Beyond the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B interaction sphere - University of ...

100 J World Prehist (2006) 20:87–126
originally proposed by Bar-Yosef and Belfer Cohen (1989) in order to define a broad-scale
explanatory framework that could accommodate a number of similarities observed between
different areas in lithic industries, architectural forms, subsistence practices and
symbolic expression. One of their contentions is that during the PPNB chronological
horizon exchange networks intensified, thus increasing the scope and opportunities for
acculturation and regional cultural integration (Fig. 6)
Importantly, the original concept of the ‘‘PPNB interaction sphere’’ (Bar-Yosef &
Belfer Cohen, 1989; Bar-Yosef, 2001b) contributed to models of acculturation a significant
socio-economic dimension that overall has received little explicit commentary in the literature.
By identifying a basic duality in the Levantine settlement patterns (with large
village sites occupying the ‘‘core area’’ of the Mediterranean woodland zone and smaller
forager sites being located in the arid and semi-arid areas of the southern Levant) it became
possible to establish a genuinely socio-economic Neolithic core-periphery system, which
was presumed to have been based on the manufacture and trade of ‘‘prestige goods’’, such
as obsidian, copper ores, sea shells, bitumen, turquoise, and Dabba marble (Figs. 7). The
directionality of such material and cultural exchanges was furthermore explicitly linked to
the assumed superior dynamics of the sedentary village political economies. The Neolithic
communities of cultivators and herders of the Levantine Corridor with their more advanced
technologies and societal institutions were thus taken to represent the main forces that set
the pace for region-wide social and economic developments such as plant cultivation,
agropastoralism and, later, pottery use. This was seen as particularly relevant in the
acculturation or colonization of less ‘‘developed’’, culturally ‘‘marginal’’ areas.
Fig. 6 PPNB tribal areas in mainland western Asia defined on the basis of regional material culture
assemblages (redrawn after Bar-Yosef, 2002)
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