People and space in early agricultural villages: Exploring daily lives, community size, and architecture in the late pre-pottery neolithic

Population growth, or, more specifically, pressure, is often viewed as bein g critical to the development of food production in the Pre-Pottery Neolith ic of the Near East. It is surprising, therefore, to recognize how little d etailed archaeological research has explored the rates of population growth and how they might be related to social crowding in early village social e nvironments. Combining archaeological and ethnographic perspectives, this a rticle explores the possible links between demographic change, possible soc ial crowding, and reasons for the "collapse" of large aggregate villages oc cupied between approximately 8500 to 8000 years before present. Reflection upon the timing, estimated magnitude, and rate of demographic change prompt s the researcher to reconsider the perceived links between sedentism, food production, and the emergence of social inequality in the context of early agricultural villages of the south-central Levant. (C) 2000 Academic Press.