ORIENT Volume XLVII 2012

SPECIAL ISSUE
International Workshop on Israelian Hebrew
in Tsukuba, JapanA Household Perspective
towards the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
to Late Neolithic Cultural Transformationin the Southern Levant

Seiji KADOWAKI

The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan(NIPPON ORIENTO GAKKAI)

A Household Perspective

A Household Perspective towards the Pre-Pottery
Neolithic to Late Neolithic Cultural
Transformation in the Southern Levant
Seiji KADOWAKI*
Besides the economic transition from foraging to agriculture, researchersof the southern Levantine Neolithic have investigated the issue of culturaltransformation from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) to Late Neolithic(LN) period. This archaeological phenomenon, formerly explained as
hiatus palestinien, is currently understood as a structured cultural change
involving reorganizations in settlement systems, subsistence activities,
tool-production technology, social organization, and ritual practices.
Causes for these changes have been sought in several factors, including
climatic shift, environmental deterioration, increasing reliance of farming,
population increase, social crowding, and the decline of communal rituals.
This paper proposes a household perspective on this issue toeffectively interlink ecological and social factors. To this end, the paper
first reviews current understanding of PPNB households and thenexamines archaeological records indicative of household size, household
activities, and the social relationship among households. In this
discussion, archaeological data are interpreted by drawing on theanthropologically expected relationship between household size and thedegree of economic interdependence among households, i.e., communal
or autonomous performance of production and consumption activities.
As a result, I suggest that the increase in household size during theLate PPNB and LN, as indicated by multicellular, two-story houses andcourtyard buildings, was caused by the increasing autonomy ofhouseholds in the performance of production and consumption activities
since the Middle PPNB. The latter process is explicable as a response to
the reduced opportunities for forming communal works due to diversified
subsistence activities and conflicting labour scheduling amonghouseholds. These transformations of households can be considered as asignificant aspect in the reorganization of settlement systems and related
cultural changes at the transition from the PPNB to LN.
Keywords: Neolithic, Cultural transformation,
Household, Communal activity

Southern

Levant,* Assistant Professor, Nagoya University Museum
Vol. XLVII 20123

I. Introduction
Current archaeological records in the southern Levant indicate a clear increase in
the size of settlements at the transition from hunting-gathering economy to thefarming of domesticated plants and animals, the process of which covers thearchaeological time range from the late Epipalaeolithic (i.e., Natufian) throughthe Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. The increase in settlement size during these
periods is prominently shown by a series of Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B(PPNB) “mega-sites” with estimated sizes around 10-14 ha, which greatly
exceeds the mean size (0.1-0.5 ha) of the largest Natufian hunter-gatherer
settlements (Kuijt 2000b, 80-83; Kuijt 2008, 291-293). Although the discoveriesof such unexpectedly large Neolithic settlements prompted debates on thepossibility of Neolithic urbanization (Beinert et al. 2004), many researchers do
not regard this Mega-Site Phenomenon as representing “Proto-Urbanism” forvarious reasons (Gebel 2004; Hole 2000). For example, some researchers areconcerned with the contemporaneity of buildings that constitute the site (Kuijt
2008, 290; Verhoeven 2006). This means that occupied areas at a single time
may have been much smaller than the surface extent of archaeological sites.
Other researchers point out the fundamental socio-economic differences between
Neolithic “mega-sites” and conventional cities in subsequent periods (Düring
2007; Gebel 2004). Furthermore, it is well known among Near Easternarchaeologists that Neolithic large settlements did not continue theirdevelopment towards the emergence of cities in the Bronze Age.
The decline of large Neolithic settlements at the transition from the PPNB
to the Late Neolithic (LN) period1 is often called the “collapse” of early
agricultural villages, raising questions as to the causes that cannot be explainedby the unilinear, i.e., progressive, model of cultural evolution. To provide ahousehold perspective to this cultural transformation, this paper first reviews
explanations that various researchers have suggested for the PPN-LN culturaltransition and then reconsiders current understanding of PPNB households by
examining archaeological records indicative of household size, household
activities, and the social relationship among households. In this discussion,archaeological data are interpreted by drawing on the anthropologically expected
relationship between household size and the degree of economic
interdependence among households, i.e., communal or autonomous performanceof production and consumption activities. Although the discussion focuses on
the southern Levantine Neolithic, it also refers to some relevant archaeological
data and studies for the middle Euphrates region and northern Mesopotamia.2

