INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

Other important New World crops are beans, chili peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and peanuts,
many crucial today to world economies and international cuisines. Don’t forget those non-food
crops, tobacco, coca, and other drugs and industrial materials.
What animals were domesticated in the New World? The dog came in early, probably with the
first Paleolithic hunters. Others were South American camelids (llama, alpaca, vicuna) and
guinea pigs, with occasional wild turkeys under human control.
Why so few? Probably because there were few around to control. Horses and other large
mammals became extinct at the end of the Ice Age, not to return until brought back by the
Europeans. Was this the reason that there were no wheeled vehicles in North and South
America—that there were no large animals to pull them? Probably not, since we do have
prehistoric Mexican toys with wheels, and humans can pull carts too. What about the hogs that
run around Florida and get shot during hog season? These are not native but are descendants of
the pigs brought by the Spanish, which got loose and went feral in the forest!
What will look different about archaeological sites after the beginning of food production?
Besides evidence of genetically changed species, we will see larger settlements, more dense
populations, more storage space, some evidences of social inequality, and more permanent
structures, but not everywhere and not all at once.
How does some of this evidence appear at the Ain Mallaha site in the Jordan valley of Israel?
This very early village dates from 11,000 to 9000 B.C. Stone houses with querns, grinding
stones, set into the floor indicate more permanent settlement. But there are wild grains and
remains of gazelle and other wild animals.
What does the evidence show of the development of domestication at Tell Abu Hureya in
northern Syria? A tell is a mound of debris from successive habitation sites. Here we have
uninterrupted occupation from 10,500 to 6000 B.C., with a record of the changes that happened
during the transition from wild food collecting to farming and herding. Wild wheat, rye, lentil,
and gazelle become replaced by cultivated cereals and domesticated sheep and goats over a time
span of 2,500 years. Plastered mud brick houses were relatively permanent.
How does the 10,000 years of occupation of the tell at Jericho tell us of culture change? A rich
oasis in the Jordan Valley, it was a biblical city, but much earlier Neolithic levels were excavated
by Dame Kathleen Kenyon (shown digging in a skirt, p. 215 and color picture in Fagan 1985).
Similar grinding stones, permanent houses, traces of grain, and wild gazelle giving way to sheep
and goats were found. But this article also emphasizes trade items from long distances, such as
salt, tar, and sulphur from the Dead Sea and turquoise, shell, obsidian, and greenstone from
elsewhere in the region. A Neolithic=period stone tower, wall, and ditch surrounded the site; this
was a major group construction project requiring some direction and fancy planning. Was it all
for defense, and if so, from whom? Later interpretations suggest that it was fortification against
flooding and a tower for storage or community gatherings for social or ritual reasons. Jericho is
also famous for early Neolithic human burials with plastered skulls remodeled to look like heads.
What might this ritual treatment mean?