Origins of agriculture and sedentism

Despite the long historical and archaeological record of interaction between Mongol herders and Chinese agriculturalists, pastoralists in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia have resisted pressure to adopt subsistence economies dependant on the cultivation of plant foods. While some evidence suggests that many of these steppe regions are more ecologically suited to herding than farming, their northern frontiers have proven to be agriculturally viable. Therefore, the persistent resistance to sedentary agricultural modes of production should be traced to long‐standing cultural values at odds with sedentism and agricultural toils. By considering several lines of evidence, including environmental limitations and the constraints of pastoralist land‐use, Mongol resistance to the adoption of cultivation is seen as having been driven by the development of ideological systems incompatible with the adoption of agriculture.

This teaching aid reviews the major evolutionary landmarks that over the last sixty million years marked the development of intelligence in Homo sapiens. The discussion begins with social primates and charts the adaptations that ultimately led to the emergence of modern humans including the growth of the brain, increased manual dexterity, and evolution of language. Also considered are adaptations to allow for the digestion of starch, and their impact on early agriculture, the first use of fire and cooking. Discussion includes consideration of the following gene mutations: RNF213 GENE, HAR1 GENE, ARHGAP11B GENE, SLC2A1 GENE, SLC2A4 GENE, HACNS1 GENE, MYH16 GENE, SRGAP2 GENE, FOXP2 GENE, AMY1 GENE

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, HUMAN EVOLUTION, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, LANGUAGE, GENETICS, HOMO SAPIEN, HOMO HABILIS, AUSTRALOPITHECINES, PRIMATES, CHIMPANZEE, GORILLA, GELADA, MOYAMOYA DISEASE, CAROTID ARTERY, HOMININ, WONDERWERK CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA, STARCH DIET, MEAT DIET, RNF213 GENE MUTATIONS, HAR1 GENE, ARHGAP11B GENE, SLC2A1 GENE, SLC2A4 GENE, HACNS1 GENE, MYH16 GENE, SRGAP2 GENE, FOXP2 GENE, AMY1 GENE

Visiting China for the first time in October 2016, at the kind invitation of Professor Feng Li, I was immediately struck by the scale and complexity of the Neolithic archaeology. During interesting discussions with Chinese colleagues it became clear that many aspects of the archaeological narratives developed for the origins of the Neolithic in China shared many of the same explanatory models and theoretical perspectives as its prehistoric counterpart in southwest Asia (modern-day Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Anatolia). I thought it therefore appropriate in my contribution to this issue of Asian Archaeology to offer a summary of the history and development of Neolithic transition archaeology in southwest Asia. I hope this contribution will lead to further comparative discussions.

In this dissertation I address the timing of and interrelatedness between initial Early Formative period (2000–1500 BCE) transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization in Mesoamerica. I approach these topics using evidence from the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), a multi-season field and laboratory investigation of the site of La Consentida on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on six radiocarbon dates (1947–1530 cal B.C.), La Consentida represents the earliest village site ever discovered in coastal Oaxaca, and likely in much of Pacific coastal Mexico. According to these dates, the site has produced some of the earliest ceramics and mounded earthen architecture known in Mesoamerica. In this dissertation, I argue on the basis of changes over time in earthen architecture, ground stone tools, and house construction that the community grew more sedentary over the course of site occupation. Based on studies of faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, and food processing technology, I conclude that the community ate a broad diet but consumed more maize than did contemporaneous groups in other Early Formative period occupation areas, such as the Soconusco region of Chiapas and Guatemala. Culinary preferences may have changed at La Consentida, however, with a shift over time from consuming maize in beverage form to processing flour on stone mills that prompted increasing dental attrition. Anthropomorphic ceramic figurines from the site demonstrate a diversity of social roles, suggesting that the community was heterarchically complex from very early in its history. Obsidian sourcing and evidence of ceramic formal and decorative styles similar to those from other Formative period sites in West Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and Central Mexico indicate La Consentida’s broad interaction sphere. The very early dates associated with ceramic vessel fragments from La Consentida may complicate current models for the adoption of ceramic technology in Mesoamerica by suggesting an early tradition developing along the western Pacific coast that was contemporaneous with the Soconusco region’s Barra phase (1900–1700 cal B.C.). These various lines of evidence demonstrate that La Consentida was a community in transformation during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas. Research at La Consentida is relevant to key archaeological debates concerning Archaic to Formative period transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Evidence from the site is beginning to support arguments for gradual adoption of sedentism, early consumption of significant quantities of maize, and the importance of heterarchical distinctions in the birth of Mesoamerican social complexity.