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A Household Perspective

II. Models for the Abandonment of PPNB Aggregate Settlements: Adaptation to Changing Environments and Social Segmentation
During the 1960s and 1970s, the small number of known LN sites ledarchaeologists to hypothesize an occupational hiatus in the southern Levant after
the PPN period (de Vaux 1970, 519). After the discoveries of many LN sites
filling this occupational gap, the abandonment of most PPNB villages iscurrently recognized as a realignment of the settlement system that occurred
over ca. 300-600 years at the transition from the PPNB to LN rather than aregional abandonment by large-scale emigration.
This settlement reorganization involved population dispersal from many
PPNB agglomerated villages and the establishment of small, dispersed
settlements in the southern Levant (Banning 2001; Gopher and Gophna 1993,
303-307; Köhler-Rollefson 1988). Furthermore, many researchers point out that
this settlement shift was a part of a structured cultural change involving
reorganizations in subsistence activities, tool-production technology, socialorganization, and ritual practices (Banning et al. 1994; Gopher 1989; KöhlerRollefson 1992; Kuijt 2000b; Nishiaki 2000; Quintero and Wilke 1995;
Rollefson 2000; Simmons 2000; Verhoeven 2002) (Fig. 1). The exact timing andthe nature of this Neolithic cultural change may have varied from one settlement
to another in the southern Levant, and even greater variability is expected for
Mesopotamia and Anatolia. However, these cultural and social changes appear
to have occurred in wide geographic areas in the Near East (Fig. 2).
Various accounts have been proposed for this Neolithic culturaltransformation and the settlement reorganization. Some researchers consider thatclimatic aridification deteriorated the environment around the PPNB settlements,
eventually forcing the inhabitants to move to other areas (Bar-Yosef 2001; BarYosef and Meadow 1995, 45; Moore 1985, 52). This climatic change, even if it
did occur, is not likely to correspond to the 8.2 ka event despite such suggestions
by some (see Maher et al. 2011, 17-18 and Simmons 2007, 185 for reviews on
this issue). This is because the recent estimated date for the end of Late PPNB
precedes the 8.2 ka event by 500-800 years, and the probability that the 8.2 ka
event came before the beginning of the earliest LN culture, i.e., Yarmoukian, isless than 0.01 (Maher et al. 2011, 17-18). As another climatic view, Simmons(1997) points to the possibility of torrential summer rain during the PPNB
period, which contributed to soil erosion and the loss of fertile sediments. In
addition to climatic changes, researchers also attribute the environmental
deterioration to human activities, suggesting that the vegetational resources
around the PPNB villages became culturally depleted by long-term land use forVol. XLVII 2012

5

6

ORIENTNo grave goods

Dense cluster?

Grave goods

Cist grave ?

Scattered, arranged along alleys or around courtyards

Coutyard houses

Dispersed

0.1-10 ha?

Two-story houses?

2-12 ha?

Nonformalized blade
technology

Pit houses, round andrectangular rooms

6-14 haExpedient flake production

Farming (wheat, barley, legumes)

6,400

Late Neolithic

Compartmentalization

Skull removal/plasteringLinear or cluster

Pier HouseAgg regated

0.5-4.5 ha

7,000 - 6,700

Final PPNB /PPNCLivestock (goats, sheep, cattle, pigs)

Navif orm blade technolog y

Plant gathering

Hunting (gazelles, goats, deer)

7,500

Late PPNB

Banning 1998; Kuijt 2000b

Banning 2004, 2011; Henry et al.
2003; Garfinkel and Miller 2002

Banning 1998, 2004; Banning and
Byrd 1987; Goring-Morris andBelfer-Cohen 2008

Banning 2001

Kuijt 2000b and 2008; Kadowaki
2007

Gopher 1989; Gopher and Gophna
1993; Quintero 1998; Rollefson 1998

Kuijt and Morris 2002; Miller 1992;
Neef 1997; Rollefson et al. 1992

Banning 2007 ; Maher et al. 2011

References

Figure 1: Schematic Diagram Showing Changes in Archaeological Records from PPNB to Late Neolithic in
the Southern Levant

Mortuary practiceArrangement ofhousesArchitectural
form

Settlement
systemRange ofsettlement size

Lithic technology

Subsistence

Approximateboundary dates(cal. B.C.)

Middle PPNBA Household PerspectiveÇatalhöyük

Seker al-Aheimar
Halulael-Kerkh

Hassuna

Abu Hureyra
El Kowm 2

BouqrasYiftahel
Sha’ar Hagolan
Tabaqat al-BûmaJericho'Ain Ghazal

es-Sifiya

Azraq basin

Wadi el-Jilat
Tell Wadi Feinan
Ghwair I
Beidha Ba’ja
Basta'Ain Jammam'Ayn Abu Nukhayla

0

200km

Figure 2: Neolithic Sites Mentioned in the Text
agriculture, herd-grazing, and woodcutting for house construction and plasterproduction (Köhler-Rollefson 1988, 1992; Moore 1985, 52; Moore et al. 2000;
Rollefson and Köhler-Rollefson 1989; Rollefson et al. 1992; Simmons 1997).
Along with these environmental changes, Köhler-Rollefson and Rollefson
also propose that the collapse of the aggregated PPNB village at ‘Ain Ghazal isclosely related to the development of nomadic pastoralism and the concomitantchanges in settlement patterns. According to them, the bifurcation into farmers
and herders occurred as a means to solve the conflict between the demand for
agricultural land and that for pasture in order to support increasing population at
the site. They propose that, during the PPNC and Yarmoukian periods, thepopulation at ‘Ain Ghazal fluctuated as pastoralist components of the settlement
made seasonal movements between the site and the desert with flocks of sheep
and goats to reduce the impact on agricultural lands near the settlement (KöhlerVol. XLVII 20127

