipalaeolithic (see Boyd 2006 for a
summary of the debate). However, the emergence of
stone architecture in Natufian settlements is com-
bined with new large, non-portable, stone grinding
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
62
tools, potential storage features, cemeteries, and
even monumental constructions, such as at Wadi
Hammeh 27. Together, these suggest a shift in how
people associated with places, their conception of
themselves in the landscape, and in their ability to
engage collectively in long-term projects. They have
gone beyond the assumed anticipation of the long-
term, repeated use of locations seen in the earlier ag-
gregation sites, apparently deliberately making their
mark on the landscape more permanent through the
use of stone architecture, and at the same time tying
themselves more closely to these locations, not only
in a practical sense but also potentially through the
association of communal kinship to place provided
by cemeteries. These traits all continued to develop
in the PPNA, when architectural complexity becomes
remarkably commonplace.
Most Early PPNA settlements east of the Jordan were
relatively small, with little evidence for either greater
concentrations of population, or overall demogra-
phic pressure. WF16 is similar in size to Natufian set-
tlements, with the main phase of occupation encom-
passing an area of c. 2000m2, while Iraq ed Dubb
located in northern Jordan is c. 500m2 in size (Kuijt
2004). The overall dimensions of the site of Shara-
ra, located in the lower reaches of the Wadi Hasa,
have not yet been precisely determined, but again
the site appears less than 2000m2 in size. Dhra’, lo-
cated close to the Dead Sea, is the largest Early PPNA
site known east of the Jordan Valley; it is not only
under a hectare in size, but also only supported a re-
latively low density of occupation with open space
between buildings (Finlayson et al. 2003).
Structures in PPNA settlements are generally thought
to have served as places of residence, and there is a
considerable literature on the Neolithic development
of house and home (e.g., Wilson 1988; Watkins
1990). PPNA sites to the west of the Jordan Valley,
such as Netiv Hagdud, are typically characterized by
numerous near identical structures, assumed to re-
present nuclear family residences (Finlayson, Maka-
rewicz 2017). However, the assumption that dome-
stic shelter was the primary force driving develop-
ments in early architecture does not appear to hold
true east of the Jordan Valley, where architecture
has a much more diverse and complex history. A
particular feature of this diverse architecture is that
much of it appears to be communal in nature – from
shared storage structures to larger public architec-
ture (Finlayson et al. 2011b). This is not present at
most sites to the west, and at Netiv Hagdud the evi-
dence for the construction of storage features is li-
mited to some small, stone lined pits, with no direct
evidence for how they were used (Bar-Yosef, Gopher
1997). In the small part of Dhra’ that has been ex-
cavated, three building forms have been identified,
one for storage, one for food processing, and one by
default assumed to be residential. If this pattern of
varied building function were maintained across the
site, it would indicate that the residential density,
and presumably associated population, was low. At
WF16 there is no obvious residential form, or stan-
dard ‘house’ type, and almost every structure ap-
pears different from its neighbours. The proportion
of the site taken up by a single large structure (O75)
at WF16 suggests that the space available for resi-
dential purposes would have been only a fraction of
even this small site. These Early PPNA sites continue
the pattern emerging in the Natufian, of changes in
the built environment that relate to social organiza-
tion, and the emergence of food storage economies,
but not of demographic pressure.
Late PPNA sites were also relatively small. Mushash
163 located in the steppe east of the Jordanian pla-
teau edge is under 3000m2 in size (Tvetmarken,
Bartl 2015), and the settlement of ZAD2 encompas-
ses only 2000m2, dominated by a single large struc-
ture with its major axis 7m long (Edwards, House
2007). Kharaysin by the Zarqa river is a large site,
but its Late PPNA component is only known from
two adjacent semi-subterranean structures (Ibanez
et al. 2015). The Late PPNA occupation at WF16 re-
mains approximately the same size as the earlier
phase of settlement.
Although settlements mostly remained small east of
the Jordan Valley during the PPNA, the architecture
at these sites has an increasing focus on non-residen-
tial buildings, a pattern that appears to have roots
in the Natufian, with examples both to the west at
Mallaha and east of the Jordan at Wadi Hammeh 27.
