Social Complexity in the Southern Levantine PPNB as Reflected through Lithic Studies: The bidirectional blade industries

Barzilai, Omry

doi:10.30861/9781407307305

Cited by 27 publications

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“…Preliminary results indicate that lithic production at PPNB Kharaysin was oriented towards the systematic production of large, standardised blades using bidirectional blade technology (Borrell et al 2019), as is widely attested in the Levant (e.g. Quintero & Wilke 1995;Nishiaki 2000;Abbès 2003;Barzilai 2010;Borrell 2017). The PPNB community at Kharaysin had relatively easy access to large quantities of high quality flint, comprising both fine-grained purple flint and a finer, highly lustrous flint of heterogeneous colour (pink, orange, white or light brown).…”

Section: The Site and The Artefactsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Flint ‘figurines’ from the Early Neolithic site of Kharaysin, Jordan

et al. 2020

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Section: The Site and The Artefactsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Flint ‘figurines’ from the Early Neolithic site of Kharaysin, Jordan

et al. 2020

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“…The "naviform" mode of flaking stone, designed for the production of long and thin blades, was a pan-Levantine phenomenon (Bar-Yosef and Belfer- Cohen, 1989). Naviform products (arrowheads and sickle blades) expertly produced on non-local raw material, were found together with items sharing the same regional conceptual knowledge yet crudely knapped on local raw material (Barzilai and Goring-Morris, 2007;Khalaily et al, 2007Khalaily et al, , 2013Barzilai, 2010;Mitki, 2015). A common explanation of this phenomenon is that the well-made items were introduced into the local communities from outside the region.…”

Section: Craft Specializationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prehistoric Perspectives on “Others” and “Strangers”

Belfer‐Cohen

Hovers

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Social "connectivity" through time is currently considered as one of the major drivers of cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Within this framework, the interactions within and between groups are impacted by individuals' distinction of social relationships. In this paper, we focus on changes in a major aspect of social perceptions, "other" and "stranger." As inferred from the archaeological record, this perception among human groups gained importance during the course of the Pleistocene. These changes would have occurred due to the plasticity of cognitive mechanisms, in response to the demands on behavior along the trajectory of human social evolution. The concepts of "other" and "stranger" have received little attention in the archaeological discourse, yet they are fundamental in the perception of social standing. The property of being an "other" is defined by one's perception and is inherent to one's view of the world around oneself; when shared by a group it becomes a social cognitive construct. Allocating an individual the status of a "stranger" is a socially-defined state that is potentially transient. We hypothesize that, while possibly entrenched in deep evolutionary origins, the latter is a relatively late addition to socio-cognitive categorization, associated with increased sedentism, larger groups and reduced territorial extent as part of the process of Neolithization. We posit that "others" and "strangers" can be approached from contextual archaeological data, with inferences as regards the evolution of cognitive social categories. Our analysis focused on raw material studies, observations on style, and evidence for craft specialization. We find that contrary to the null hypothesis the archaeological record implies earlier emergence of complex sociocognitive categorization. The cognitive, cultural and social processes involved in the maintenance and distinction between "others" and "strangers" can be defined as "self-domestication" that is still an ongoing process.

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“…The bidirectional blade technology is the most significant lithic tradition of the Pre Pottery Neolithic (PPN) B during the ninth and the eighth millennia BC (e.g. Abbès, ; Barzilai, ; Borrell, ; Calley, ; Nishiaki, ; Quintero & Wilke, ; Wilke & Quintero, ). The PPN bidirectional blade technology appeared around 8900–8800 BC (Late PPNA) in the middle Euphrates valley, marking a crucial change in local lithic traditions and projectile technology (Stordeur & Abbès, ).…”

Section: Definition Of the Bidirectional Blade Technology On Naviformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bidirectional blade technology on naviform cores from northern Arabia: New evidence of Arabian‐Levantine interactions in the Neolithic

Crassard

Hilbert

2019

Arab Archaeol Epigr

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Discovered in March 2015, the sites of DAJ‐112 and DAJ‐125 in the Al‐Jawf province of northern Saudi Arabia consist of a large collection of surface lithic artefacts that can be compared to well‐known Pre‐Pottery Neolithic (PPN) B technology from the Levant: the two sites include bidirectional blade technology with naviform core preparation and opposed platforms surface exploitation, as well as burin production at a wide scale. Other surface scatters have been identified during the 2013 and 2015 surveys, showing these two sites are not isolated in Al‐Jawf, as rather important occurrences of Early Holocene technology have been identified across the region. Although the sites from Al‐Jawf are surface occurrences and not radiometrically dated, the finds have proven to be extremely significant, representing a southward incursion of classic naviform cores‐based technology, thus expanding the geographical distribution of this technology beyond the Levant. By addressing the lithic evidence from northern Arabia, the expansion and/or influence of PPN populations and cultural elements will be discussed.

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Social Complexity in the Southern Levantine PPNB as Reflected through Lithic Studies: The bidirectional blade industries

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

Flint ‘figurines’ from the Early Neolithic site of Kharaysin, Jordan

Flint ‘figurines’ from the Early Neolithic site of Kharaysin, Jordan

Prehistoric Perspectives on “Others” and “Strangers”

Bidirectional blade technology on naviform cores from northern Arabia: New evidence of Arabian‐Levantine interactions in the Neolithic

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