Periodic Reporting for period 4 - MENTICA (The Middle East Neolithic Transition: Integrated Community Approaches)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30
What lessons can we learn from the prehistoric past about disruption, and human engagement with it? One of the first global disruptions faced by human societies was the Neolithic transition from mobile forager-hunter to settled farmer-herder in the Epi-Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic periods of the Middle East, 17,000-7000 BCE. Human communities worked through this disruption, including climate change, to enable complex societies to thrive and to form the basis for later cities, empires and civilisations. In the MENTICA project we research the Early Neolithic transition in a core region through application of cutting-edge methods within a theoretical framework of community and ‘collective identity’ as interpretive concepts. This research addresses an integrated suite of ‘Grand Challenges for Archaeology’, including: human responses to abrupt climate change; the emergence of agricultural economies; the management and domestication of plants and animals; the multi-scalar organisation of human communities; the resilience and transformation of societies; the formation of human identities; and health and well-being in prehistory. These issues are of major importance to society today given the challenges faced by all of us within the context of rapid climate change and associated environmental impacts.
Through the six years of this project we have met MENTICA’s aims and objectives as stated in the Description of the Action. In particular, we wish to underline the following achievements. Firstly, despite extreme challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic on top of more regular difficulties in conducting large-scale collaborative field research in Iraq, we have been able to carry out a total of seven major field seasons in Iraqi Kurdistan. These field activities included four seasons (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023) at the Early Neolithic site of Bestansur and three seasons (2021, 2022, 2023) at the Late Epipalaeolithic-Early Neolithic site of Zawi Chemi Rezan. We spent a total of 12 months in the field across the six years of the project, as originally planned. What was not possible through the project’s lifetime was the conduct of new fieldwork in Iran, as originally proposed. But the work across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan enabled us to meet all the project’s aims and objectives.
Through the six years of this project we have met MENTICA’s aims and objectives as stated in the Description of the Action. In particular, we wish to underline the following achievements. Firstly, despite extreme challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic on top of more regular difficulties in conducting large-scale collaborative field research in Iraq, we have been able to carry out a total of seven major field seasons in Iraqi Kurdistan. These field activities included four seasons (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023) at the Early Neolithic site of Bestansur and three seasons (2021, 2022, 2023) at the Late Epipalaeolithic-Early Neolithic site of Zawi Chemi Rezan. We spent a total of 12 months in the field across the six years of the project, as originally planned. What was not possible through the project’s lifetime was the conduct of new fieldwork in Iran, as originally proposed. But the work across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan enabled us to meet all the project’s aims and objectives.
Throughout the project lifespan, major progress has been achieved in addressing the six Work Packages of the project. In WP1, ‘the archaeology of communities and community archaeology’, we have conducted extensive excavations at the project key sites, as detailed above, and we have engaged in multiple local outreach activities, including assisting with the redesign of the Prehistory Gallery at Slemani Museum, Sulaimaniyah, which features many objects and ideas from the MENTICA project. We have also held regular information sessions about the project with local communities in Sulaimaniyah province of Iraqi Kurdistan, including school and university visits. In WP2, ‘changing environments and community food-ways’, we have recovered, recorded, analysed and begun to synthesise large bodies of data relating to the environment and to community food-ways. Thus evidence from charred plant remains attesting ancient environments and food production and consumption has been studied by project archaeobotanists, Charlotte Diffey and Hannah Caroe, while the evidence of animal remains has been analysed by project zooarchaeologists, Donna de Groene and Gwendoline Maurer over the project duration. Taken together with other recovered evidence, we can characterise the food-ways of the communities at the sites of Zawi Chemi Rezan and Bestansur as highly transitional between mobile hunter-gatherer and settled farmer-herder, which makes these two sites of unique importance for studying the earliest stages in this great transformation in the human narrative. In WP3, ‘creating communities: built environment design, use and social relations’, our excavations at Zawi Chemi Rezan, c. 8800 BCE, uncovered semi-subterranean oval or circular structures probably used as seasonal shelters, while at Bestansur, c. 7700-7100 BCE, we have exposed an extensive area of mudbrick architecture attesting sophisticated planning and construction capabilities at a very early stage in the development of village life. Through the application of multiple techniques, including micromorphology, we are able to reconstruct daily and seasonal activities such as food preparation and cooking, rubbish disposal, tool making and repairing, and building construction and maintenance within buildings and across the settlement.
For WP 4, ‘communities of the dead: demography, diet and disease’, the work of Sam Walsh was critical in establishing protocols for recording and analysing the large number of human skeletons encountered in our excavations at Bestansur. This work has been greatly enhanced and enlarged by osteoarchaeologist, Giulia Ragazzon, who has overseen the excavation and processing of up to 80 human skeletons from Bestansur, many of them small children and adolescents. This is a uniquely important assemblage of human remains from this period, which are generating multiple new insights into disease, diet, and demography during the transition to a more settled lifestyle in the Early Neolithic period. In WP5, ‘connected communities of craft’, Amy Richardson’s detailed analysis of artefacts including beads, tokens, and stone objects demonstrates the wide-ranging networks of movement of materials and objects across the Middle East during the Neolithic period. Roger Matthews’ analysis of chipped stone tools of chert and obsidian, plus other colleagues’ work on ground stone tools, use-wear analysis and residue analysis are all contributing to a picture of considerable sophistication and specialisation in craft activity by the Early Neolithic period. Finally, In WP6, ‘Epipalaeolithic-Early Neolithic communities and early global disruption: thematic investigations’, all project members have been highly active in sharing their data, methodologies and interpretations to generate innovative multi-stranded narratives regarding this major transition in the human-environment narrative.
For WP 4, ‘communities of the dead: demography, diet and disease’, the work of Sam Walsh was critical in establishing protocols for recording and analysing the large number of human skeletons encountered in our excavations at Bestansur. This work has been greatly enhanced and enlarged by osteoarchaeologist, Giulia Ragazzon, who has overseen the excavation and processing of up to 80 human skeletons from Bestansur, many of them small children and adolescents. This is a uniquely important assemblage of human remains from this period, which are generating multiple new insights into disease, diet, and demography during the transition to a more settled lifestyle in the Early Neolithic period. In WP5, ‘connected communities of craft’, Amy Richardson’s detailed analysis of artefacts including beads, tokens, and stone objects demonstrates the wide-ranging networks of movement of materials and objects across the Middle East during the Neolithic period. Roger Matthews’ analysis of chipped stone tools of chert and obsidian, plus other colleagues’ work on ground stone tools, use-wear analysis and residue analysis are all contributing to a picture of considerable sophistication and specialisation in craft activity by the Early Neolithic period. Finally, In WP6, ‘Epipalaeolithic-Early Neolithic communities and early global disruption: thematic investigations’, all project members have been highly active in sharing their data, methodologies and interpretations to generate innovative multi-stranded narratives regarding this major transition in the human-environment narrative.
Taken as a whole, the project team working together generated a significant breakthrough with regard to the advancement of our understanding of the Neolithic Transition in the Middle East. Through excavation and analysis of multi-stranded evidence from the sites of Zawi Chemi Rezan and Bestansur, we have demonstrated that communities still largely dependent on hunted and gathered food resources were fully capable of developing sophisticated craft and architectural skills and knowledge long pre-dating significant reliance on domesticated crops and animals as major food resources. Our project has added a whole new component to the stages of that major transition in the human condition, which will be of lasting relevance to all future studies of this broad topic.