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

12 000多年前，近东地区从觅食到粮食生产的转变，导致狩猎采集的经济和社会实践发生了一系列重大转变，极大地改变了人类的生活方式。 新石器时代前陶器时期是人类史前史的一个关键时期。11，600年至10，200年前，当人们仍然严重依赖收集的植物食物和狩猎游戏时，但开始尝试种植植物和更多以社区为导向的社会结构。 然而，尽管在PPNA期间，生活和社会发生了戏剧性的，同时发生的变化，但人们对从觅食到粮食生产和社区社会组织形式的转变的确切机制知之甚少。已经为新石器时代早期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食物生产者在创造社区导向的社会结构时所使用的各种各样的生存策略。 2010年至2012年进行的调查显示，在el-Hemmeh有一个独特的公共停尸房结构（结构6），其中包含多个石衬的cist特征，每个特征都有一个人以坐姿埋葬。 以前，只有简单的坟墓，切入房屋地板或墙外碎片，并包含弯曲的墓葬被称为南部黎凡特PPNA。 本项目旨在：1）完成6号结构的开挖; 2）完成6号结构外部沉积物的开挖，这些沉积物的特征是故意倾倒的炉膛残留物、垃圾和建筑垃圾。 这些有重点的步骤构成了一个项目调查的一部分，该项目调查了公共殡葬做法与生计活动、季节性和职业强度在PPNA社会组织结构（重组）中的联系。

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.