Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MARGINS (Pushing back the MARGINS: investigating the PPNC-Late Neolithic conquest of near-eastern arid lands through settlement pattern analyses and landscape studies)
Reporting period: 2022-08-29 to 2024-08-28
MARGINS intends to understand why and how, at the end of the Neolithic (PPNC-Late Neolithic, 7th-6th millennium), the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent witnessed a wide settlement growth, performed by groups involved in interregional networks but who developed their own socio-economic strategies. Despite intensified archaeological fieldwork, central questions remain unanswered concerning the complexity of this wide phenomenon: its roots, its causes, which subsistence and settlement strategies made it possible, the groups involved and their origin. Hypotheses are gradually strengthened but the discussions still lack a quantitative, diachronic and global approach as implemented with MARGINS. Relying for the first time upon statistical and spatial analyses of settlement patterns and territorial organization, the project allows to embrace this “conquest” of new lands in its spatial and temporal entirety and second, to reinforce analyses for comparing hypotheses with measurable arguments. The main innovative aspects of MARGINS are the possibility to set up a comparative approach on an inter-regional scale and the combination of statistics and remote sensing that are often applied separately. This protocol was designed to achieve MARGINS’ final objectives, which are 1) to propose renewed scenarios of ‘conquest’ of the Levantine arid steppes in the heyday of the neolithization process, and 2) to clarify the complexity of factors of influence (e.g. demographic, climatic, technical, social).
The first phase of the project led to the production of a comprehensive review, performed at an unprecedented scale, of both archaeological and environmental data covering the second half of the neolithization process in arid regions of the Levant. It includes data, both published and unpublished, from two dozens of international fieldwork programs implemented in inland Syria and north-eastern Jordan from the 1960s onwards. The resulting database is the cornerstone of the project. It contains 90% of the data used for the analyses, with the remaining 10% linked to environmental components being included in a GIS. I have defined 61 criteria to describe the 152 archaeological sites inventoried and their close context. The database is divided into two main tables. One table describes each site as a whole and the other table describes, when relevant, chronological phases per site.
Taking advantage of being part of the University of Chicago academia, where exploration of anthropological concepts and theoretical knowledge is strongly promoted, combined with an invitation to present a paper at the international conference held in Veracruz (Mexico) Frentes Pioneros: conquista de territorios a través de los siglos (Frontiers: territorial conquest through ages), I deeply explored conceptual aspects of the project such as ‘margins’ and ‘marginality’ in Prehistory and added the concept of ‘frontier’ that I proved to be applicable to the ‘conquest’ phenomenon of new arid lands in the Levant at the end of the neolithization process. The serendipitous timing of MARGINS and the Frentes Pioneros Conference provided a stimulating opportunity to rethink and discuss the analysis of the ‘colonization’ in light of the ‘frontier’ concept. Theorized and mainly used in geography for describing pre-modern and modern colonization process, it also found acceptance in historical studies for describing phenomena as old as the neolithization process in France (6th mill. cal. BCE; Manen & Amon 2018). By confronting archaeological data with the definition of the concept, I questioned the fact that the nine-millennium-old settlement expansion that occurred in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent could also be qualified as a ‘frontier’. I investigated this question by revisiting the following aspects of the ‘conquest’: its origins and motivations; the possibility/difficulty of distinguishing between indigenous populations and newcomers; the origin(s) of the ‘pioneers’; the settlement’s spatial progression and organization; and the sociocultural and economic aspects specific to these lands. I concluded that the Neolithic expansion in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent can indeed qualified as a frontier, the following aspects of the expansion falling into its definition:
◦ a colonization of (almost) inhabited territories;
◦ a progress along favored circulation axes (streams);
◦ an archipelago-like occupation;
◦ the coexistence of two different types of land-use (sedentary farmers vs. mobile herders-hunters).
In addition, early hypotheses that sought to explain the late Neolithic settlement shift posited that population movements reflected climatic deterioration, demographic pressure, and overgrazing that resulted in the collapse of the ‘megasites’ (Bocquet-Appel & Bar-Yosef 2008; Rollefson & Köhler-Rollefson 1989; Rollefson 2019). This presupposes a ‘colonization’ triggered by a constraining context, on the path to becoming unsustainable. I argue on the contrary in favor of a timely alignment combination of seized or provoked opportunities, with high levels of technical achievement in some fields, and attractiveness of resources from the Badia, related to fauna and minerals exploitation. Moreover, while acknowledging indisputable constraints, these regions were conducive for innovations and, following Rollefson (2011), the sustainable conquest of harsh environment should be considered as an achievement of the neolithization process and not a marginal phenomenon.
