Demography and storage systems during the southern levantine neolithic demographic transition

Abstract

Despite its importance in understanding the forager-farmer transition, remarkably little recent research has explored the role of food storage and changes in food production as a foundation for the NDT. Drawing on data from the southern Levantine Neolithic, in this chapter I make two arguments. First, while significant, the NDT in the southern Levant was gradual, and it appears that the major period of growth occurred ca. 1,200 years after the appearance of domesticated plants. Second, rather than focusing on plant domestication as the defining catalyst of the NDT, these data highlight the importance of food storage based on wild foods that facilitated greater sedentism. In the southern Levant, there is clear evidence that the subsistence and nutritional foundation for the NDT appeared several thousand years before the appearance of domesticated plants. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.