Becoming Neolithic examines the revolutionary transformation of human life that was taking place around 12,000 years ago in parts of southwest Asia. Hunter-gatherer communities were building the first permanent settlements, creating public monuments and symbolic imagery, and beginning to cultivate crops and manage animals.
These communities changed the tempo of cultural, social, technological and economic innovation. Trevor Watkins sets the story of becoming Neolithic in the context of contemporary cultural evolutionary theory. There have been 70 years of international inter-disciplinary research in the field and in the laboratory. Stage by stage, he unfolds an up-to-date understanding of the archaeology, the environmental and climatic evidence and the research on the slow domestication of plants and animals. Turning to the latest theoretical work on cultural evolution and cultural niche construction, he shows why the transformation accomplished in the Neolithic began to accelerate the scale and tempo of human history. Everything that followed the Neolithic, up to our own times, has happened in a different way from the tens of thousands of years of human evolution that preceded it.
This well-documented account offers a useful synthesis for students of prehistoric archaeology and anyone with an interest in our prehistoric roots. This new narrative of the first rapid transformation in human evolution is also informative to those interested in cultural evolutionary theory.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1 A Concentration of Opportunity
2 Changing Subsistence Strategies: Foraging to Farming
3 Changing Subsistence Strategies: Hunting and Herding
4 Early Epipalaeolithic – The Transformation Begins
5 Complex Hunter-Harvesters in the Levant and beyond
6 Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic – Transforming Their World
7 Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic – Climax
8 Further Transformation: Dispersal and Expansion
9 The Evolutionary Framework for the Story
10 The Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic Transformation: The Pivot of Cultural Evolution
11 The Problem of Neolithic Religion
12 The Triple A: Aggregation, Acceleration, Anthropocene
About the Author :
Trevor Watkins is an emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh where he taught prehistoric archaeology of the east Mediterranean and southwest Asia for many years. He led excavations in Cyprus, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. For many years, his research has been focused on the Neolithic period in southwest Asia, between twelve and eight thousand years ago. In recent years, he has been concentrating on relating the results of recent archaeological research to the latest theoretical work by leading researchers in cognitive archaeology and the field of cultural evolutionary theory. If evolution takes place over time, then archaeologists should be able to document and calibrate the process with material evidence.
Review :
"Trevor Watkins is one of the most distinguished prehistoric archaeologists and Neolithic experts of our time,
and this publication is an unquestionable piece of highquality research. Becoming Neolithic is an outstanding
compendium of decades of archaeological investigations and scholarly discussions about the Neolithic in southwest Asia, which the author was able to collate, report, and discuss brilliantly. Watkins is by far the most suitable scholar to write a book about the Neolithic thanks to his years dedicated to research into this topic, and the text clearly reveals his zeal and passion. The scientific community has finally received an updated and long-awaited reference book about this area of research through the eyes of an internationally recognized authority in the field who managed to review and synthesize a large number of widely dispersed scholarly contributions and fragmentary archaeological data... The strength of this book is the extraordinary fluidity in tracing and summarizing more than 60 years of research output. Child, Mellaart, Braidwood, Cauvin, and other eminent scholars of the Neolithic are considered here and are criticized in light of current views in the field. Very few academics are capable not only of examining such a large amount of archaeological information but also of compiling generalized descriptions and comprehensive narratives out of messy and incomplete data... I strongly recommend this book to all readers, including those unfamiliar with the world of archaeology and prehistory... the volume is easy to read, accessible, and will be an excellent book for students as well."
~ Mattia Cartolano, American Journal of Archaeology, July 2024, Vol. 128, No. 3, pp. E048–049. https://doi.org/10.1086/731025.
“The Neolithic and its origins remain among the most debated topics in archaeology, with extensive literature on the subject. Adding a piece to this extensive narrative is no small feat, given the vast amount of ink already spent on this subject. Trevor Watkins’ book, Becoming Neolithic: The Pivot of Human History, succeeds in this challenge by offering an updated and comprehensive, yet succinct, account of the origins of the Neolithic, or, using his own words, the Epipalaeolithic- Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia. It includes numerous original theoretical insights that reflect the author’s scientific background and his personal contributions to the study of early Neolithic societies through cultural evolutionary theory... This book is highly recommended for all researchers working on the Neolithic, as well as those with a broader interest in human history. Although the book is academic in nature, its clear narrative of the evolution of hunter-gatherer societies from the Upper Palaeolithic to the threshold of the first Mesopotamian urban societies makes it a useful and accessible introduction for early-career students. This book offers a compelling read that merits multiple consultations. With each engagement, previously unnoticed ideas and details are likely to surface, deepening the reader’s understanding. The author’s background and theoretical expertise significantly enhance the debates on the origins of the Neolithic and its importance in human history.”
~ Niccolo Mazzucco (Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledges, University of Pisa, Italy), European Journal of Archaeology 2024.
