Neolithic Transitions in Southwest Asia: A Multi-Regional Perspective

The goal of this project is to prepare a major synthesis of the emergence of agriculture in the Near East, a momentuous development that changed the course of human history. The adoption of plant cultivation and animal husbandry enabled unprecedented population growth, sedentism, craft specialisation and the emergence of social inequalities, and foreshadowed the emergence of the first urban societies. In this study I will summarise and compile a major new overview of this period in the Near East. Over the course of the past two decades major fieldwork projects and laboratory studies have produced important new knowledge and information that this project will summarise and synthesise to arrive at an up-to-date overview and understanding of this crucial period in human history.