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Introduction
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August 2015 - March 2016
Publications
Publications (37)
The goal of this contribution is to stimulate a wider reflection on the role of food consumption practices throughout prehistory. We focussed on the Jōmon communities of Hokkaidō Island in Northern Japan since these mobile foragers underwent a process of economic diversification and intensification, eventually leading to higher levels of sedentism...
In Southwest Asia, early ceramics are generally associated with sedentary farming communities. This is unlike many other parts of Asia, where ceramics were first manufactured by hunter-gatherers. Radiocarbon evidence indicates that sustained production of ceramic containers (pottery) began at several sites in Anatolia, Upper Mesopotamia and the nor...
Supplementary Information for The impact of environmental change on the use of
early pottery by East Asian hunter-gatherers
Significance
The motivations for the widespread adoption of pottery is a key theme in world prehistory and is often linked to climate warming at the start of the Holocene. Through organic residue analysis, we investigated the contents of >800 ceramic samples from across the Japanese archipelago, a unique assemblage that transcends the Pleistocene–H...
The Neolithic in north-east Asia is defined by the presence of ceramic containers, rather than agriculture, among hunter-gatherer communities. The role of pottery in such groups has, however, hitherto been unclear. This article presents the results of organic residue analysis of Neolithic pottery from Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Result...
Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins...
Significance
Pottery has had a central role in human society for many millennia, but the reasons for the emergence and spread of this technology are poorly understood. First invented by groups of hunter–gatherers living in East Asia during the last glacial period, production only began to flourish with rising global temperatures in the Holocene, bu...
The Neolithic is a key topic in the study of Old World prehistory but how the Neolithic is defined varies between regions. In East Asia the invention of pottery is often seen as marking the start of the Neolithic. In contrast to this ‘eastern’ perspective, in western parts of Eurasia it is the presence of agriculture that usually defines the onset...
The invention of ceramic objects made from fire-hardened clay represents an important and early step in the development of pyrotechnology. This paper examines pottery invention and innovation by hunter-gatherers in East Asia and by farmers in the Near East to examine how prehistoric communities in different socio-economic systems came to rely heavi...
Largely missing from the debate surrounding the use of pottery among arctic and subarctic hunter-gatherers are site-based biomolecular studies of vessel contents. This study used lipid-residue analysis to elucidate vessel function at Nunalleq (GDN-248), a late Thule-period coastal village site in the Yup'ik area of Western Alaska. In total, 31 pott...
This article introduces a method of exploratory analysis of the geographical factors influencing large-scale innovation diffusion, and illustrates its application to the case of early pottery dispersal in the Old World. Regression tech-niques are used to identify broad-scale spatiotemporal trends in the innovation's first occurrence, and regression...
This article introduces a method of exploratory analysis of the geographical factors influencing large-scale innovation diffusion, and illustrates its application to the case of early pottery dispersal in the Old World. Regression techniques are used to identify broad-scale spatiotemporal trends in the innovation's first occurrence, and regression...
Pottery was a hunter-gatherer innovation that first emerged in East Asia between 20,000 and 12,000 calibrated years before present (cal bp), towards the end of the Late Pleistocene epoch, a period of time when humans were adjusting to changing climates and new environments. Ceramic container technologies were one of a range of late glacial adaptati...
This article examines Siberia's increasingly important role in the study of the emergence of pottery across northern Eurasia. The world's earliest pottery comes from Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer sites in East Asia. This material is typically seen as disconnected from later pottery traditions in Europe, which are generally associated with sedent...
As in more northerly parts of the Fertile Crescent, archaeologists have largely neglected the Late Neolithic of the southern Levant relative to the preceding Pre-Pottery Neolithic and succeeding Chalcolithic periods. Even its basic chronology and cultural typology remain contested. Our understanding of social, economic, and symbolic dimensions of t...
Compared to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), evidence for potentially symbolic imagery is rare in the Late Neolithic of the Southern Levant, consisting primarily of figurines and decorated pottery. While the symbolic roles of fi gurines have occasionally been discussed, studies of decorated pottery have usually focused on developing chronologies...
Discussions of the emergence of pottery have often focused on the development of durable vessels among sedentary societies. However, there is increasing appreciation of the fact that early pottery was sometimes used by mobile groups, such as Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in East Asia and perhaps Late Neolithic pastoral nomads in the Near East....
In this paper we present evidence for some of the changes in material culture over a millennium or so at the small Late Neolithic settlement of Tabaqat al-Bûma, in northern Jordan, and attempt to place them in the wider context of the 6th millennium cal BC. The successive occupations of farmsteads at this site provide small but relatively well-date...
The Wadi Ziqlab Project of University of Toronto continued excavations at al-Basâtîn in northern Jordan. The site shows substantial remains from the Late Neolithic (Wadi Rabah) and Early Bronze I periods, with more subtle evidence of PPNB and Classical periods. The site’s Late Neolithic remains show strong parallels to the site of Tabaqat al-Bûma,...
Excavations at al-Basatîn in Wadi Ziqlab, northern Jordan, have recovered evidence for an EB I occupation at the site, in addition to strata dating to the Late Neolithic and Classical periods. Artifacts and a series of radiocarbon assays indicate this occupation dates to the early EB I. Analyses of the pottery, stone tools, and faunal remains sugge...
This paper presents direct evidence of subsistence practices and pottery use at a Late Neolithic site at al-Basatîn, northern Jordan. Measurable concentrations of C16:0 and C18:0 were recovered from 8 of 10 archaeological pottery fragments through use of a microwave-assisted silica gel and aminopropyl solvent protocol developed for the isolation an...
In June and July of 2009, the University of Toronto's Wadi Ziqlab Project resumed excavations at al-Basatîn, where evidence of occupation during the Epipalaeolithic, Late Neolithic (c.5800-5300 cal BC), and Early Bronze Age (c.3500 cal BC) is buried in a colluvium. The EBI architecture includes substantial parts of two circular or oval buildings an...
Research in Wadi Ziqlab, Northern Jordan, has focused on the discovery and excavation of Late Neolithic sites in an attempt to understand its regional settlement system in the sixth millennium cal. BC. Previous evidence suggested that small hamlets or farmsteads may have characterized this settlement system, as represented at Tabaqat al-Bûma. Recen...
The Wadi Ziqlab Project of University of Toronto conducted two seasons of excavations at al-Basâtîn in northern Jordan, which its survey had discovered in 2000. The site’s Late Neolithic remains include well-preserved cobble floors and outdoor surfaces with dense neolithic debris, part of at least one late neolithic structure, and some stone and cl...
Projects
Projects (2)
For many years, we have been investigating the late prehistory of northern Jordan, with a particular focus on the previously under-documented Late Neolithic or Early Chalcolithic. This has involved surveys in the drainage basins of Wadi Ziqlab, Wadi Taiyyiba, and, most recently, Wadi Quseiba. Excavated sites include Tabaqat al-Bûma, al-Basatin, Tell Rakan, 'Uyyun al-Hammam, Jawafat Shaban, and Dar Quseiba. Our aim is to learn more about the Pottery Neolithic in this region, including its pottery, lithic technology, and settlement systems.
To test the use of Bayesian optimal allocation and sweep widths in archaeological survey and to investigate landscape archaeology of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of northern Jordan in the region between Taiyyiba and the Jordan Valley.
