The Late PPNB “World” Systems in Northern Mesopotamia and South Levant: agglomeration, control of long distance exchange and the transition of early religious centers to central villages

Abstract

During the Aceramic Neolithic (PPN) period of the Near East, many economic and societal changes took place. During the PPNA is when we recognize a process of agglomeration of hundreds people in big sites such as Jericho. The archaeological record proves more than likely contacts between the contemporary societies of the Levant and some Eastern and Central Anatolian sites. The extent of those far contacts is hard to estimate, but we assume that such contacts and the trade network, which we can study mainly through the obsidian trade, using terrestrial and maritime routes, with the interaction of big villages though a few intermediary steps, already full operating at that time, must have helped to transform the local hierarchies, economic interdependences and rituals, and for instance it could accelerated the end of Gobekli Tepe around mid PPNB. And therefore during the Late PPNB consolidated the central villages, key nodes in the trade networks, and these, in different ecological regions, reached between 10 and 15 ha, v. gr. in Basta, Beisamoun or ‘Ain Ghazal. And in such a way, those built interdependent Ancient “World” Systems.