Rollefson 1988 and 1992; Rollefson 1997).
Banning (2001) relates the shift from the PPNB to LN settlement system tothe development of the food-production economy and population growth during
the Late PPNB. These economic and demographic factors led to competition for
agricultural land and pasture among PPNB villagers. The inevitable expansionof agricultural fields raised the cost of travel to the fields, which in turnincreased the cost of crop transportation. A favourable solution to these
economic problems was provided by locating settlements close to widelydispersed fields, as seen in the LN settlement system (Banning 2001, 153).
In contrast to the above explanations focusing on climatic, environmental,
and subsistence factors, Kuijt considers the collapse of the Late PPNB villages
as a process of social change, mainly induced by social crowding (Kuijt 2000b).
Based on the careful examination of regional population growth, Kuijt suggeststhat the Late PPNB “mega-sites” may represent large, aggregated villages thatexperienced unprecedented stress from social crowding. The examination of
Late PPNB architecture leads him to suggest that community members
responded to social crowding by constructing two-story, highly
compartmentalized buildings in an effort to maintain space for privacy andsecure storage (Kuijt 2000b, 87-89). He argues that there is an inherent physicallimitation in the strategy of spatial compartmentalization but, more importantly,
he points out its conceptual influence on social, economic, and political
relationships among community members (Kuijt 2000b, 96). He suggests thatsocial crowding and its resulting social segmentation among households led to(1) the diminishing ability of “House, ritual, and economic leaders to effectively
manage and organize all segments of the community” and (2) “the emergence ofpolitically, economically, and socially more powerful Houses or lineages” (Kuijt
2000b, 95). These two phenomena may have resulted in the reduced frequency
of communal rituals and the emergence of burial goods during the Late PPNB.
He argues that the communal rituals, in particular mortuary practices during the
PPNB, functioned to reiterate an egalitarian ethos and sustain shared authorityand power among many lineage lines to maintain community solidarity (Kuijt
1995, 108-110 and 2000b, 96). He suggests that the reduced frequency ofcommunal rituals by the Late PPNB represents a process of changing social
relations that finally resulted in the fragmentation of aggregated, Late PPNB
villages. Kuijt, however, does not clearly explain how the process of socialchange is related to ecological settings, such as environmental deterioration, orchanging subsistence activities, e.g., the decline of hunting and the introductionof domesticated animals.
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A Household Perspective

The ecological, demographic, and social factors considered in the above
models are not mutually exclusive but can be complementary as they represent
different aspects of the same phenomenon. I suggest that a better understandingof the Neolithic settlement shift can be gained by meaningfully inter-relatingthese factors. For this purpose, the following will discuss several issues on
Neolithic households, such as the size and activities of households and the social
relations among households.
III. Autonomy of Households and Community Regulatory Mechanisms
Based on his stratigraphic and spatial analyses of building remains at a
Middle PPNB site of Beidha, Byrd stresses the overall trend towards a more
restricted social network among households for sharing production andconsumption activities (Byrd 1994, 2000 and 2005). This trend is also phrased asincreasing household autonomy over time, which is supported by thearchaeological record that indicates a diachronic trend towards (1) increasingly
restricted visibility and access into buildings, and (2) the elaboration of indoor
features, including storage facilities (Byrd 1994 and 2000). The latter evidence
was also pointed out by Flannery (1972, 1993 and 2002) and Kuijt (2000b, 8794 and 2008, 301), who also examined other PPNB sites including Yiftahel,
Jericho, and ‘Ain Ghazal. In particular, Flannery suggests that the communal useof storage during the Natufian and PPNA periods changed to the privatized useof storage by individual households during the PPNB period.
Along with the increasing autonomy of households, Byrd emphasizes “thedevelopment of more formal community regulatory mechanisms” in thetransition to sedentism and food production (Byrd 1994, 642). He argues that
this mechanism was needed to “deal with conflict resolution and to promotegroup cohesiveness” in response to the reduced sharing networks and theincreased competition among households (Byrd 1994, 643). He specificallyindicates that community regulatory mechanisms functioned to facilitatecommunal works (e.g., harvesting and construction of public buildings),
community decision making, conflict resolution, and group rituals (Byrd 1994,
660).
The concept of community regulatory mechanisms is similar to Kuijt’s
argument with regards to mortuary rituals during the PPNA and PPNB periods(Kuijt 1995, 2000a and 2000b). He stresses ideological aspects of rituals thatreiterate egalitarian ethos among community members, arguing that thecommunity-level power prohibited the establishment of authority by a single
lineage or a few individuals (Kuijt 2000b). However, Byrd’s concept ofVol. XLVII 20129