Stone, or well-built pisé, architecture, communal sto-
rage, and the presence of ritual and performative
buildings all suggest these architectural develop-
ments east of the Jordan Valley are not the result of
a simple process of people settling down to tend or
store cultivated crops but contain a strong element
of social signalling to bind the community together.
Furthermore, the presence of unique communal
buildings at most of these small PPNA sites east of
the Jordan provided distinctive features which were
specific to individual settlements, emphasizing the
individual identity of each community and its rela-
tionship with place (Fig. 2). This again has historical
roots in the Natufian relationship between site and
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
63
landscape, where the settlement became an increa-
singly fixed node between land and people.
There is extremely rare evidence for an Early PPNB
(10 950–10 300 cal BP) entity east of the Jordan,
most convincingly at the recently discovered site of
Harrat Juhayra 202, identified mainly by the pres-
ence of Helwan points (Fujii et al. 2020), but also at
the site of Jilat 27 (Garrard, Byrd 1992), and possi-
bly in the final phase of Mushash 163 (Tvetmarken,
Bartl 2015). This Early PPNB presence does not ap-
pear to represent a short-lived transitional phase,
nor the eventual arrival of the Early PPNB from the
northern Levant as part of an externally generated
PPNA-PPNB transition. The radiocarbon dates from
Harrat Juhayra 202 suggests it is early in the Early
PPNB phase and is contemporaneous with the Late
PPNA phase in southern Jordan (Fujii et al. 2020).
The lack of a time lag in the appearance of the Early
PPNB in Jordan, and the apparent continuity at
Mushash from the Late PPNA to the Early PPNB, both
argue against the introduction of the Early PPNB
after it fully developed in the north. Equally, recent
radiocarbon dates place Shkarat Msaied early in the
Middle PPNB sequence and overlap with the conven-
tional chronology of the Early PPNB (Kinzel 2013).
Continuity in developments in chipped stone tech-
nology in the south of Jordan and elements of archi-
tectural continuity direct from the Late PPNA to the
Middle PPNB further confirm there is a local deve-
lopment that is distinctly different to the Early PPNB
stage (Finlayson, Makarewicz 2017; Smith et al.
2016; 2019). Two distinct historical sequences ap-
pear to be emerging, representing the simultaneous
presence of communities with distinct cultural affilia-
tions. This is significant for our growing understand-
ing of Neolithic society as being far from homoge-
nous, with markedly different communities living in
close geographic proximity.
Our knowledge of the Middle PPNB east of the Jor-
dan Valley is limited to a few, albeit extensively ex-
cavated, sites. In the south, both Shkarat Msaied and
Beidha are small settlements, characterized by dense-
ly clustered substantial architecture. Byrd estimated
that Beidha extended between 1500 to 3600m2 in
size, depending on the degree of erosion of its west-
ern edge (Byrd 2005b). Recent work has suggested
that erosion was not as extensive as previously pro-
posed, however, and the lower size estimate may be
more accurate (Makarewicz, Finlayson 2018). Shka-
rat Msaied is c. 1000m2 in area (Kinzel et al. 2011).
The architecture at Shkarat Msaied and the earliest
phase (Phase A) at Beidha is circular and single
roomed. In the subsequent (and still Middle PPNB)
phase at Beidha, while the buildings remain single
roomed, they become more rectangular, although
still with rounded corners. This is similar to the ear-
liest Middle PPNB phase at ‘Ain Ghazal in the north
of Jordan. By the end of the Middle PPNB at both
Beidha and ‘Ain Ghazal, these structures had been
replaced by multi-roomed rectilinear buildings. A si-
milar process appears to have taken place at Ghwayr
1, although the multi-roomed (and probably two-sto-
rey) buildings there are likely to be Late PPNB in
date (Simmons, Najjar 2006). Rollefson has argued
that ‘Ain Ghazal is the only source of evidence for
population growth in the Middle PPNB, but that even
here the site remained smaller than 4–5ha (Rollef-
son 2001). Preliminary reports regarding Kharaysin
suggest this site may have been very
large during the Middle PPNB, but so
far excavations have not confirmed
whether occupation covers the whole
site area at any one time (Ibanez et
al. 2015).
There is no sign of a substantial in-
crease in population, nor of demo-
graphic pressure, with sites remain-
ing relatively rare, and most small,
until the end of the Middle PPNB.
What the settlement evidence does
indicate is continuing change taking
place in community organization.
