Pre History - the archaeology of the ancient Near East

Today we say goodbye to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B with a look at the collapse of the PPNB world system. Of course, as it is still up in the air as to whether we ever actually HAD a PPNB world system, we can also have a look at whether or not we actually have a PPNB collapse. Have a listen and tell me what you think. Does the PPNB collapse, or not?

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

Now that we have had a good look at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in most of the Near East, this time we are travelling over to Cyprus. Cyprus also has a Pre-Pottery Neolithic, but it isn't exactly what we might expect based on what we know about the Neolithic in the rest of the Near East. Looking at the wonderful Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Cyprus changes the way that we think about the process of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and Neolithic life, in all of the Near East.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

Now that we have seen how people moved over to growing rather than gathering their own food, and settled into villages with the birth of communal village life, we can have a look at some of the other developments happening across the Near East during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. We can also see how the scale of these changes happening across the Near East has impacted how we understand the scale of social networks between people and between communities in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Depending, of course, on how you look at it.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

This week we are looking at what life was like in Neolithic settlements, and how these have changed from the first permanent houses that we found in the Late Epipalaeolithic. Both time periods have houses, and in some cases the houses are not all that different. However, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic we no longer just get houses, we get villages - and the village life that goes along with it.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

Last week we looked at the move from collecting to growing our own food during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic by discussing the process of plant domestication. This week we complete this change in how we fed ourselves by looking at the process of domesticating food that has a tendency to wander off a bit more than plants do - animals.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

This week we will be starting on the Neolithic, the last of our three stone ages. As a lot of big things happen in the Neolithic, we can't do everything in one episode so I am breaking it up and spreading the Neolithic across a series of episodes which will deal with the different big events. This week, we start with the first of these big changes: the change from gathering our food to growing it ourselves.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

Last time we looked at whether or not we could really think of the earlier Epipalaeolithic as being something distinctly different from the later Upper Palaeolithic. This week we look at the later Epipalaeolithic, which is definitely different from the Upper Palaeolithic and even pretty distinct from the earlier Epipalaeolithic. We look at the end of the ice age and the beginning of the Holocene, some animals which we domesticated - or which may have domesticated us - and how we settled down into the Holocene world of the Near East in the later Epipalaeolithic.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

The Epipalaeolithic - the period from the Last Glacial Maximum to just before the beginning of farming - is an awkward period to characterise in the prehistory of the Near East. Mostly this is because the division between the Upper Palaeolithic and the earlier part of the Epipalaeolithic is a bit murky. This week we will look at this division, and see what changes, and what actually does not change as we move into the Epipalaeolithic.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me [email protected] or reach me on the website at prehistorypodcast.com

This week we continue our look at the Upper Palaeolithic of the Near East with a look at what people were eating, and how they were eating it. Life is not just about food though, even for Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. So, we will also look at how Upper Palaeolithic people dressed and decorated themselves, visited with other people and swapped goods and ideas in their extensive social networks.

If you have any comments or questions you can reach me at [email protected] or on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.

Last week we said goodbye to our cousins the Neanderthals and stood along as the only people species in the Near East. This week we shall see what we humans got up to in the Upper Palaeolithic now that we had the whole place to ourselves.

If you have any comments or questions you can reach me at [email protected] or on the website at prehistorypodcast.com.