community regulatory mechanisms involves the practices of other communal
activities, such as the construction of public buildings and agricultural activities.
Referring to two general political-economic strategies (corporate-based andnetwork-based) that lead to social inequality (Blanton et al. 1996; Feinman
1995), Byrd indicates that the Levantine Neolithic communities followed a
corporate-based pathway, which is characterized by community activities, strong
kinship relations, and collective rituals (Byrd 2000, 91). Ethnographic records inthe description of corporate-based strategies show a variety of communal
activities, which include community hunts, horticultural cleaning, planting,harvesting, food distribution, initiation rituals, and construction of publicbuildings (Feinman 1995, 264-268).
IV. Households during the PPNB Period and the Social Significance of Daily
Practices
1. Reconsidering the Significance of Communal Work by PPNB Households
Despite the difficulty of assessing the autonomy of households and identifying
community regulatory mechanisms archaeologically, the above explanatorymodel from a perspective of households can be a useful theoretical framework,in which we can discuss the social significance of daily production andconsumption activities that are readily detectable in archeological records. For
example, activities performed by individual households may reflect, or havefunctioned to enhance, the autonomy of households, while communal activities
joined by multiple households may have had a role in maintaining solidarity
among them. On the basis of this assumption, the following will review current
pictures of PPNB households and the social relations among them in theperformance of daily production and consumption activities.
A series of careful examinations of PPNB architecture by Banning and
Byrd suggests that the nuclear household was the popular household type during
the PPNB period (Banning 1996, 170; Banning and Byrd 1987; Byrd 2000).
However, the exact identification of nuclear or extended household isarchaeologically difficult because such categories are primarily defined bykinship. Thus, the usage of nuclear and extended households is meant here to
represent their relative group size; the nuclear household is smaller than theextended household.
Byrd (2000, 90) argues that nuclear households were best suited to thesituation of food-producing economy in the southern Levant, pointing out
several ecological and social factors that include (1) “the utilization of relatively
abundant but spatially restricted resources that can be effectively exploited as
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A Household Perspective

small plots of land”, (2) “a limited need for long stays outside the community by
adult members of the family”, (3) “a lack of multiple simultaneous tasks”, and(4) the presence of “a lean season during which stored resources could be
utilized”. Additionally, Byrd also considers nuclear households as “the mosteffective way of passing resources from generation to generation since there isless conflict over inheritance” (Byrd 2000, 90).
If PPNB households were as small as nuclear households, they are likely tohave faced problems in labour organization and labour scheduling. This isbecause each nuclear household had to manage a wide array of subsistence
activities that faunal and botanical remains from some PPNB villages indicate(Banning 1998, 212-215; Hillman 2000; Köhler-Rollefson et al. 1988). Byrd
(2000, 90) points out that PPNB domestic activities are characterized by “alimited need for long stays outside the community by adult members of thefamily” and “a lack of multiple simultaneous tasks”. However, the wide range of
PPNB subsistence activities, including collective hunting, wild-plant gathering,
agriculture, and animal herding, indicates that the above two conditions were notalways met. Specifically, the seasonal-resource exploitation at PPNB Abu
Hureyra shows that early summer was the very critical period for the
procurement of several resources, including crop harvesting and gazelle hunting(Moore et al. 2000, 499) (Fig. 3). This means that some subsistence activities
may have been complex simultaneous tasks and required some adults to work
away from their houses during the period of intensive-resource exploitation,
particularly for collective hunting, as suggested by the analyses of deathseasonality and age composition of gazelle remains at Abu Hureyra (Legge andRowley-Conwy 2000, 435-450). Legge and Rowley-Conwy (2000: 442-447)
also refer to the historical use of “kite sites” distributed across the desert areas in
Jordan and Syria (Betts 1998; Helms and Betts 1987) as auxiliary evidence forthe practice of community drive hunting during the Neolithic period. If this viewof PPNB subsistence activities and scheduling is correct, how would nuclear
households manage to conduct complex subsistence activities successfully?
According to anthropological household studies, nuclear households form
community labour groups when they need large labour forces for land clearance,
planting, or group hunting (Wilk and Rathje 1982, 623). Among modern Kekchi
Maya, nuclear families in the villages with plentiful land usually work
separately in a linear manner, but in the event of a “bottleneck”, when a largepool of labour is needed for clearing, planting, or harvesting of corn, households
exchange labour within a community labour group to cope with these complex
simulataneous tasks (Wilk 1984, 232-3). It is likely that PPNB households
Vol. XLVII 201211

Figure 3: Annual Schedule of Subsistence Activities at Abu Hureyra 2A(Middle PPNB)
Estimated period of food use in storage:(After Moore et al. 2000: Fig. 14.4)
employed a similar strategy to organize their productive labour force.
Several kinds of communal activities have been suggested for PPNB
communities. Already mentioned are collective drive hunting (Legge andRowley-Conwy 2000) and community rituals (Kuijt 1995, 2000a, 2000b).
Byrd’s argument for cooperative construction activities at Beidha (1994: 660) is
based on a village terrace wall in Phase A (Byrd 1994: 650) and seven large
buildings, including Buildings 8 and 9 in Phase C, that differ from residentialbuildings in more elaborate architectural features and the lack of domestic
residues (Byrd 1994: 653-657). The idea of the collective construction of largescale walls is compatible with those of the Late PPNB terrace wall at Halula(Molist 1998: 123-126) and the PPNA walls of Jericho (Bar-Yosef 1986).
Furthermore, the community-wide performance of some agricultural tasks, suchas harvesting, has been suggested for the PPNB community at Halula (Borrell
2007: 66-67). This view, although it may be difficult to demonstratearchaeologically, is illustrated in some ethnographic records of present agrariancommunities (e.g., Wilk 1984 and Stone 1993). Lastly, based on their
examinations of the spatial distribution of milling tools at Beidha, Byrd (2000:
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A Household Perspective

