Consciousness, creativity, and self at the dawn of settled life

"Over recent years a number of scholars have argued that the human mind underwent a cognitive revolution in the Neolithic. This volume seeks to test these claims at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey and in other Neolithic contexts in the Middle East. It brings together cognitive scientists who have developed theoretical frameworks for the study of cognitive change, archaeologists who have conducted research into cognitive change in the Neolithic of the Middle East, and the excavators of the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük who have over recent years been exploring changes in consciousness, creativity and self in the context of the rich data from the site. Collectivevly, he authors argue that when detailed data are examined, the theoretical evolutionary expectations are not found for these three characteristics. The Neolithic was a time of long, slow and diverse change in which there is little evidence for an internal cognitive revolution. Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. He is the author and editor of many books, most recently Religion and the Emergence of Civilizatopn, Entangled: Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things, and Religion at Work in Neolithic Society"--

Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Contents -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Introduction to the Themes, Site, and Region -- 1 Introduction to the Themes of the Volume: Cognition and Çatalhöyük -- Theories of Neolithic Cognitive Change -- Çatalhöyük -- Neolithic Societies of the Middle East and Anatolia -- Measuring Neolithic Cognitive Change -- Conclusions -- References -- 2 Hunter-Gatherer Home-Making? Building Landscape and Community in the Epipaleolithic -- Introduction -- Being Hunter-Gatherer or Becoming Neolithic?

Dwelling, Space, and Place in Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology -- A Hunter-Gatherer Built Environment? Hunter-Gatherer Place-Making and the Life History of Place in Southwest Asia -- Identifying Epipaleolithic Places -- Tracing Epipaleolithic Interactions -- Place-Making at Kharaneh IV -- Kharaneh IV and the Larger EP Social Landscape -- A Discussion of EP Place-Making -- Conclusions -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Part II Higher Levels of Consciousness -- 3 When Time Begins to Matter -- Concepts of Time -- An Almost Neglected Subject in Neolithic Research -- Different Approaches to Time

Relative Chronologies -- The …