Taking advantage of being part of the University of Chicago academia, where exploration of anthropological concepts and theoretical knowledge is strongly promoted, combined with an invitation to present a paper at the international conference held in Veracruz (Mexico) Frentes Pioneros: conquista de territorios a través de los siglos (Frontiers: territorial conquest through ages), I deeply explored conceptual aspects of the project such as ‘margins’ and ‘marginality’ in Prehistory and added the concept of ‘frontier’ that I proved to be applicable to the ‘conquest’ phenomenon of new arid lands in the Levant at the end of the neolithization process. The serendipitous timing of MARGINS and the Frentes Pioneros Conference provided a stimulating opportunity to rethink and discuss the analysis of the ‘colonization’ in light of the ‘frontier’ concept. Theorized and mainly used in geography for describing pre-modern and modern colonization process, it also found acceptance in historical studies for describing phenomena as old as the neolithization process in France (6th mill. cal. BCE; Manen & Amon 2018). By confronting archaeological data with the definition of the concept, I questioned the fact that the nine-millennium-old settlement expansion that occurred in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent could also be qualified as a ‘frontier’. I investigated this question by revisiting the following aspects of the ‘conquest’: its origins and motivations; the possibility/difficulty of distinguishing between indigenous populations and newcomers; the origin(s) of the ‘pioneers’; the settlement’s spatial progression and organization; and the sociocultural and economic aspects specific to these lands. I concluded that the Neolithic expansion in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent can indeed qualified as a frontier, the following aspects of the expansion falling into its definition:
◦ a colonization of (almost) inhabited territories;
◦ a progress along favored circulation axes (streams);
◦ an archipelago-like occupation;
◦ the coexistence of two different types of land-use (sedentary farmers vs. mobile herders-hunters).
In addition, early hypotheses that sought to explain the late Neolithic settlement shift posited that population movements reflected climatic deterioration, demographic pressure, and overgrazing that resulted in the collapse of the ‘megasites’ (Bocquet-Appel & Bar-Yosef 2008; Rollefson & Köhler-Rollefson 1989; Rollefson 2019). This presupposes a ‘colonization’ triggered by a constraining context, on the path to becoming unsustainable. I argue on the contrary in favor of a timely alignment combination of seized or provoked opportunities, with high levels of technical achievement in some fields, and attractiveness of resources from the Badia, related to fauna and minerals exploitation. Moreover, while acknowledging indisputable constraints, these regions were conducive for innovations and, following Rollefson (2011), the sustainable conquest of harsh environment should be considered as an achievement of the neolithization process and not a marginal phenomenon.
The timing of the implementation of MARGINS is particularly relevant in regards of the research dynamic on the Neolithic in arid areas of West Asia. The questions raised during the conception of MARGINS start to more broadly come to mind of the Neolithic community working in particular in the adjacent steppe and desert regions of the Arabic Peninsula. The project results contribute to increase our general knowledge of the completion of the neolithization process in West Asia. Its unique approach of trans-regional analysis of settlement dynamics has the potential to become a key method to help clarify Prehistoric connection patterns between arid margins of the Fertile Crescent. Review of data from the entire region under study and preliminary results already demonstrate, as questioned in the research objective of MARGINS, that this area, where neolithic communities developed their own trajectories for resilience and growth in marginal environments, was not socio-economically marginal. On the contrary, it has proved they should be considered as fully being part of the neolithization process in West Asia and deserve a more central position in the wider discussion. Moreover, the next question is now to determine if they were not one of the central driving forces for the diffusion of the neolithization in the farthest reaches of the Neolithic core area. The demonstration of the ‘frontier’ phenomenon appears critical in particular as a new angle of study to better understand this colonization of new lands by pioneer communities. The Neolithic settlement dynamism of these, nowadays, deserted areas has been shown to the general public through the example of the Black Desert of Jordan in the framework of the special exhibition Pioneer of the Sky: Aerial Archaeology and the Black Desert, curated by MARGINS fellow M.-L. Chambrade at the ISAC Museum of the University of Chicago.