Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-10, Section: A, page: 3575.

Adviser: Frank Hole.

Hypotheses are tested concerning the role of ground stone technology in the origins of agriculture in southwest Asia. Data were collected from 22 Jordanian sites dating to 22,000 to 5,500 b.p. The sites lie in diverse environments and include hunter-gatherer campsites, farming villages and possibly pastoralist camps. The significance of ground stone assemblage variations is investigated using ethnographic and experimental data on plant-food processing in different subsistence systems. Expected patterns are tested on archaeological assemblages. Methods of classifying these tools are reviewed.

Ground stone tools represent stages in lithic reduction. Levantine assemblages developed slowly from 45,000 to 12,500 b.p. In the Natufian (12,500-10,500 b.p.), plant-processing tools became much more numerous, a development related to increasing sedentism. Ethnographic and experimental data indicate that processing techniques essential for consumption of wild cereals are arduous. Wild cereals may not have been "attractive" resources and were possibly exploited in response to stress. In the Early Natufian, labor intensification in plant-food exploitation appears to have taken place, possibly a result of stresses imposed by sedentism and climate change.

Elaboration of plant processing in the early Neolithic represents a further development of this pattern. Addition of grinding techniques coincides with botanical evidence for the transition from foraging to farming and represents as attempt to maximize digestible food obtained from the restricted territories characteristic of early agrarian systems. In the Neolithic the use of this technology varied between regional subsistence systems. Late Neolithic assemblages are sparse and coincide with the full establishment of sheep-goat domestication. The transition to agriculture may have had consequences for women. Data from agrarian societies suggest that grain milling is associated with adult women in household economies. Analysis of grave goods in Natufian burials suggests that this pattern may not have existed prior to the development of agriculture.