A poorly defined notion of 'sedentism' continues to feature prominently in archaeological discussions of the Epipalaeolithic/Neolithic transition in Levantine prehistory. While acknowledging the valuable contribution of previous studies on the subject, this article argues that interpretations of the archaeological evidence are being hampered by the continued adherence to 'sedentism' as a concept for explaining social transformations in settlement and landscape, and that there is little more to be said from this perspective. I suggest that recent perspectives on 'social landscapes' will help further our understanding of this period in human history. In the specific case of the Later Epipalaeolithic (the Natufian and other 'cultural entities'), this engagement would be profitably grounded in discussion of the histories of human communities' perceptions and uses of space, place and landscape, and how these perceptions and uses changed over time. It is argued that the Early Natufian -when, it is claimed, sedentism first appears in the Levantine sequence -needs to be studied in its own right as a particular set of social practices and traditions, and not as some kind of 'precursor' to the Neolithic almost three millennia later.

En el presente artículo se reporta el hallazgo de varios contextos arqueológicos tempranos descubiertos e investigados recientemente en el noroeste de la ciudad de Quito, en el sector urbano denominado Rancho Bajo. Se trata principalmente de un cementerio relacionado con una superficie de uso de muy antigua fecha para la región, que presentó también un área de actividad dedicada a la talla de obsidiana. Los datos estratigráficos, así como las dataciones radiocarbónicas, ubican estos contextos en un momento de transición (3600-3400 cal. AP) entre el periodo Precerámico y el Formativo Temprano. Este último se consideraba, a través de los materiales culturales de filiación Cotocollao, el

The shift to sedentary lifeways represents a significant change in human adaptation. Despite the broadly contemporaneous timing of this transition across East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, such changes varied regionally. This article synthesises new and existing data from Neolithic sites on the Mongolian Plateau to reveal a simultaneous shift towards investment in site architecture, with distinct variation in the organisation of settlement and subsistence across biogeo-graphic zones. The development of sedentary communities here emphasises the importance of climatic amelioration for incipient sedentism, and demonstrates how differences in ecological and cultural contexts can encourage various responses to the same environmental stimuli.

In 2011 a burial was disturbed during work in Salisbury, a northern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia (SA). Subsequent archaeological excavation revealed a male human interment in a deep alluvial context with a number of unusual characteristics, including a bone point and several ‘binding’ hearths. A sample of femoral bone was submitted for AMS radiocarbon dating and bone collagen stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis. Dating determined that the burial was relatively recent (380±30 BP), contemporary with proposed shifts in the Kaurna’s
economic systems when ‘mound sites’ were inhabited, that is, over the past 1500 years. Stable isotope results indicated the individual consumed a distinct diet based on terrestrial foods, with an absence of marine protein. The location, mode and stratigraphic context of the burial, coupled with the stable isotope results, suggest this individual had a different diet to contemporary Kaurna men. The ethnographic record and knowledge provided by traditional owners suggested that his diet may have been connected to his status and position within Kaurna society as a ‘medicine man’ or ‘sorcerer’.

For various reasons related to human diet, social prestige or cosmology, hunting-especially of large preys-has always been central in foragers' societies. When pre-Neolithic foragers have given up their nomadic way of life they have faced a sink-source problem about game procurement in the resource-catchment area around their settlements. Baiting, by mean of the cultivation of wild plants in food plots, may have help them to attract herbivores, thus improving the return of hunting activities. These foragers were also motivated by the capture of wild animals alive, in order to keep fresh meat for a while, to translocate these animals or for milk exploitation. For this capture, the use of a passive form of drive hunting seems best suited. The cultivation of food plots within the funnel and the corral might have been used to attract wild herbivores into the drive. Baiting was therefore designed either to increase the hunt or to improve the capture of large wild herbivores such as the Near-Eastern wild caprines that were later domesticated. Therefore baiting should be viewed as a hunting strategy as well as an unconscious selection mechanism since it has inadvertently contributed to the prey pathway to animal domestication.