The highly diverse, specific function
buildings of the PPNA are replaced
in the Middle PPNB with more stan-
dard architectural forms replicated
Fig. 2. Large communal structure being excavated at WF16. Note
the curved benches around the edge of the structure, internal fea-
tures, including inset mortars near the apex of the building.
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
64
within the settlement, including both circular and
rectangular forms. Such standardization has been
widely assumed to represent common residential
forms (although see Banning 2011 for a discussion
of the difficulties in defining residential structures),
and suggests that during this period residential ‘hou-
ses’ may be emerging east of the Jordan Valley. How-
ever, strong elements of community level organiza-
tion were maintained, suggested by the continued
use of unusually large buildings as seen at, for exam-
ple, communal Building 37 at Middle PPNB Beidha,
which served as an arena for daily practice, central
practice, and a focal point within the village (Maka-
rewicz, Finlayson 2018).
A dramatic shift in settlement size and density took
place around 9200 cal BP in the Late PPNB, evi-
denced by the appearance of numerous large set-
tlements exceeding 10ha in size, including ‘Ain Gha-
zal, Wadi-Shu’eib, es-Sifiya, Khirbet Hamman, Basta,
and ‘Ain Jammam (Rollefson 2004; Simmons et al.
1989; Mahasneh 1997; Rollefson, Kafafi 1985; Ge-
bel et al. 2006; Waheeb, Fino 1997). Somewhat
smaller Late PPNB settlements including el-Hemmeh,
Hamarash, al-Khayran, Ba’ja, (Makarewicz et al.
2006; Sampson 2012; Kroot et al. 2012; Gebel, Bie-
nert 1997) and settlements in the Jafr basin such as
Wadi Abu Tulayha further filled out the landscape
(Fujii 2009). Within these settlements, larger struc-
tures become more prevalent, often with internal
compartmentalization and private storage in base-
ment cells, with at least one residential floor above
the storage. This may reflect the continuing increase
in importance of households within the community,
where concealed household accumulation becomes
possible as storage ceases to be public. The larger,
multi-compartment buildings may indicate multi-fa-
mily households. The ubiquitous use of rectilinear
architecture and the frequent use of second storeys
reflect a greater density of architectural packing with-
in a settlement (Banning, Byrd 1987). Altogether,
the increase in the number of sites, their size, and
the density of architecture within them suggest that
population levels finally and dramatically rose dur-
ing the Late PPNB. While it has been argued that this
population rise was the result of immigration from
the west (Rollefson 2004; Gebel 2004), the massive
stone architecture of most of these sites appears stri-
kingly similar to the construction methods of indige-
nous Middle PPNB sites.
The multi-compartmented buildings that characterize
Late PPNB settlements east of the Jordan Valley ab-
sorbed and internalized many of the functions pre-
viously conducted publicly in separate, but shared
facilities. Late PPNB domestic architecture is domi-
nated by private space, private storage, and conceal-
ment (Byrd 1994). Such privacy and concealment
would have reduced the opportunities for enforced
sharing that arise from visible storage, and would
have enabled each household to become more inde-
pendent within the community, potentially indicating
the rise of the household as an organizational unit
within the community.
Ideological change
Ideological change is part of the Childean package,
and the increasing materialization of ideology and
ritual reported in Neolithic material culture has been
described as a symbolic revolution (Cauvin 2000).
This phenomenon has been interpreted variously
as representing the beginning of religion, a greater
materialization of relationships between people and
things, and a cognitive revolution (Cauvin 2000;
Hodder 2005; Watkins 2005). The evidence from
east of the Jordan Valley is distinctive, lacking the
naturalistic symbolism well known from the north-
ern Levant, and containing a diverse series of mor-
tuary practices, which raises two questions regard-
ing the role of symbolism in the Neolithic transfor-
mation. Firstly, do synthetic accounts conflate mul-
tiple strands of symbolic behaviour evidenced from
different regions and periods into a constructed ‘Neo-
lithic’ symbolism made more dramatic by selecting
the most spectacular examples (plastered skulls in
the southern Levant, naturalistic symbolism in the
northern Levant, painted walls at Çatalhöyük)? And
secondly, does this readily apparent, symbolically
charged material culture, the immediate focus of
most research, reflect a genuinely widespread and
central Neolithic phenomenon?
