Tracing mobility and connection to place in the world’s first farming villages
How did people move and form communities when human societies first shifted from hunting and gathering to farming? A new study of the Neolithic period in southwest Asia, the birthplace of agriculture, offers fresh insights.
Teeth
An international team of researchers led by Durham University and The University of Liverpool, analysed chemical signatures in the teeth of 71 individuals from five archaeological sites in modern Syria, spanning the entire Neolithic period (11,600–7,500 years ago).
Individual patterns of mobility
This, combined with osteological and funerary evidence, allowed them to reconstruct individual patterns of mobility in unprecedented detail. The results show that once permanent villages were established, people largely stayed local, strengthening group identity and ties to particular places. Mobility increased again towards the end of the Neolithic, creating connections between different regions.
Interestingly, during this time women were more likely than men to move between communities, hinting at patrilocal traditions, where men stay in their home community and women relocate. The observation that women in particular were mobile, illustrates their - likely central - role in the processes of innovation and the establishing of cross-regional networks characteristic of this period. Importantly, despite these movements, both locals and newcomers were buried in similar ways and along each other suggesting that early farming communities were inclusive and open to outsiders.
Balance
This research, published this week in Nature Scientific Reports and funded by the Leverhulme Trust, highlights how mobility shaped the earliest farming societies, balancing local belonging with the establishment of wider social networks. These findings not only fill in a major gap in the Northern Levant, a key region in the spread of agriculture and settled life, but also demonstrate how scientific techniques can transform our understanding of social life in the world’s first villages.
Read the full article on the website of Nature Scientific Reports.