The shift to sedentary lifeways represents a significant change in human adaptation. Despite the broadly contemporaneous timing of this transition across East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, such changes varied regionally. This article synthesises new and existing data from Neolithic sites on the Mongolian Plateau to reveal a simultaneous shift towards investment in site architecture, with distinct variation in the organisation of settlement and subsistence across biogeographic zones. The development of sedentary communities here emphasises the importance of climatic amelioration for incipient sedentism, and demonstrates how differences in ecological and cultural contexts can encourage various responses to the same environmental stimuli.

The shift to sedentary lifeways represents a significant change in human adaptation. Despite the broadly contemporaneous timing of this transition across East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, such changes varied regionally. This article synthesises new and existing data from Neolithic sites on the Mongolian Plateau to reveal a simultaneous shift towards investment in site architecture, with distinct variation in the organisation of settlement and subsistence across biogeo-graphic zones. The development of sedentary communities here emphasises the importance of climatic amelioration for incipient sedentism, and demonstrates how differences in ecological and cultural contexts can encourage various responses to the same environmental stimuli.

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80-90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia.

La Consentida explores Early Formative period transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization at the site of La Consentida in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Examining how this site transformed during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas, the book provides a new way of thinking about the social dynamics of Mesoamerican communities of the period.

Guy David Hepp summarizes the results of several seasons of fieldwork and laboratory analysis under the aegis of the La Consentida Archaeological Project, drawing on various forms of evidence—ground stone tools, earthen architecture, faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, ceramics, and more— to reveal how transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization at La Consentida were intimately linked. While Mesoamerica is too diverse for research at a single site to lay to rest ongoing debates about the Early Formative period, evidence from La Consentida should inform those debates because of the site’s unique ecological setting, its relative lack of disturbance by later occupations, and because it represents the only well-documented Early Formative period village in a 300-mile stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast.

One of the only studies to closely document multiple lines of evidence of the transition toward a sedentary, agricultural society at an individual settlement in Mesoamerica, La Consentida is a key resource for understanding the transition to settled life and social complexity in Mesoamerican societies.

Rocek, Thomas R.  1998  Pithouses and Pueblos on Two Continents: Interpretations of Sedentism and Mobility in the Southwestern United States and Southwest Asia.  In Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites, Thomas R. Rocek and Ofer Bar-Yosef (eds.).  Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  pp. 199-216.

The Preceramic site of Pernil Alto is located on the desertic Andean foothills of Southern Peru. It dates to 5800-5000 cal BP and with that to the end of the Middle Preceramic Period of the Central Andes. It was possible to detect the transition from foraging to agriculture starting at around 5300 cal BP in the permanent village of Pernil Alto. With these results, early village agriculture is evident in Southern Peru, which in turn contributes to an overall understanding of the emergence of the first complex societies
in the Central Andes.

Bone collagen stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data for
archaeological human remains suggest that the territorial behaviours
reported in relation to Tindale’s ethnographic research for the lower
stretches of the Murray River of South Australia in the vicinity of the
river mouth and adjacent coastal regions can be extended back through
the late Holocene. Testing hypotheses regarding the presence of late
Holocene semi-sedentary and sedentary subsistence-settlement
systems along various regions of the Lower Murray and adjacent coast
requires comprehensive archaeological research, including improved
chronometric dating for a range of archaeological sites, demonstration
of the use of a range of key plant and animal foods, and expansion of
stable isotope applications to include strontium and oxygen. This paper
provides an overview of the natural environment of the Lower Murray
River region of South Australia, including the availability of water and a
range of food resources. The importance of foods available in the
vicinity of the riverine zone that could have provided reliable dietary
sources is emphasised. Such ecological data regarding the abundance
and availability of key plant and animal foods are fundamental to
improved understandings of hunter-gatherer behavioural variability in
the region.

