The Aftermath of the Levantine Neolithic Revolution in the Light of Ecological and Ethnographic Evidence

Abstract

At the end of the 7th millennium the southern Levant witnessed the sudden abandonment of most of its previously thriving PPNB villages. While this phenomenon has long been attributed to external factors such as climatic change and invasions, it is suggested here that the early Neolithic economic system of village-based mixed farming was at least a contributing factor in this development. The brittle environments of most of the sites were not able to withstand the ecological pressure which human early agricultural and pastoral activities entailed : Continuous cultivation of the same crops led to loss of soil fertility and accelerated erosion, sedentary animal husbandry resulted in a degeneration of natural pasture. Ethnographic evidence is presented that early domesticated animals, especially goats, may have interfered with cultivation and required some degree of mobility for their well-being. This gradual loss of agricultural productivity could be alleviated to a certain extent by an expansion of the site catchment area, but after a critical radius and population size had been exceeded, the dilemma could only be resolved by a dispersal of the inhabitants into smaller and economically specialized groups.

Provisioning the Early Bronze Age City of Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel: Isotopic Analyses of Domestic Livestock Management Patterns

“…This spatial separation of pastoralists and their animals from the settlement has been suggested by some (e.g. Köhler-Rollefson 1988;Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson 1993) to date back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (8500-5500 BCE). Others (e.g.…”

Transformations in an early agricultural society: Feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic

“…Large towns were depopulated in favor of small villages, for reasons that remain controversial (Banning, 2004;Bar-Yosef, 2001;Köhler-Rollefson, 1988;Kuijt, 2004;Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson, 1989;Simmons, 2000). Economic reliance on plant and animal domesticates increased still further, and some people may even have become nomadic pastoralists (Köhler- Rollefson, 1988;Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson, 1993). Changes in technological and architectural practices included a decline in lithic standardization and the construction of houses with thinner walls and poorer floors than in those of the PPNB Rollefson, 2001).…”

The Beginnings of Agriculture: The Ancient Near East and North Africa

“…On a theoretical level, the combined effect of plant and animal husbandry should have been a more stable food supply for growing populations (Raish 1992;Redding 1993). Yet the land could not continue to support expanding populations without some change in management (Kohler-Rollefson 1988). In fact, the first half of the sixth millennium B. C. saw a fairly widespread abandonment of settlements and the reestablishment of smaller commU.nities on other sites, and fauna!…”