87-88) and Wright (2000: 109-111) suggest that food processing during Phases A
and B (earlier phases of Beidha) was likely a group event possibly joined bymembers from different households.
Although the above collective tasks may have had a role in maintaining
social cohesion among PPNB households, it would not have eliminatedcompetitions for power or conflict among community members. Apparently“non-utilitarian” community activities, such as rituals, could have functioned as
regulatory mechanisms that maintained community solidarity. My argument isthat PPNB community solidarity was maintained, not only by communal rituals,
but also by some daily production or consumption activities that community
work groups conducted.
2. Autonomous Activities by PPNB Households
On the other hand, some activities appear to have been performed by eachhousehold individually in the PPNB period. As mentioned earlier,compartmentalized indoor space in Middle and Late PPNB houses is often
interpreted as storage with restricted access in residential areas (Byrd 1994 and2000; Kuijt 2008). Although the preservation of stored foods is very rare, there
are some discoveries of stored tools in narrow indoor spaces, such as clusters ofground stones at Beidha Phase C (Wright 2000: 112) and ‘Ayn Abπ Nukhayla(Kadowaki 2006: 57) as well as a sickle and other hunting/processing tools at
Tell Halula (Borrell 2007). These storages in secluded domestic areas may
represent a phenomenon that Flannery interpreted as the risk acceptance at thelevel of the household or the privatization of storage (Flannery 1993 and 2002,
421).
While the ownership of storage is a significant factor in the considerationof inter-household relations, researchers also studied the social contexts of someproduction and consumption activities for the same purpose. For example,
Wright (2000) examined diachronic changes in the locations for milling,cooking, storage and dining from the Natufian to Late PPNB period in thesouthern Levant. She suggests that milling and cooking during the Middle PPNB
were often practiced in open social settings, such as near the house entrance oroutdoor areas between houses, while the Late PPNB food-related activities
usually took place in more closed settings inside houses (Wright 2000: 101-114).
The excavations of Late PPNB multi-cellular buildings of Area B at es-Sifiya
uncovered “five complete limestone querns, two stone bowls, six pestles andtwo unbaked clay vessels laying directly on the floor” (Mahasneh 2004: 48, 60),
indicating a specialized use of this room for food preparation. The spatialVol. XLVII 201213

analysis of groundstones was also conducted using the floor assemblages ofseveral buildings at the late Middle PPNB site of ‘Ayn Abπ Nukhayla(Kadowaki 2002 and 2006), where the traces of food-processing activities weredetected at indoor general activity areas associated with each of the residential
units (Fig. 4).
Also relevant here are studies of the organization of craft production
because they often discuss how households were involved in craft production
activities. For example, Quintero (1998) examined the naviform core-and-blade
technology employed in the PPNB occupations of ‘Ain Ghazal. Based ontechnological and spatial analyses, she suggested that the naviform technology,
which requires high-quality raw material and substantial skill, was likely
practiced by knapping specialists at workshops. On the other hand, she alsosuggests that expedient chipped-stone productions, i.e., nonformalized blades
and flakes, were probably performed at the household level (Quintero 1998,
229-232). In contrast to the case study at ‘Ain Ghazal, the examinations of floor
assemblages at ‘Ayn Abπ Nukhayla show that wastes from naviform core
reduction were associated with each of the excavated residential buildings,
indicating that naviform blades were manufactured at the level of the household
instead of the workshop (Henry et al. in press).
Another complex chipped-stone technology during the PPNB is thepressure-flaking production of obsidian blades and bladelets (Cauvin 2000, 8688). Technology and spatial distribution of obsidian artifacts were analyzed for
the Late PPNB and early LN levels of Seker al-Aheimar, northeast Syria(Kadowaki et al. in press). In these levels, several concentrations of obsidian
waste from bladelet production were recovered in outdoor areas of the same
location repetitively over several building levels. Although the localized
distribution of production waste might indicate a specialized production system,
examination of surrounding deposits, which also contain a wide range ofdomestic refuse, and the discard behaviour associated with the obsidian refusesuggest that obsidian bladelets were principally manufactured in domestic areas
rather than workshops at this settlement.
In addition, the production loci for stone beads have been detected within
residential buildings at some PPNB and early LN sites in the Jilat-Azraq basin(Wright and Garrard 2002). The authors point out that the bead production
during the PPNB is smaller in scale than the LN one and generally associatedwith other domestic refuse (Wright and Garrard 2002, 272). As another type of
non-utilitarian objects during the PPNB, a large amount of unfinished productsof sandstone rings have been discovered at Ba’ja (Late PPNB, Gebel and Bienert
14

