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Feasting, Social Complexity, and the Emergence of the Early Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia: A View from Göbekli Tepe

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Feast, Famine or Fighting?

Part of the book series: Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation ((STHE,volume 8))

Abstract

Early Neolithic social complexity is a topic much discussed but still under-researched. The present contribution explores the possible role of feasting in the emergence of social complexity , hierarchical societies and the shift to the Neolithic way of life in Upper Mesopotamia . This region has long been placed at the periphery of the area relevant for crucial steps in Neolithization. With the hill sanctuary of Göbekli Tepe , however, it has produced a site that challenges this traditional assumption. There, large circle-like enclosures made up of often richly decorated T-shaped pillars of up to 5.5 m height have been erected during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (10th millennium BC), followed by smaller rectangular pillar-buildings throughout the early and middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (9th millennium BC). Vast evidence for feasting at the site seems to hint at work feasts to accomplish the common, religiously motivated task of constructing these enclosures. Given the significant amount of time, labor, and skilled craftsmanship invested, and as elements of Göbekli Tepe’s material culture can be found around it in a radius of roughly 200 km all over Upper Mesopotamia , it is likely that the site was the cultic center of transegalitarian groups. Access to and command of knowledge crucial to the society’s identity and well-being may have served as a social barrier hindering individuals to step outside of the given limits, while being the basis for power over the workforce of others for a restricted group of people. Social hierachization seems to emerge already in the PPN A of Upper Mesopotamia , earlier than hitherto thought, and maybe also earlier than in the Southern Levant, a region long thought to be the cradle of the new, Neolithic way of life.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Compare the special issue of Paléorient dedicated to the influence of Cauvin’s work: Coqueugniot and Aurenche 2011.

  2. 2.

    This model is implicitly very much based on Mauss (1966) ideas on gift exchange as the social glue of ‘archaic’ societies.

  3. 3.

    Göbekli Tepe’s iconography is generally dominated by masculinity. Whenever the sex of one of the animals depicted at Göbekli Tepe is indicated, it is a male specimen. The sole clearly female depiction thus far is a later added graffito on a stone slab in one of the buildings of Layer II, which was most likely not an original decoration of that room.

  4. 4.

    This rather large range is explained by the level of training and experience of the individuals in question. The experiment was conducted with male and female students lacking the physique and know-how we might have to assume for the hunter-gatherer groups of the PPN. According to experience, a modern mason, trained and skilled, works twice as quickly as the students in this experiment, so maybe a Neolithic craftsman may be assumed to fit somewhere in the middle between these two extremes.

  5. 5.

    Personal communication Tristan Carter, Toronto.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Orient-Abteilung, Podbielskiallee 69–71, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Oliver Dietrich, Jens Notroff & Klaus Schmidt

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  1. Oliver Dietrich
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  2. Jens Notroff
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  3. Klaus Schmidt
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Correspondence to Oliver Dietrich .

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  1. Soc & Anth Dept, Winthrop University Soc & Anth Dept, Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA

    Richard J. Chacon

  2. Social, Behavioral and Global Studies, CSU Monterey Bay Social, Behavioral and Global Studies, Seaside, California, USA

    Rubén G. Mendoza

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Dietrich, O., Notroff, J., Schmidt, K. (2017). Feasting, Social Complexity, and the Emergence of the Early Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia: A View from Göbekli Tepe. In: Chacon, R., Mendoza, R. (eds) Feast, Famine or Fighting?. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48402-0_5

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