1 Frieze of Royal Cobras from the Southern Tomb at SaqqaraIntro Notes● Catchment Area- the land surrounding a community that provides all the foods, crops, etc. to feed the city-state. ○ The size and function of a city-state is dependent on the catchment area.● Processual Archaeology- using archaeology to come to the conclusion of what people were doing. ● Cognitive Archaeology- using archaeology to discover how people felt and what they believed. ● The Archaeology Sample- archaeologist always deal with samples, never 100% and from that sample must piece together the rest.Near East/ Fertile Crescent(From Persian Gulf through Zagros Mountains to Levant, upper Euphrates, East of TaurusMountains)● The archaeological context- what is found during excavation and survey (the physical remains of tools, pots, bones, houses, etc) and the relationships between those artifacts and features that help us interpret the functions of the buildings and sites in which they are discovered. The goal is to recover, define, and interpret.○ Features■ buildings (homes, city walls, temples, etc.)○ Artifacts- things made by humans■ Pottery (can tell us about food storage, preparation, and consumption, scale of civilization, and certain functions we can derive from inferences from the pottery). The change of pottery through time can help us date archaeological sites.■ Sculptures and carvings■ Weapons, helmets, armor (can indicate status for example - which is comparable to gang culture in the united states)○ Ecofacts- remains of plants or animals used or exploited by humans■ Stone tools and metal tools, bones, organic plant material○ Matrix- the stratigraphic layers of occupation at a site■ Can tell us when things were happening● Systemic Context○ For example, this building was a ____,○ Interpreting what something was used for can be a hard sometimes, and false2○ The archaeological context is used to find the systemic which ○ Analogies are used to bridge the archaeological and systemic contexts■ Shortfalls: analogies has different meanings or don’t exist at all in differentcultures■ Broader meanings began to be used(List of similarities between the Neolithic sites)● Large, town-sized village farming communities● In many ways are urbanized, yet are not cities○ Sophisticated art and architecture○ Clear community concerns and administered endeavors○ Craft specialization○ Long-distance trade○ Sizable populations● Communal efforts, monumental building, material culture● Lack of centralization● Rank system (as opposed to class/ stratified system) ○ Rank: Standing gained through family history and/or achievements, Class: Born as a plebeian or noble, class cannot change● Neolithic○ Shift from hunter gathering to larger scale communities because of sedentism■ Subsistence is a baseline of how much food you need for the community to survive● As early as 10,000 BC, there were permanent settlements, but there's still evidence that they still hunted and moved towards total agriculturalism○ Sedentism is a prerequisite for agriculture, but another way is that agriculture is aco-requisite for sedentism. So we don't know which one came first, or if they bothevolved over time at the same time○ Systems theory approach - once you begin controlling and producing more and better crops for food and being to be able to produce more and better food, that leads to a larger and healthier population○ You can't travel with 10k people, so the larger population hinders mobility and tends towards more sedentary behavior○ They would pick and choose crops that were more resilient as well as bringing in foreign crops and they got better with predicting weather patterns and which crops grow better. Bringing in other crops is a risk buffering mechanism because by diversifying the crops, if one fails there is another to take its place. ● Agricultural diversity can lead to a certain degree of economic diversity also.○ You can get secondary products from animals■ Examples: fertilizer, milk, cheese, wool, oils○ Also, as you exploit the "in-field" you essentially expand your territory○ Generally, the smaller the community, the more likely they can raise animals, andthen kill them off and eat them and not have to worry about large scale production of secondary products○ Crop diversification leads to variation in soil and gives you more areas of landJericho3● Was a “tell” (Arabic for “mound”)- a buildup of debris from successive phases of human occupation at the site● Contained a spring, and was well watered around the area. ● Slit trenches○ trenches dug to bisect the mounds to see through the layers b/c traditionally, everything is destroyed on top to get down to the lowest layers● Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Phase (9000 BC-7000 BC) (lower levels of the mound)○ 3-4 hectares (extraordinarily large)○ Single-room, circular planned homes with mud-brick building material & sunken clay floors; large in size■ houses were probably densely packed in the settlement■ space between houses likely accommodated communal food-processing, industrial, and possibly food storage activities- shows importance of the household within a community (called an open settlement plan).○ Fortification wall and ditch with a tower that contained storage units for communial use.● Pre-Pottery Neolithic B phase (7000-6000 BC)○ Houses were large, rectangular, architecturally complex with a number of rooms, installations, and possibly courtyards○ The household control of work areas, storage facilities, and even water conservation may indicate an increased emphasis on the family as the basic economic unit in the town, which is a shift from an egalitarian to a potentially more stratified community○ Contained a single shrine-like room (not proven to be actual shrines) with a stonebase and a single stone or basalt column. ● Intramural burials- within the settlement itself○ Skulls were found removed from their skeletons after primary burial ○ Skulls were arranged in groups (sometimes circles) in pits under the floors of houses- secondary burial○ The skulls were decorated- cranial cavity filled with clay, shells put in the eyes○ Conclusion- These burials indicate…. ■ the importance of the household as an identifying social unit ■ that only certain individuals or families could claim a special status since not all of the intramural burials