Abstract

Our understanding of the Neolithic transition and its development has expanded greatly in recent years due, in part, to the ongoing analysis of the manufacture and use of stone tools. This volume represents the eighth in a series of workshops initiated in 1993 with the aim of documenting lithic technology across this pivotal era of social and economic change, while enhancing the correlation between analytical vocabularies and methodologies. The volume contains 42 chapters by both established and emerging scholars. They present data from new sites that challenge prior perspectives on the timing and direction of Neolithic expansion across Southwest Asia. While the origins of the earliest Neolithic (PPNA) lithic technology in the preceding Epi-Palaeolithic (Natufian) illustrate continuities in the different regions of the Levant, these new data support polycentric or non-centric perspectives of Neolithic development, and contribute to a more complex, multi-linear assessment of diffusion. The range of papers present recently discovered evidence documenting an earlier Neolithic expansion to the Southern Levant along routes including the desert interior, and the PPNA expansion to Cyprus, highlighted by parallel lithic traditions and dependent on Neolithic advances in seafaring. Neolithisation of the Caucasus and the Aegean is examined in terms of the spread of complex pressure modalities at the end of the PPN and in the early PN period. The pace and direction of Neolithic change preserved in accumulated corpuses of lithic data in all areas of the Near East begin to show more complex timing in the adoption of Neolithic technologies, distinctions in local contexts and tool adaptation to advances in agriculture. Together these studies provide an up-to-date and multifaceted perception of this transformative period of change.