The flow of ideas: shared symbolism between WF16 in the south and Göbekli Tepe in the north during Neolithic emergence in south-west Asia

Mithen, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3391-7443, Richardson, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7376-8948 and Finlayson, B. (2023) The flow of ideas: shared symbolism between WF16 in the south and Göbekli Tepe in the north during Neolithic emergence in south-west Asia. Antiquity. ISSN 1745-1744 doi: 10.15184/aqy.2023.67

Abstract/Summary

The transition from hunter-gatherer to farming lifestyles involved changes in all aspects of human lifeways: how food was acquired, technology, patterns of mobility, settlement size and architecture; demography and social relations; ideas of ownership, property, and ideology. With such all-encompassing change, a gradual emergence of farming is more likely than a short-term Neolithic revolution within each centre of origin. Similarly, the transition is likely to have been a spatially diffuse process: plant cultivation, animal herding, sedentism, and so forth, developing independently in different localities. New ideas, tools, cultivated seed and other items would have flowed through spatially extensive social networks, coalescing in favourable environmental and cultural circumstances to create a diversity of farming lifestyles. We provide further evidence for the social networks that underpinned the emergence of farming in SW Asia by describing previously unrecognised symbolic connections between the northern and southern Levant.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/108178
Identification Number/DOI	10.15184/aqy.2023.67
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Social Archaeology Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Department of Archaeology
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
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