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People and Space in Early Agricultural Villages: Exploring Daily Lives, Community Size, and Architecture in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic Ian Kuijt Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, 75–102 (2000)

Cohen (1985: 106; cf. Altman 1977) argues that under conditions of population aggregation, animals and humans respond negatively to a number of features in their environment: congestion, loss of control, loss of privacy, and information load. Members of early agricultural communities may have experienced the by-products of social crowding expressed in physical congestion in housing, resource procurement, or in scheduling conﬂicts.

The ﬁve largest known Late Natuﬁan settlements are each approximately 2,000 m 2 (0.2 ha), this ﬁgure increased dramatically in the PPNA period, with settlements averaging over 10,000 m 2. The largest known MPPNB period settlements range in area from 45,000 to 50,000 m 2, and later post-8,500 B.P. LPPNB settlements such as Basta and ‘Ain Ghazal, cover nearly 140,000 m 2 (Fig. 3).

Kramer (1982: 162) and Watson (1979: 35– 47) estimate that among agriculturists the average number of people living in a 1000-m 2 village ranges from 83 to 97. Based on research on Tell Marib, a modern site in Yemen, van Beek (1982: 64 – 65) provides an estimate of 286 –302 people per hectare.

Ethnographic studies of roofed-ﬂoor area, numbers of structures, and household size suggest that each adult person in a sedentary agricultural and horticultural context generally requires between 9 and 10 m 2 of ﬂoor space (Kramer 1982; Leblanc 1971; Naroll 1962; Watson 1982).

the relinquishing of LPPNB lifeways, particularly the abandonment of these large aggregate villages between 8000 and 7750 B.P., may well have been related to changes within a broader set of ritualistic and social beliefs, in combination with regional environmental changes and local environmental degradation. In particular, I would emphasize four possible interrelated social processes of change, including (1) the inherent limitations of LPPNB social organization to cope with increasing population aggregation, conditions of social crowding, and scalar stress (Johnson 1982); (2) the inﬂuence of scalar stress in diminishing the ability of House, ritual, and economic leaders to effectively manage and organize all segments of the community; (3) the emergence of politically, economically, and socially more powerful Houses or lineages characterized by greater access and control of some resources and privileges; and (4) the overall effect of the complex interplay between these factors in challenging the fundamental rationale for the existence of this ritual system and the group of people who controlled it. Potentially, the increases in the scale and density of these LPPNB communities would have also challenged existing social structures for organizing labor at certain periods of the year, as well as created a greater need for competing and cooperating hierarchical structures for sharing information and materials.

I believe that the emergence of more powerful lineages, as well as increased social stresses related to crowding and information exchange, limited the practical ability for the community to participate in communal rituals. For instance those rituals that were practiced would have had a reduced effect on the community due to increases in scale and/or resistance to increasing social segmentation. When ritual and mortuary ceremonies are conducted less frequently and less effectively, the entire foundation for social cohesion may be weakened. With the weakening or removal of the overall ideological structure upon which this culture of village life was based, ritual systems no longer were able to maintain group solidarity. Without voluntary participation and belief in the ritual systems and worldview by all community members, and in the face of regional environmental changes and degradation of conditions around settlements, there would have been few, if any, factors to attract individuals or families to large agricultural centers and little in the way of social, economic, or ritual reasons to keep disgruntled community members from leaving the settlement for other areas.

the abandonment of LPPNB aggregate village communities along the Jordanian Highlands (45-50 ha) can be seen as a failed experiment in balancing antiquated systems of shared social power with the need for developing new means of organizing and directing increasingly large urban communities with competing House leaders.