Mortuary practice, often the most easily observed
form of ritual behaviour, certainly appears heteroge-
nous east of the Jordan throughout the early Neoli-
thic. For example, in the PPNA at WF16 most burials
were placed in a flexed sleeping position, but there
was some special treatment of skulls, sometimes
buried separately, occasionally painted. Secondary
burials were also present, notably not following a
standard practice (Mithen et al. 2015). At WF16 bu-
rial appears closely linked to the buildings, with
both subfloor burial and burials cut through walls,
with the latter practice echoed at Dhra’. This pat-
tern of diversity between and within sites contin-
ues with variation in burial practice during the Mid-
dle PPNB. At ‘Ain Ghazal, there are three main bur-
ial types, decapitated subfloor or courtyard burials,
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
65
‘trash burials’ of entire skeletons, and infant burials
(Rollefson 2001), while at Wadi Shu’eib burials were
commonly composed of multiple inhumations (Sim-
mons et al. 1989). In the earliest phase at Beidha,
most burials were placed intact on stone slabs in the
accumulating rubbish inside an abandoned build-
ing (Building 41) apparently dedicated to this pur-
pose (Byrd 2005b), while the most striking feature
at Shkarat Msaied is a mortuary structure (Building
F) containing numerous multiple burials and a stone
cist containing many unplastered skulls (Kinzel
2013). Adults and infants are all present in the bur-
ial record, and there is no evidence of any distinc-
tive association with grave goods. The communal
burials of Shkarat Msaied may represent the role
mortuary practice held in holding at least some com-
munities together. The variation in important sym-
bolic acts between sites suggests considerable vari-
ation in ideological belief among communities, and
such distinctive belief patterns would have been an
important mechanism to enhance and maintain the
independent identity of the individual community.
Distinct community ideologies emphasize the impor-
tance of local practices and histories in underwriting
the many different Neolithic development processes
that occur.
One of the most iconic images of the early Neolithic
in Southwest Asia is the plastered skull. The role of
these plastered skulls in mortuary practice and the
nature of the complete mortuary cycle to which they
belong have been subject to extensive analysis and
variously interpreted as evidence of skull cults and
as ritual designed for social integration (Kuijt 2000;
2008b), generally assumed to be central to PPNB life.
However, plastered skulls are largely limited to the
southern Levant and were in use only during the
Middle PPNB, a phase of about 600 years duration,
but only a small part of the long-term regional Neo-
lithic process. Furthermore, even within this geogra-
phically and chronologically circumscribed practice,
Kuijt has noted that there are locally distinct patterns
to skull processing techniques (Kuijt 2008b). East
of the Jordan Valley, evidence for plastered skulls
has only been found at ‘Ain Ghazal and Tell Abu
Suwwan in the north of Jordan, indicating not only
local variation, but also that within Neolithic diver-
sity there are multiple levels of local and regional
connections (Makarewicz, Finlayson 2018).
Apart from the mortuary data, the Neolithic east of
the Jordan Valley has appeared relatively impover-
ished in terms of obviously symbolically charged ar-
tefacts, with the exception of the Middle PPNB plas-
ter figurines from ‘Ain Ghazal. The naturalistic sym-
bolism found widely through the Middle Euphrates
region in the Late PPNA/EPPNB, most dramatically
at Göbekli Tepe, and continuing through the PPNB
to the extensive use of art in the later Neolithic site
of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia has been brought together
as evidence of a symbolic revolution (Cauvin 2000;
Hodder 2005; Schmidt 2005). Both the Middle PPNB
mortuary practices of the southern Levant west of
the Jordan river and the plaster figurines of ‘Ain
Ghazal have been absorbed into this dominant nar-
rative of a Neolithic symbolic revolution (e.g., Cau-
vin 2000). The situation east of the Jordan is in rea-
lity rather different. Here, from Natufian Nahal Ein
Gev II, Early PPNA WF16, and Late PPNA ZAD II the
decoration of portable objects is dominated by pat-
terns of lines and perforations on small pebbles, or
bone plaques (Grosman et al. 2016; Edwards,
House 2007). This minimalistic decoration is a long
way from the naturalism of material culture to the
north, although it may still have held significant
symbolic value. In the Middle and Late PPNB, with
the exception of ‘Ain Ghazal most sites east of the
Jordan only contain limited numbers of small, sim-
ple, animal figurines of uncertain ritual significance
(Rollefson 2001). The materiality of symbolism is
not strongly represented in the Neolithic transfor-
mation east of the Jordan Valley.
