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Sixteen small samples of fragmentary "chlorite" containers, coming from three different workshop sites of the Konar Sandal South network (Iran), were analyzed using a multianalytical approach, consisting in thin-section petrography and mineralogical characterization by X-ray powder diffraction. This preliminary study singled out at least two major different mineralogical groups, suggesting that different craft groups, possibly in different times, exploited different local sources of chloritic rocks. Results also indicates that the surroundings of Konar Sandal South, the main urban hub of the Halil valley, were involved - probably for several centuries - in the production of three major different classes of stone pots (cylindrical vessels with intricate geometric patterns, plain bell-shaped bowls and incised série récente vessels). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During recent archaeological excavations at the northern mound of Tepe Sialk, a small cluster of burials was found in a settlement layer dated to the latest phase of the Late Neolithic period. Among the six burials recovered, four were jar burials including cremains, one was a plain pit grave with no traces of cremation and one was a double burial with both cremated and uncremated bones. The white colour of the cremains indicated that, except for one cremated body, all were burnt at temperatures exceeding 700/800°C and most were covered by red ochre. In two cases, the spatial distribution of bone fragments belonging to various body parts revealed that the bones may have been systematically collected from the funeral pyre and placed into funerary vessels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource management strategies, settlement pattern.;, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal focd consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]