ORIENTFigure 4: Spatial Distributions of Milling Tools on Building Floors at ‘Ayn Abu Nukhayla, Southern Jordan.
Circles indicate spatial units, where food-processing, storage, and craft production activities were performed,
probably occupied by separate residential groups that can be called households. (After Kadowaki 2006)

A Household Perspective

Vol. XLVII 201215

1997, 252). The excavators consider that production took place in specialized
households, but they are not certain about the scale of production.
The above activities performed at the level of the household, regardless ofthe degree of specialization, are likely to reflect, or have functioned to enhance,
the autonomous character of households in their management of socio-economic
activities. Although the social contexts of past activities are not always clear inarchaeological records, the examinations of the locations and the scale of daily
production and consumption activities, including storage, craft production, andfood preparation, can be useful evidence regarding the social groups (i.e.,
specialists, households, or supra-household groups) that organized these
activities.
V. Changing Households at the Transition from the Late PPNB to the LN
If the solidarity of PPNB communities was partly maintained by communal
activities, any change in those activities may have had a significant impact onsocial relations. Indeed, it is likely that household activities were changing
during the Late PPNB in face of resource depletion around villages (KöhlerRollefson 1988 and 1992; Moore et al. 2000; Rollefson et al. 1992), the declineof hunting activities (Köhler-Rollefson et al. 1988; Legge and Rowley-Conwy
2000), the increasing importance of domesticated animals (Köhler-Rollefson etal. 1988; Legge and Rowley-Conwy 2000), and growing population pressure on
agricultural land due to population increase (Banning 2001, 153; Kuijt 2000band 2008).
Several studies of ethnographic households indicate two possible
ramifications of resource scarcity. First, the inheritance of rights to scarce
resources becomes an important function of households (Wilk and Netting 1984,
11; Wilk and Rathje 1982, 628). This practice enhances the private ownership ofresources. In the Neolithic Levant, the increased size of private storage in LatePPNB two-story buildings may support the idea of enhanced private ownershipand accumulation of surplus in this period. Second, growing population pressure
on land and the depletion of adjacent resources would have made it necessary
for villagers to travel farther away from their villages to obtain agriculturallands, pasture, or such resources as game animals for collective hunting(Banning 2001, 153; Trigger 1990, 35-6; Wilk 1984, 235). As a consequence,
households would take a variety of strategies independently.
For example, among Kekchi farmers in modern Belize,
those who want to maximize yield (usually younger men with few
16

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A Household Perspective

dependents) clear fields in closer low forest while men who want tominimize risk with a more reliable harvest (often older men with many
dependents) grow their corn in distant high forest. (Wilk 1984, 235).
Lands at different locations and with different kinds of vegetation needdifferent timings of clearing and different techniques, which makes it difficult toorganize communal works for each case. In addition, the introduction of dry
corn and rice to compensate for the decreased productivity of wet corn further
complicates the labour scheduling of individual Kekchi households.
It is likely that the strategies of PPNB households also became diversified
in response to resource scarcity. The introduction of domesticated animals may
represent part of the diversified subsistence activities among PPNB households(Flannery 2002, 424). Köhler-Rollefson (1992), Rollefson (1997), and Simmons(2000) suggest the bifurcation of Neolithic villagers into farmers and pastoralists
at the end of the PPNB. However, based on the above hypothesis, I suggest that,instead of bifurcation into two opposite subsistence modes, many households
may have employed both farming and herding (and probably hunting andgathering) in different degrees. Ultimately, diversified subsistence activities andconflicting labour scheduling among households probably undermined thepracticability of communal works. At the same time, the enhanced ownership ofresources may have reduced the social network of sharing among households.
Under this social condition, it is interesting that Late PPNB houses arecharacterized by unprecedentedly great scale and complexity (Banning 1996;
Kuijt 2000b; Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen 2008), as shown by building
remains from Basta (Nissen et al. 1987), Ba’ja (Gebel and Bienert 1997; Gebel
2006), ‘Ain Ghazal (Rollefson 1997), es-Sifiya (Mahasneh 1997 and 2004), and‘Ain Jammam (Fino 2004) among others. Gebel (2006: 68-69) suggests thatdomestic buildings of these sites share a common plan type, called “BastaHouse”, consisting of a larger, central room surrounded by smaller cells, often
interpreted as storage, although the plan can vary according to topographic
constraints at the site. Evidence for a popular view that the Basta House plan
represents a basement for an upper story (e.g., Banning 1996; Kuijt 2000b;
Rollefson 1997; Simmons 2007: 138) has mounted through examinations ofarchitectural features, room fills, and their formation processes (Gebel 2006).
Although it is difficult to determine if large and complex Late PPNB
houses were occupied by single extended households or several nuclear
households, the increased house size and a multi-room layout may indicate theincreased size of households and increased demands for private storage andVol. XLVII 201217