Despite the rich architectural record of shared and
communal buildings, there are very few structures
that appear overtly symbolically charged through
decoration. Where architecture is decorated east of
the Jordan, it is done so in a relatively simple man-
ner; for example, the use of parallel wave lines
moulded around the bench of structure O75 at WF16
(Finlayson et al. 2011b), or the red plastered floors
found in some PPNB contexts, such as Ghwayr 1 and
Kharaysin (Simmons, Najjar 2006; Ibáñez et al.
2015). There are exceptions, such as the probably
Middle PPNB cluster of small buildings outside the
main settlement at Beidha (Finlayson, Makarewicz
2018). The presence of standing stones in the centre
of one structure, upright stone basins in the walls,
stone-paved floors, and a large stone basin beside
the building cluster have all been used to argue that
this is a ritual complex (Rollefson 2005). In the Late
PPNB at ‘Ain Ghazal, there are two forms of build-
ings that have been identified as ritually important.
Inside the settlement there are unusual circular
buildings with subfloor channels, and outside the
settlement large rectilinear buildings with possible
altars surrounded by ‘temenos’ walls (Rollefson
2005). Both the so-called shrine at Beidha and the
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
66
larger structures described as temples at ‘Ain Gha-
zal, are highly partitioned, limiting access to the acti-
vities conducted to a small number of people, possi-
bly signalling a change from the preceding shared
communal architecture.
Special purpose ritual structures have been argued
as essential to maintain community-wide values and
identities to balance the emergence of powerful, in-
dependent households in the Neolithic (Banning,
Byrd 1987; Byrd 2000). The ‘Ain Ghazal and Beidha
structures are thought to have met this need, but
there are no similar structures known from any
other Late PPNB settlements located east of the Jor-
dan. Extrapolating the social significance of these
few large structures to the wider Late PPNB is the-
refore difficult. Despite the limited scale of excava-
tion at most sites, the scarcity of such buildings sug-
gests such formal ritual structures were not typical
of Neolithic society east of the Jordan Valley and
therefore neither a critical nor essential part of the
Neolithic transformation.
Discussion
Changes in subsistence east of the Jordan appear to
have followed locally divergent pathways, with the
relative importance of cereals, legumes, tubers, and
other plant foods appearing to vary widely on a site-
by-site basis until at least the end of the PPNA. The
exploitation of animals suggests that there was much
local innovation in animal management until the
Late PPNB, when domesticates were likely imported
into the region and added to the subsistence reper-
toire, although hunting continued to be important,
and management of the new domesticates continued
to follow local practices. This combination of local
developments and practices, combined with the in-
teraction with other regions indicated by the arrival
of the new domesticates, is at the heart of the role
played by the multiple pathways of the Neolithic.
The built environment appears to have played a very
visible role in structuring society and community,
and it became important to inscribe the settlement
in the landscape. Elsewhere in the early Neolithic, as
at Göbekli Tepe and Jericho, this inscription is de-
veloped into monumental architecture (a pattern
seen in low-level food producing societies around
the world – from the megaliths of Atlantic Europe to
mound building in North America, Bender 1985).
PPN settlements east of the Jordan mostly consist of
tightly clustered buildings, with apparently sharply
defined limits. This is seen, for example, at Beidha
where the site boundary is further emphasized by
a wall, separating it from the surrounding landscape,
and emphasizing the transition to a built landscape,
something that appears to commence in the Natu-
fian. Several of the sharply defined PPNA sites in
the South of Jordan, WF16, Dhra’, Sharara and el-
Hemmeh are placed beside major landscape features,
in dramatic landscape positions (Fig. 3). Societies
with delayed-return subsistence economies may
have found it increasingly important to mark terri-
torial ownership of resources, and east of the Jor-
dan the role of visible monuments in the landscape
may have been fulfilled by the settlements them-
selves, made more marked by increasingly sharply
defined clusters of solid and elaborate architecture.
