Investigation of Adaptation to the Arid Zone in the Levantine Early Neolithic

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Through support from The National Science Foundation, Dr. Donald Henry and an international group of collaborating scientists will continue the investigation of the Early Neolithic site of Ayn Abu Nukhayla, located in southern Jordan. The site falls at the time when humans were first beginning to engage in cereal cultivation and animal (sheep/goat) herding. The research builds on earlier NSF supported work and focuses on understanding how the occupants of this 8,500 year site were able to exploit a setting that today is one of the driest on earth. The research continues to center on the excavation of this large, architecturally rich site in conjunction with geologic and paleoenvironmental investigations of the nearby area. The study will have three specific components: (1) a high resolution climatic-environmental reconstruction; (2) an evaluation of alternative subsistence-settlement models using cementum increment analysis and stable isotope signatures; and (3) a detailed inter-site spatial analysis that is intended to trace the social and economic dimensions of the settlement. The remarkable growth and expansion of the Near Eastern Early Neolithic followed by disruption is often attributed to climatic-environmental changes, but researchers disagree on the timing and direction of such changes. The proposed research will address this issue through the recovery of environmental proxy data in the form of plant ( pollen, phytolith, diatom) and geologic (sedimentological, geochemical, and isotopic) evidence from deposits of a large dry lake near the site. Additionally, the geologic column should identify rather precisely the first appearance of cultivated cereals and herding as reflected in cereal pollen and phytoliths (silica elements from plants) and fecal spherulites (calcite bodies in sheep/goat dung) . Earlier soundings and pilot studies confirm the presence of such data in association with datable charcoal. Extrapolation of the radiocarbon chronometry established from the earlier soundings indicates that a high resolution, climatic-environmental record can be developed through deeper soundings that stretches back some 8-12,000 years ago. Earlier research indicates the occupants of Ayn Aba Nukhayla followed a combination of foraging, herding, and farming thought to have been integrated within a strategy of transhumance (i.e., seasonal and elevational shifts in settlement). This is likely to have involved farming the nearby mudpan (watered from upland run-off) from Fall through Spring followed by abandonment of the site during the warm-dry season for the movement of herds to upland pastures. To test this idea, the cementum increments of the teeth of hunted (hare, gazelle, ibex) and herded (sheep/goats) animals will be studied to provide seasonal information relative to the occupation of the site. Also, differences in vegetation and geologic substrates between the local setting and the nearby uplands offer a means of tracing herding practices through the analysis of stable isotope signatures derived from herbivore teeth and bones.The well preserved occupational floors within the fills of the pithouses also provide an unusual opportunity to study spatial patterns of human interaction in an Early Neolithic community. Despite interest in understanding changes in community organization that are likely to have accompanied the emergence and elaboration of food production, there remains considerable disagreement on the composition of households and community structure. While the spatial patterning of features, artifacts, and ecofacts (bones, plant and dung signatures) can trace the degree to which households were economically and socially autonomous, such detailed spatial studies have here-to-fore not been undertaken in the region Broader impacts of the proposed research include a pedagogical component in which graduate students will engage in a full range of science related tasks involving research design, field and laboratory instrumentation, data management, hypothesis testing, and report preparation.