indoor activity areas. These changes in household size and the space used fordomestic activities can be understood as a consequence of reduced sharing ofproduction and consumption activities, the conditions of which made musteringa large labour force and private storage within individual households
advantageous (Banning 1996). It is possible that such changes in inter-household
relationship and their manifestation in the built environment occurred earlier insome settlements, for example at Beidha Phase C and Ghwair I Phase III, wheresome researchers suggest the presence of late Middle PPNB two-story domestic
buildings (Byrd 2005; Byrd and Banning 1988; Simmons 2007: 170-171;
Simmons and Najjar 2006: 83).
The timing and the nature of changes in domestic buildings may havevaried in other areas of the Near East. For example, at Abu Hureyra and Halulain the middle Euphrates, no apparent increase in the scale and complexity ofhouses is reported from the Middle to Late PPNB period despite a significant
growth of the settlement in the former case (Moore 2000: 189-251; Molist 1998:
118-123). Both Middle and Late PPNB houses at these sites measure 46-82 m 2
in area (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 61) and are multicellular, consisting of
three to five rooms of varying sizes. Larger rooms are often associated withhearths (Molist 1998), while smaller ones are interpreted as storage (Akkermans
and Schwartz 2003: 61). In fact, at Halula, one of the smaller rooms contained acluster of tools, including a sickle retaining its blade segments (Borrell 2007: 6768). Examining how these Middle and Late PPNB houses compare to thebuildings with courtyards or tripartite divisions at Late PPNB-early LN Bouqras(Akkermans et al. 1983) and Final PPNB El Kowm 2-Caracol (Stordeur 2000)
would likely be worthwhile. At Bouqras, five excavation squares (15/13-19/13)
that reached sterile deposits uncovered ten architectural levels showing acontinuation of standardized house shapes and internal layouts. The houses
usually include large areas that are interpreted as courtyards, which occupy 2540% of the total area occupied by each of the houses (50-105 m2 on average)(Akkermans et al. 1983: 340-343). The courtyards became narrower in upper
layers (particularly levels 1-3), giving an appearance of a tripartite layout. The
courtyards, installed with a horseshoe-shaped oven, are usually surrounded bysmall rooms with an oval oven or shallow floor bins on one side (Akkermans etal. 1983: 343) and a broad room without any installation on another side. Suchmulticelluar structure consisting of large and small rooms with specific functions
is reminiscent of the Basta House plan in the southern Levant. Detailed
examination is necessary to clarify how these architectural changes from the
PPNB to early LN in the middle Euphrates may be related to the changes in
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A Household Perspective

household size, household activities, and inter-household relations.
In the southern Levant, the possible increase of household size during theLate PPNB may have continued in the LN period, as indicated by the presenceof courtyard structures. The excavations at the early LN site of Sha’ar Hagolan
documented three large houses in Areas E and H, each with a courtyard flanked
by several rooms (Garfinkel and Miller 2002; Garfinkel 2006). According to
Garfinkel (2002, 258-262; 2006), extended families consisting of three or more
nuclear families inhabited these houses. Each nuclear family had a dwellingroom and an adjacent storage room. The emergence of extended households isalso suggested by Flannery (2002), based on his studies of the layout ofcourtyard structures and the locations of storage and cooking facilities atHassuna, a LN settlement in northern Mesopotamia. Buildings with courtyards
have also been reported at a Yarmoukian layer of ‘Ain Ghazal (Rollefson 1997)
and at Tell Wadi Feinan (Qatifian, Najjar 1992) (Fig. 5). In addition, a farmsteadof Phase 3 at Tabaqat al-Bûma (Wadi Rabah) has a central outdoor space thatsurrounding households used for food preparation and tool production. Despite
the lack of patterned architectural plan (Banning 2004, 228), the use of a central
activity area shared by multiple households is essentially similar to the space useof the courtyard structure (Kadowaki 2007).
However, it is necessary to be cautious about linking the simple presence ofa courtyard structure to the residence of an extended household or multiple
nuclear households because the courtyard structure can show variations in thenumber and arrangement of constituent houses and outdoor walls (z4, z5, and z6
syntaxes in Banning 2011: 52). Even in the case that a single courtyard structure
incorporates multiple residential units, such as at Sha’ar Hagolan, the social
relationship among different residential groups sharing the same courtyard canvary from strong incorporation to loose cooperation in limited kinds of activities(Banning 2011: 73-75). Despite these considerations, the courtyard structurewith multiple residential units (i.e., z5 and z6 syntaxes) can be interpreted as amaterial manifestation or a social action of closely related households thatbounded themselves apart from other community members.
If multiple residential groups in courtyard compounds worked more or lesscooperatively, their labour force should have been larger than that of Middle
PPNB pier-house inhabitants. This is explicable as a consequence of socialchange since the Late PPNB period characterized by (1) the enhanced private
ownership of resources and (2) the diversified subsistence activities and theconcomitant decline of community-wide labour organizations. Despite the latter
trend, we do have some LN architectural remains indicative of probable publicVol. XLVII 201219