Eine große Zahl der Texte Rousseaus können als ‚Ursprungserzählungen' bezeichnet werden. Dies gilt insbesondere für autobiographische Texte, die sich die Rekonstruktion von Begebenheiten zum Gegenstand machen, mit denen sich die Richtung von Rousseaus Lebensweg geändert hat. Einer der charakteristischen Züge dieser Erzählungen ist es, dass sie den zeitlichen Hintergrund in ein absolutes ‚Vor' und ein ebensolches ‚Nach' einteilen, sowie dass sie das tragische Zeichen der Unumkehrbarkeit tragen. Diese Fabelkompositionen zielen darauf ab, die Frage nach den Umständen und den Verantwortlichen für diese Umbrüche völlig aufzuklären.

Based on calibrated AMS radiocarbon dates from stratigraphically controlled contexts, the Early Formative period site of La Consentida was occupied between 1950 and 1550 cal BCE. In addition to evidence of early pottery and mounded earthen architecture, this site has produced fourteen sets of human remains in twelve discrete burials. The people of La Consentida lived and died during a period of key socioeconomic transitions including the establishment of sedentary villages, a shift toward agriculture, and the origins of formalized social inequality. In this paper, we discuss the archaeological context of La Consentida's burials and the results of bioarchaeological and stable isotopic analyses of human and faunal remains from the site. Stable isotope values and paleopathological data suggest significant maize consumption concurrent with increasing dental attrition. Considered alongside changes in food processing tools, this pattern suggests a culinary transition regarding maize use. Burial goods and associated features (including a ceremonial cache containing faunal remains, ceramics, and a musical instrument) shed light on mortuary practices. As some of Oaxaca's earliest known human remains the burials of La Consentida offer a rare opportunity for multidisciplinary investigation of the diet, lifestyles, and mortuary traditions of an early Mesoamerican village.

Seven AMS radiocarbon dates (1950-1525 cal BC) from controlled contexts demonstrate Early Formative period occupation in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. These dated elements from the site of La Consentida include hearths, occupational surfaces, carbon adhering to pottery from a midden, and human bone collagen processed with XAD purification. They were excavated from primary contexts and do not represent redeposited materials. An eighth sample, dated to the Middle Formative period, is considered postoccupational. The diversity of dated deposits and features, their distribution, and their overlapping calibrated ranges indicate settlement by an initial Early Formative period village.

On the basis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of human remains, this paper provides evidence for the retention of hunteregatherer economies among coastal inhabitants in northern Chile during the late Holocene e at the same time that inland populations were adopting agricultural economies. Coastal diets from the Caleta Vitor region of the Atacama Desert were dominated by marine-based foods, predominantly from upper trophic levels. The focus on reliable marine food resources is interpreted as a risk minimisation strategy in this marginal arid environment. Although these coastal hunteregatherers adopted other goods and traditions from agricultural populations, their participation in this larger interregional exchange network did not affect their basic subsistence economies. Associated new radiocarbon dates from the site are also discussed. Skeletal remains and artefacts associated with the Caleta Vitor shell middens generally originate from sites with dates ranging from c. 9000e476 BP. However, the human remains that are the subject of this research cover the time period c. 4000e476 BP.

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80-90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia.

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80-90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia.

La Consentida explores Early Formative period transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization at the site of La Consentida in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Examining how this site transformed during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas, the book provides a new way of thinking about the social dynamics of Mesoamerican communities of the period. Guy David Hepp summarizes the results of several seasons of fieldwork and laboratory analysis under the aegis of the La Consentida Archaeological Project, drawing on various forms of evidence—ground stone tools, earthen architecture, faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, ceramics, and more— to reveal how transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization at La Consentida were intimately linked. While Mesoamerica is too diverse for research at a single site to lay to rest ongoing debates about the Early Formative period, evidence from La Consentida should inform those debates because of the site’s unique ecological setting, its relative lack of disturbance by later occupations, and because it represents the only well-documented Early Formative period village in a 300-mile stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast. One of the only studies to closely document multiple lines of evidence of the transition toward a sedentary, agricultural society at an individual settlement in Mesoamerica, La Consentida is a key resource for understanding the transition to settled life and social complexity in Mesoamerican societies.