The built environment of settlements also provides
a novel means to manifest social relationships, ma-
nipulate kinship history, and fix a socially construct-
ed past in the landscape (Gosden, Lock 1998). In
this region, architecture may be more important in
changing ideology and society than the elaborate
naturalistic symbolism of the northern Levant. This
built environment provides the framework for the
daily practices that maintain the structures of soci-
ety and which can be used as an important means
to negotiate change (Bourdieu 1977; Bell 1997;
Weismantel 2014). The symbolic presence of the
community in the landscape is further emphasized by
the presence of cemeteries within these settlements.
Communal architecture, in its many forms, ties com-
munities together by providing the places and spa-
ces that form the architectural scaffolding that fra-
mes every shared activity undertaken by members
of the community. This focus grew out of the his-
torical context created in the Natufian. From the Na-
tufian onwards investment in settlement, and the
creation of community at a focal point in the land-
scape, is increasingly evident. This new development
does not arise out of large Epipalaeolithic hunter-
gatherer aggregation sites that might have been
part of a long-term process of demographic pressure
(Kuijt 2000; Goring-Morris, Belfer-Cohen 2008), but
emerged out of small settlements, and consequently
appears unlikely to be driven by demographic pres-
sure or resource stress. The generally small Early
Neolithic settlements east of the Jordan Valley ap-
pear to have been closely integrated communities,
indicating that such communal architecture did not
arise as a response to large communities requiring
new ways to manage their social relationships, but
rather architecture was used to help foster commu-
nity solidarity, at a time when populations were still
small. The strong centrifugal force continued to bring
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
67
ancestral and mythic history (Randall, Sassaman
2010). Many of the actions performed in the commu-
nal structures east of the Jordan will have been mun-
dane daily practices, but the venues will have trans-
formed these into public, ceremonial acts, giving
them greater weight to integrate the community (Ma-
karewicz, Finlayson 2018; Gosden, Lock 1998; Con-
nerton 1989). The elaboration of architecture and
settlement that emerges from the Natufian appears
to reflect a new world order.
Fig. 3. Dramatic landscape positions of WF16 (3a),
Dhra’ (3b), and el-Hemmeh (3c). All three sites are
located in the right-centre of the images. WF16 is
visible as a light patch on the top of the last gravel
knoll before the volcanic rock formations behind;
Dhra’ visible by the green sunscreen, before the
vertical rock face of the edge of the rift valley; el-
Hemmeh as excavation trenches open below, to the
right of the striking black volcanic cone.
people together at an even greater scale in the Late
PPNB, and the attraction of focal places in the land-
scape outweighed the resource and social stresses
that would have been created by this dense and inti-
mately clustered population. Increasingly static com-
munities would have had to develop their subsis-
tence strategies to avoid the resource stresses that
their chosen communal way of life had created.
The contribution the Natufian most obviously makes
to the Neolithic narrative is in what the PPNA inhe-
rits: the step away from the richly social landscape
inhabited by most hunter-gatherers to a new way of
living in that landscape (Boyd 2006). More perma-
nent architecture not only enhanced fixed points in
the landscape but also created a new built environ-
ment that gradually eroded the flexibility of previ-
ous architectural forms and more tightly constrained
social interaction and daily practice, encouraging the
development of social structures that led to commu-
nity establishment. While not setting any inevitable
development trend, the Natufian creates the histori-
cal context that sets the stage for the Neolithic.
