ABSTRACT

Beginning nearly a century ago, the rise of agricultural economies and village society in the Near East has long been characterized as a revolution (e.g., Childe 1951:59-86). If perhaps not revolutionary in the sense of extreme rapid change as per a political revolution (and, of course, rapidity of change is relative), then certainly the evolution of agricultural societies in the settled zones of the Near East is revolutionary in the sense that it has changed every aspect of human culture and society. The introduction of domestic herd animals into the hunter-gatherer societies of the arid peripheries of the region entailed similarly far-reaching consequences. In the period following the initial adoption of sheep and goats into the desert, the archaeological record refl ects profound changes in these societies, changes not only in basic subsistence economy, but in technologies, social organization, and crucially, ideology and cosmology. In this sense, the revolution in the desert parallels that of the sown, if somewhat later.