Depuis 15 ans, grâce à de nombreux travaux, la connaissance du Néolithique moyen du Bassin rhodanien progresse considérablement. Les données paléoenvironnementales, sitologiques, économiques, artisanales, funéraires se sont multipliées. L'examen des faits ...

Book review. Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory: Technology, Lifeways, and Cuisine. Edited by Peter Jordan and Kevin Gibbs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781107118249.
Ceramic technology was a relatively late innovation in human prehistory. Recent research indicates that people began making pottery in north-eastern Asia towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 16,000 years ago. In comparison, technologies such as manufacturing tools from stone and bone, controlling fire and preparing animal skins for clothing, predate pottery by a million years or more. Despite this delayed appearance in the archaeological record, ceramics were traditionally viewed as a significant technology associated with a major transition, from the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) to the Neolithic (New Stone Age). This volume brings together papers from leading researchers to address key questions, namely, why was pottery invented and what role did ceramics play in the dramatic Neolithic changes? A functional role in cooking gave pottery some advantages over alternative technologies, though not always. As a sign of sedentism, agriculture or social complexity, pottery is quite unreliable. Indeed, the consensus emerging from these contributions is at odds with the historical significance granted to pottery. The privileging of pottery likely reflects its durability and visibility in the archaeological record, lending ceramics a prominence at the expense of perishable technologies like wood and fiber. Collectively, these papers make a compelling case that ceramic technology was never essential for human survival or adaptation and the advent of pottery was, surprisingly, almost irrelevant.

Previous research has presented hypotheses concerning the presence of widespread Aboriginal sedentism in coastal and riverine South Australia during the past 5000 years. These hypotheses were based on biological distance data (metric and non-metric), isotopic analyses at the inland Roonka Flat site and the emergence of large, well-defined cemeteries throughout the region. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data for a large burial population at the Swanport archaeological site in the lower Murray River Basin of South Australia, near the coastal river mouth, provide additional evidence for the presence of hunter-gatherer sedentism and territoriality during the late Holocene. Stable isotope research provides a powerful method to examine subsistence-settlement systems and social relations in prehistoric populations.

In the past 25 years since the reconstruction of Shelter 131 of Eynan was suggested by Francois Valla, its image has become almost iconic—a highly cited symbol of early sedentism constituting a significant part of our knowledge on early stone constructions and the people behind them. A new look at the architectural remains and the stratigraphy resulted in an alternative reconstruction, essentially different than the one we have come to know. We used spatial (architectural-geometrical) analysis in order to study the relationships between the different architectural elements and to test our hypothesis that the series of postholes may have not pertained to the upper floor 131 of Layer IV as suggested by Perrot and Valla, but rather to the successive occupational and architectural episode. The association of the postholes with Wall 51 of Layer III sheds new light on the architectural remains revealing their geometric design, an important characteristic of Early Natufian Architecture, the meaning and implications of which we shortly discuss.

Bone collagen stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data for archaeological human remains suggest that the territorial behaviours reported in relation to Tindale’s ethnographic research for the lower stretches of the Murray River of South Australia in the vicinity of the river mouth and adjacent coastal regions can be extended back through the late Holocene. Testing hypotheses regarding the presence of late Holocene semi-sedentary and sedentary subsistence-settlement systems along various regions of the Lower Murray and adjacent coast requires comprehensive archaeological research, including improved chronometric dating for a range of archaeological sites, demonstration of the use of a range of key plant and animal foods, and expansion of stable isotope applications to include strontium and oxygen. This paper provides an overview of the natural environment of the Lower Murray River region of South Australia, including the availability of water and a range of food resources. The importance of foods available in the vicinity of the riverine zone that could have provided reliable dietary sources is emphasised. Such ecological data regarding the abundance and availability of key plant and animal foods are fundamental to improved understandings of hunter-gatherer behavioural variability in the region.

Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au ' Ambrose et al. 1 997 his study ' Am brose et al. 1 997 %c~overn-~islon and Quinn 1996 Table 2 Cornparikon of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data for prehistoric human bone excavated at various archaeological sRes in the northern Marianas archipelago, Micronesia.