Human-environmental relationships within Neolithic adaptations

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Our understanding of the origins of sedentary life in Egypt and the motivation for the first human groups to adopt more settled ways of life, lies in part in the sites of the later sixth and fifth millennium BCE, together with earlier Epipalaeolithic evidence, where available. An examination of the various transitions and adaptations that human groups passed through has often been lacking in the literature, and many publications give the impression of the Neolithic being a rather ‘known’ period (e.g., as discussed in Barker 2013); this is far from the case. Sometimes settled life is presented as a necessarily positive transition,1 which is not an assumption to be made lightly. A recent conference in Berlin (“Revolutions”, October 20152) helped to highlight just how variable the adoption and adaptation of aspects associated with the Neolithic are when looking across throughout North Africa and the Levant, and that aspects, or processes, of Neolithisation (for want of a better term) encompass a wide range of possible outcomes. It also flagged up how crucial the relationship between humans and their environment is (implying interaction rather than determinism) and how there is a profound need for more chronologically robust climatic models and availability of raw data.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Gift of the Nile? Ancient Egypt and the Environment
EditorsThomas Schneider, Christine L. Johnston
Place of PublicationArizona
PublisherUniversity of Arizona Press
Chapter4
Pages67-86
Number of pages20
Publication statusPublished - 21 Dec 2020

Publication series

NameJournal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections
Volume25
ISSN (Print)1944-2815

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