Exploring social change in the Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic of the Near East

The Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic saw some groups of mobile hunter-gatherers become increasingly sedentary, cohabiting in larger, more stable groups and increasingly elaborate material environments. This change had significant implications not only for economies and environments at the time, but also for the social relationships between the people living in these earliest villages and between groups now 'fixed' in specific parts of the landscape. However, the nature and indeed even existence of social groupings at the time – household, social group ('village') or broader 'cultures' – remains contentious, as individual and group identities seem unlikely to have been static, clearly defined or internally homogeneous. Questions about social relations remain some of the most difficult to answer using archaeological data, and the potentially non-analogue nature of social identities and groupings is a further stumbling block to research in the area. This session will thus the breadth of archaeological proxies, methods and concepts that can be used to investigate social relations among people during this period of dramatic social change.