Permanent architecture does not necessarily equate
to full-time sedentism (Boyd 2006; Ingold 1999), but
it clearly marks specific places. Landscapes are not
simply topologies of resources they contain networks
of meaning (Thomas 1993), and this engagement
with places across landscapes is part of hunter- ga-
therer social history, often marked by natural fea-
tures (Bradley 2000), including the dramatic land-
scape features that emphasize the positions of some
PPNA sites. This engagement can be further recorded
and inscribed by the placement of monuments
(Bradley 1998), and this appears to have been one
of the factors at work in Neolithic settlement. The
different temporalities of everyday living and cosmo-
logical experience are informed by daily practice,
where biographies become enmeshed in the land-
scape (Gosden, Marshall 1999). Settlement construc-
tion appears to have served to inscribe history in the
landscape in the Natufian and early Neolithic east of
the Jordan. The settlements not only served to mark
territory and ownership but they also radically
changed the nature of engagement with place. The
built and fixed settlements become historically situ-
ated, not only enculturing the landscape but also
providing a venue where performance could be used
to produce history and change the relationship be-
tween the community and the landscape (Kuchler
1993). The construction of venues provides new
boundaries and structures for ceremonial acts, creat-
ing a new spatial narrative that can produce a new
3a
3b
3c
Bill Finlayson, Cheryl A. Makarewicz
68
Conclusion
East of the Jordan, settlement, subsistence resour-
ces, and ideology are intertwined within a long his-
toric cultural context. The numerous new excava-
tions in Jordan over the last decade have demon-
strated a long and continuous sequence of develop-
ment that runs from the late Pleistocene Epipalaeo-
lithic through the early Holocene Pre-Pottery Neoli-
thic. The intensification of subsistence economy, the
increasing management of resources, and the adop-
tion of components of delayed-return economics
went hand-in-hand with the development of archi-
tecturally more permanent settlements marking
place in, and ownership of, the landscape, as well as
providing facilities for storage and processing to
support subsistence developments. Within the same
context, the built environment was used to stress
the importance of community, local community iden-
tities, and community relations among landscape,
resources, and sharing. The increasingly large body
of architectural, social, and subsistence evidence sug-
gests Neolithic communities east of the Jordan Val-
ley emerged out of indigenous traditions rooted deep
in the early Epipalaeolithic (Sterelny, Watkins 2015).
That “many ’revolutionary’ features of the Natu-
fian and subsequent Neolithic” are now recognized
as earlier Epipalaeolithic developments (Maher et al.
2012.79) does not, however, mean that we should
extend the Neolithic backwards to form a long or
slow Neolithic, as we tick off boxes on a list of
Childe’s Neolithic traits. The construction of shelters,
patterns of population aggregation, and subsistence
intensification including modification of the environ-
ment to increase the resource base are all known
from recent and modern hunter-gatherer societies.
While such developments may be essential for the
subsequent emergence of a southwest Asian Neoli-
thic way of life, they are neither inherently nor in-
evitably on track to the Neolithic. While recognizing
that some ‘in-between’ societies have been labelled
as ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ (Smith 2001), such
societies have emerged at various points in time
around the world, and generally they do not pre-
sage the development of sedentary farming but re-
present a range of adaptations within hunter-gathe-
rer repertoires, which cannot be interpreted as tran-
sitional (Rowley-Conwy 2004; Finlayson 2009). The
common identification of the Natufian as a complex
hunter-gatherer society may actually be misleading
and draw attention away from its unique characte-
ristics.
In terms of long-term evolutionary development, it
remains harder to identify the developments that
were critical to the Neolithic, those that made it truly
revolutionary, and those that created the runaway
process that is widely recognized. Although signifi-
cant changes are evident from the Natufian onwards,
much behaviour can still be described in terms of
hunter-gatherer societies. Leaving aside subsistence,
and the precise balance between domesticated and
wild foods, the large and complex houses of the Late
PPNB, and its associated social structures, might
prove a better analogue to the multi-family co-resi-
dent households of the hunter-gatherers of the north-
west coast than their more common comparison
with the Natufian (Hayden 2004). The Late PPNB
did not represent a stable farming society, and the
large Late PPNB sites of the Jordanian plateau, once
perceived as proto-urban (Nissen 2004), were not su-
stainable, and largely decline at the end of the PPN.
Late Pleistocene and early Holocene populations
east of the Jordan appear to have adopted diverse
trajectories within their hunter-gatherer palette, and
it is only relatively late in the Neolithic sequence that
these coalesce to create what we might begin to see
as a farming-based society. A great variety of lifeways
are accepted as integral components of contempo-
rary hunter-gatherer societies, and we should be
cautious in identifying such components in the past
as inevitable evolutionary steps to the Neolithic. The
Neolithic of Southwest Asia is a period of radical
change, not forced along any particular route by a
prime mover but where there were multiple locally
contingent paths that innovated, interacted, and be-
gan to diverge from the possibilities of hunter-gathe-
rer ways of life.
The authors wish to thank Trevor Watkins, whose kind
invitation to a workshop on the “Long Revolution:
Becoming Neolithic in Southwest Asia” inspired this
paper, to the participants at that workshop for ex-
cellent discussions, and to Tobias Richter, who made
insightful comments.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Beyond the Jordan> multiformities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
69
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