Food production, community, and mortuary practice in the earliest Near Eastern Neolithic

12,000多年前，近东从觅食向食物生产的转变导致狩猎群体的经济和社会实践发生了一系列重大转变，极大地和不可挽回地改变了人类的生活方式。陶器前新石器时代(PPNA)是大约11,600年到10,200年前人类史前的关键时期，当时人们仍然严重依赖采集的植物食物和狩猎，但开始试验植物栽培和更多以社区为导向的社会形态。然而，尽管很明显，在PPNA期间，生计和社会发生了戏剧性的、同时发生的变化，但人们对从觅食到食物生产的转变与基于社区的社会组织形式之间的确切机制缺乏了解。位于约旦Wadi el-Hasa的PPNA遗址el-hemmeh的发掘已经为新石器时代最早的社会中社区角色的变化提供了新的见解，并使人们能够更细致地了解最早的粮食生产者在创建以社区为导向的社会结构时所使用的广泛不同的生存战略。2010年至2012年进行的挖掘揭示了el-hemmeh一个独特的公共停尸房结构(结构6)，其中包含多个石砌的cist特征，每个特征中都有一个人被埋葬在一个坐位上。以前，只有被切割成房屋地板或壁外碎片的简单坟墓，以及包含弯曲埋葬的坟墓才为人所知，这是南部的黎凡特PPNA。本项目旨在1)完成对6号结构的挖掘和2)完成对6号结构外部沉积物的挖掘，这些沉积物的特征是故意倾倒炉缸残渣、中间材料和建筑垃圾。这些重点步骤是一个项目调查的一部分，该项目调查社区殡葬做法如何与维持生计活动以及在PPNA(重建)社会组织结构中的占领的季节性和强度相联系。

The transition from foraging to food production over 12,000 years ago in the Near East entailed a series of critical shifts in the economic and social practices of hunter-gathers that dramatically and irrevocably transformed human lifeways. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) is a key period in human prehistory between ca. 11,600 to 10,200 years ago, when people still relied heavily on gathered plant foods and hunted game, yet began to experiment with both plant cultivation and more community-oriented social configurations. However, although it is clear that dramatic, co-occuring changes in subsistence and society took place during the PPNA, the precise mechanisms linking the shift from foraging to food production and community-based forms of social organization are poorly understood.Excavation at el-Hemmeh, an exceptionally well-preserved PPNA site located in the Wadi el-Hasa, Jordan, is already providing new insights into the changing role of the community in the earliest Neolithic societies, and enabling a more nuanced understanding of the widely diverse subsistence strategies used by the earliest food producers in creating community oriented social configurations. Excavations conducted from 2010-2012 have revealed at el-Hemmeh a unique communal mortuary structure (Structure 6), which contains multiple stone-lined cist features, each of which houses a human individual interred in a seated position. Previously, only simple graves, cut into house floors or extramural debris, and containing flexed burials were known for the southern Levantine PPNA. This project seeks to 1) complete excavation of Structure 6 and 2) complete excavations of deposits extramural to Structure 6 characterized by intentionally dumped hearth leavings, midden material, and construction debris. These focused steps form part of a project investigation of the ways in which communal mortuary practices were linked to subsistence activities and seasonality and intensity of occupation in the (re)structuring of social organization in the PPNA.