The domestication of cattle, sheep and goats had already taken place in the Near East by the eighth millennium bc. Although there would have been considerable economic and nutritional gains from using these animals for their milk and other products from living animals-that is, traction and wool-the first clear evidence for these appears much later, from the late fifth and fourth millennia bc. Hence, the timing and region in which milking was first practised remain unknown. Organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery have provided direct evidence for the use of milk in the fourth millennium in Britain, and in the sixth millennium in eastern Europe, based on the delta(13)C values of the major fatty acids of milk fat. Here we apply this approach to more than 2,200 pottery vessels from sites in the Near East and southeastern Europe dating from the fifth to the seventh millennia bc. We show that milk was in use by the seventh millennium; this is the earliest direct evidence to date. Milking was particularly important in northwestern Anatolia, pointing to regional differences linked with conditions more favourable to cattle compared to other regions, where sheep and goats were relatively common and milk use less important. The latter is supported by correlations between the fat type and animal bone evidence.
This article is concerned with the social processes involved in the formation of large agglomerated villages in the Neolithic of the Near East and Anatolia, with particular reference to Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The article aims to show that practice theories (dealing with how social rules are learned in daily practice within the house) can be used to interpret the patterning of recurrent construction and use activities within domestic space at Çatalhöyük. The regulation of social practices in the house created village-wide social rules, but it is argued that the habituated behavior was also commemorative and involved in the construction of social memory. Sitewide and house-based specific memories are documented at Çatalhöyük. The evidence for habituated practice and social memory at other sites is briefly discussed, and is argued to be relevant for the formation of settled agricultural societies.
In exploring human‐thing entanglement I wish to make five points. (1) Humans depend on things. In much of the new work in the social and human sciences in which humans and things co‐constitute each other, there is, oddly, little account of the things themselves. (2) Things depend on other things. All things depend on other things along chains of interdependence. (3) Things depend on humans. Things are not inert. They are always falling apart, transforming, growing, changing, dying, running out. (4) The defining aspect of human entanglement with made things is that humans get caught in a double‐bind, depending on things that depend on humans. (5) Traits evolve and persist. When evolutionary archaeologists identify lineages of cultural affinity, they claim to be studying cultural transmission. Transmission may be involved in such lineages, but it is the overall entanglement of humans and things that allows success or failure of traits. Résumé Par l’exploration de l’intrication entre humains et choses, l’auteur souhaite soulever cinq points. (1) Les humains dépendent des choses. Pourtant, dans une grande partie des nouveaux travaux en sciences sociales et humaines dans lesquels les humains et les choses sont co‐constitutifs, les choses sont, curieusement, peu considérées. (2) Les choses dépendent d’autres choses. Toutes les choses dépendent d’autres choses, au fil de chaînes d’interdépendance. (3) Les choses dépendent des humains. Elles ne sont pas inertes. Elles passent leur temps à tomber en morceaux, à se transformer, à pousser, à changer, à mourir, à s’épuiser. (4) L’aspect définissant l’intrication des humains avec les objets fabriqués est que les humains sont pris dans un double bind, dépendant des choses qui dépendent d’eux. (5) Certains traits apparaissent, évoluent et persistent. Quand les archéologues évolutionnistes identifient des lignées d’affinité culturelle, ils affirment étudier la transmission culturelle. Bien que la transmission puisse être à l’œuvre dans ces lignées, c’est l’intrication globale des hommes et des choses qui permet aux traits de prospérer ou de disparaître.
Çatalhöyük, on the Konya Plain in south central Anatolia, in the 1960s became the most celebrated Neolithic site of western Asia: huge (21 hectares), with early dates, tightpacked rooms with roof access, exuberant mural paintings, cattle heads fixed to walls, dead buried beneath floors in collective graves.This site, as difficult to excavcate as it is strange, is the object of a pioneering application of the ‘post-processual’ approach, hitherto largely a matter of re-working and criticism outside the trench. The Çatalhöyük project director explains his approach, in which the conclusions as well as the work in early progress will be ‘always momentary, fluid and flexible’.
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