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83 - The Neolithic of Southern Jordan

from Part VI: - Humans in the Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Recent research shows that southern Jordan, rather than marginal to Neolithic developments taking place 12-9 ka elsewhere in the Near East, was a key area of social, economic, and technological innovation in the long transition from hunter-gatherer lifeways to agro-pastoral ones. There is a significant PPNA presence in southern Jordan, falling into two distinct phases, an Early PPNA (identified at WF16 and Dhra’), and a Late PPNA (at WF16, el-Hemmeh, and ZAD2). The wide variety of architectural forms in these sites includes storage buildings, workshops, large communal buildings and mortuary structures. There is no evidence for an Early PPNB, and the evidence suggests that the Middle PPNB in southern Jordan develops directly from the local Late PPNA. The MPPNB is best known from the distinctive stone built circular architecture at Beidha and Shkarat Msaied. In contrast to MPPNB mortuary practices elsewhere in the southern Levant, there is no tradition of producing plastered skulls in southern Jordan. A series of large, agglutinative sites, e.g., Basta, emerged in the LPPNB, with a distinct local pattern d architecture. The ceramic Neolithic is, as yet, poorly known.
Type
Chapter
Information
Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
, pp. 743 - 752
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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