Evidence of Social Organization from Western Iran, 8000–4000 b.c.

This chapter illustrates how archeologists can make inferences about social organization, rather than a source of basic data on the prehistory of Iran. During the Bayat Phase, subsistence patterns allow to infer a social organization of only the same complexity as earlier: a lineage organization and perhaps landholding bands. There are hints that the division of labor may have changed, principally to draw men more actively into food production. Archeologists often base inferences about social organization on settlement patterns. Inferring social organization directly from the size of a population is a little known and relatively untested procedure but it is suggestive and should not be ignored when we are grasping at inferential straws anyway.