The Natufian culture occupies a special place in the evolution of human societies in the Near East, namely, that of the threshold to the emergence of farming communities. The idea that the Natufians were the earliest farmers is as old as the original discovery of their cultural remains by Garrod (I932). What seemed at the time an intuitive suggestion is now considered perhaps the right interpretation (Moore i982, Unger-Hamilton i989). The shift from hunting-and-gathering with some horticulture to a true farming economy seems a logical continuum (Henry i989). The fact that most of the hard evidence from the Natufian sites comes from the Early or even Middle Natufian (Valla i984), which predates the Early Neolithic by at least 8oo radiocarbon years, is rarely taken into account (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen i989). The discovery of early farming sites in the Jordan Valley and the adjacent hilly areas on both the east and the west side of the Rift Valley has made it clear that the origins of wheat and barley agriculture were in the southern Levant (van Zeist I988, Bar-Yosef i989). Thus the need to understand cultural processes in and around the Natufian homeland (Stordeur i98i) has assumed special importance. Explaining not only how but also why the Natufian culture emerged from a world of hunter-gatherers apparently not much different in material culture from their contemporaries has become the concern of a number of scholars. Henry (i989) has produced perhaps the most substantial discussion, which takes population dynamics into account. As more and more new data have been retrieved from Natufian sites, pollen cores, and faunal collections, the need for direct international discussion has become obvious, especially since many scholars working in various countries of the Near East have no such communication because of the political situation. The participants in the conference on the Natufian held at the Centre des Recherches Archeologiques, Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, June 6-8, I989, were archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, palynologists and palaeobota-