Figure 5: Late Neolithic Building Structures associated with Courtyards or
Outdoor Activity Areas
1: Sha’ar Hagolan, 2: ‘Ain Ghazal (Yarmoukian), 3: Tell Wadi Feinan,
4: Tabaqat al-Bûma (Phase 3)(1: Garfinkel and Miller 2002, 2: Rollefson 1997, 3: Najjar 1992, 4:
Kadowaki 2007)
construction and use, such as streets and alleys at Sha’ar Hagolan (Garfinkel andMiller 2002) and Yarmoukian ‘Ain Ghazal (Rollefson and Kafafi 1994) and awell at Sha’ar Hagolan (Garfinkel et al. 2006). In interpreting the social
significance of these cases, it is necessary to consider what social unit was
relevant; rather than viewing streets and wells as either village-wide orhousehold-based tasks, we can also assume intermediate scales of socialgroupings, which may correspond to “extended households” in Garfinkel’s term
(2002) or the “neighbourhoods” that Düring proposes (2007).
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VI. Summary
As mentioned earlier, a wide range of cultural changes occurred at the transition
from the Late PPNB to LN, which also manifested themselves as the drasticchange in the settlement pattern from aggregated villages to a mixture ofdispersed farmsteads and villages. Existing accounts for this Neolithic culturalchange consider various factors, including environmental conditions, subsistence
activities, population growth, and political dimensions of communities. To
propose an alternative perspective on this cultural change, I argue that dynamic
ecological, demographic, and social factors from the PPNB to LN period
influenced the nature of Neolithic households, such as the size of households,
the activities they performed, and the relationships among them.
The earlier discussions in this paper suggest that increase in the autonomy
of households in the performance of production and consumption activities
during the PPNB can be explained as a result of reduced opportunities forforming communal works in agricultural and hunting activities. Forming
communal works was impractical because of diversified subsistence activities
and conflicting labour schedules, which resulted from resource depletion around
Neolithic settlements due to climatic change, overexploitation, and population
growth. The introduction of domesticated animals and the concomitant declineof collective hunting were other factors contributing to the diversification ofsubsistence activities and the reduction of communal activities. The reduced
sharing of community labour can explain the increase of household size in the
Late PPNB and LN because it was advantageous for households to maintain alarge labour force when they are mutually independent.
I argue that increase in the autonomy and size of households during the
PPNB period provides a historical background for the ultimate change insettlement patterns at the transition to the LN. The reorganization of early
agricultural villages would not have occurred without the alteration ofhouseholds, which was induced by both ecological (environmental depletion,high population pressure on lands, etc.) and social conditions (enhanced private
ownership and the decline of communal labour organization). I propose that
there was a recursive relationship between households and social organizationsin PPNB villages. Households were regulated by and, at the same time, createdcommunal regulatory activities through their participation in both ritual andsubsistence activities. Therefore, any subtle change in household activities could
have had a significant impact on social rules, which recursively influenced thedecision-making processes of households. In the case of PPNB villages, more
complex labour scheduling among households undermined the foundation ofVol. XLVII 201221

community labour organization that had previously both provided individual
households with a necessary labour force and maintained community solidarity.
The model outlined in this paper is still preliminary, and requires further
supporting evidence. To this end, in addition to architecture, analyzing the social
contexts of daily production and consumption activities can be an effective
method for obtaining insights into social relations at early agriculturalcommunities in the Near East.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ted Banning for his support for my doctoral research, on
which this study is partly based. I am also grateful to Kazuya Shimogama for
preparing Fig. 1. I am, however, responsible for any shortcomings in this paper.
Funding for this research was provided by a Connaught Scholarship of the
University of Toronto (2002-2006), the Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists B of
the JSPS KAKENHI (23720382), and the Takanashi Foundation for Arts andArcheology.
Notes
1 The Late Neolithic (LN) period in the southern Levant is also called the Pottery Neolithic

because of the appearance of pottery at the beginning of this period. Moore (1973) defined theterm Late Neolithic in opposition to the preceding time period, Early Neolithic, whichcorresponds to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic or Aceramic Neolithic (Rollefson 1998). The term Late
Neolithic is used in this study because pottery is not usually associated with the Late Neolithic
sites in the badia/eastern desert (Betts 1998).
2 In these regions, only Abu Hureyra documents a growth and reduction of settlement size
comparable to the scale and timing of the southern Levantine “Mega-Site” Phenomena (from
Period 2B to 2C: Moore 2000: 267-275). However, the establishment of Late or Final PPNB
settlements and their abandonment by the early LN, documented at Bouqras (Akkermans et al.
1983), El Kowm (Stordeur 2000), Sabi Abyad II (Verhoeven and Akkermans 2000), Seker alAheimar (Nishiaki and Le Mière 2005), Magzaliya (Bader 1993) among others, can beunderstood as reflecting the reorganization of settlement systems similar to the southern
Levantine cases. In the northern Levant and Anatolia, however, the regional studies at the Rouj
Basin (Tsuneki and Miyake 1996) and the Konya Plains (Baird 2005) suggest that the peak of
aggregated occupations at el-Kerkh and Çatalhöyük was during the Late Neolithic, followed bya shift to dispersed settlement patterns.

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