Session Organisers: Aleksandr Popov, Junzo Uchiyama

Category: Conceptual - Theory

Session Abstract: Archaeologists continue to define and frame the Neolithic in terms of a progressive step towards new forms of economy (farming). In turn, these developments are linked to other phenomena, chiefly domestication, but also storage, sedentism and increasing social complexity. Recent decades have seen growing critique of these stadial perspectives, with acceptance of an expansive and persistent ‘middle-ground’ between foraging and farming. This typically involves a range of deliberate interventions to achieve ‘low-level food production’ across plant, animal and also aquatic resources. However, the dynamics and long-term potentials of these divergent trajectories are poorly understood and would benefit from renewed efforts at global comparative analysis. This session focuses on the theme of ‘Long Neolithics’ in different world regions. Papers are invited to focus on the complexity, duration and internal diversity of local Neolithics, and especially on the characteristics of ‘alternative’ social-ecological trajectories that do not culminate in intensive agriculture, including their demographic potentials, ecological sustainability and cultural resilience. Focal themes include (but are not limited to) emergence and displacement of ‘lost crops’, diverse human-animal interventions, and especially the modification and cultivation of ‘wild’ landscapes, forests, wetlands, grasslands and coastal zones in ways that generate distinctive place-based food systems that in some regions have persisted into historical times.

Room: A

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Peter Jordan	The Neolithization of Northeast Asia: Explaining Innovation, Collapse and Transformation
10:15 - 10:30	Aleksandr Popov	Features of the Neolithization process in the coastal territory of the Russian Far East in the Early and Middle Holocene (12000 - 5000 years BP).
10:30 - 10:45	Vyacheslav Grishchenko	The main stages and trajectories of the neolithization in the island world of northeast Asia
10:45 - 11:00	Masahiro Fukuda	Neolithic development with river fishery resources: A case from the Eastern Amur region and surrounding areas
11:00 - 11:15	Irina Ponkratova	A Man in the Art of the Stone Age of Kamchatka (Far East, Russian Federation)

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Henny Piezonka	Untying the bundle: Neolithic cultural traits seen from a (global) hunter-gatherer perspective
13:15 - 13:30	Junzo Uchiyama, Mitsuhiro Kuwahata, Peter Jordan	Neolithisation and natural disasters: Jomon settlement pattern shifts in Kyushu, Japan (ca. 11,500-7,000 cal BP)
13:30 - 13:45	Viktor Diakonov	Understanding “Long Neolithic” in the Far Northeast of Asia
13:45 - 14:00	Elena Sergusheva	Small-scale Millet Agriculture as Possible Marker of the Life Support Sustainability in the Late Neolithic of the southern Russian Far East
14:00 - 14:15	Mikael Fauvelle	No Farming Needed? Resource Intensification, Social Complexity, and Long-Term Resilience in Maritime Hunter-Gatherer Societies

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Mathilde Van Den Berg	Hormonal intervention as a mediator in human-reindeer relations beyond the wild
15:00 - 15:15	Margarita Kholkina, Roman Muravev, Yulianna Radaeva	Between North and South: Borders and Contacts Between Early Neolithic Cultures in the Gulf of Finland Region
15:15 - 15:30	Dmitriy Gerasimov, Margarita Kholkina, Alexander Zhulnikov, Marianna Kulkova, Aleksey Tarasov, Dmitriy Blyshko, Roman Muravev, Tatyana Vasilyeva, Tatyana Gusentsova, Alexander Kulkov, Nadezhda Nedomolkina	Phenomenon of the Neolithic Asbestos Ware in the Eastern Europe forest zone
15:30 - 15:45	Gertrud Neumann-Denzau	Neolithic saltmaking - a booster for transformations.
15:45 - 16:00	Guilherme Zdonek Mongeló, Fernando Ozorio Almeida, Jennifer Watling, Myrtle Shock, Thiago Kater	Should the historical process in the Amazonian SW during the medium Holocene be called Neolithization?

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Daniel Garcia-Rivero, Ruth Taylor	Subsistence patterns and cultural shifts in the Neolithic sequence of Dehesilla Cave (Southern Spain)
16:45 - 17:00	Leonor Rocha	Neolithic territories of Central Alentejo (Portugal): settlement strategies
17:00 - 17:15	Tim Kerig	Labour and social Inequality in the Neolithic of the Northern Alpine Foreland
17:15 - 17:30	Levent Yılmaz	The Use and Abuse of Neolithic
17:30 - 17:45	Jacob Freeman	Understanding the emergence of alternative social-ecological regimes of food production

Session Organisers: Hans Georg K. Gebel

Category: Conceptual - Theory

Session Abstract: The session invites us to test the term Neolithic and conventional understandings and models of Neolithisation processes from regional and global perspectives by reflecting on new findings (such as productive foraging) and confronting them with evidence not fitting. We always come up against the applicability limits of these terms when they inappropriately reflect the complexity and intricacy of phenomena or evoke misleading generalisations for their local, regional, supra-regional and global variabilities. "Neolithic" phenomena and processes also occurred before or after Neolithic "core periods", were polycentric and polycyclic in various ways and geographically shifting, reversible, failing, behaved acyclic/asynchronous. The tendency of research to prioritise individual stimuli and/or to negate multidisciplinary holistic approaches reinforces the conceptual problems with the terms. The session aims to open a global academic discourse to highlight the potential pitfalls of "reductionism" in Neolithic research and to discuss if the world's Neolithics share basic traits and a common nature in creating the new social phenotype characteristic for productive lifeways (as opposed to foraging lifeways). The productive use of natural and human resources - including the cognitive territories with their skills and dispositions created to serve these purposes – was aimed at control towards security, growth/reproducibility, and defence. Do these characterise all Neolithics to varying degrees, without foraging elements ever disappearing completely? Each contribution should attempt to give a brief outline of the relevant traits of the regional/ supra-regional Neolithic trajectories (Subsistence modes, Environmental technologies and adaptations, Built territories, Technologies and consumption, Social organisation, Belief/ Cognitive systems, Exchange networks) and outline which research approaches shaped these results. This is in order to approach the question of which interacting systems enabled the sustainable establishment and adaptation of productive environments, impaired them or caused them to fail. Was productive behaviour the common denominator and momentum of these processes, or do the globally different permanent transitions from foraging to producing - from taking to making - include substantially different human dispositions and ontologies? All these questions are intended to depict the polycentric and asynchronous panorama of early productive humans.

Room: A

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Hans Georg K. Gebel	Introduction to the Session: Early Productive Behaviour, or the Regional and Global Problems with the Terms Neolithic/ Neolithisation
13:20 - 13:40	Julian Thomas	The Neolithic as an Assemblage
13:40 - 14:00	Felipe Criado-Boado, Luís Martínez, Jadranka Verdonkschot	Cognitive and neurological bases of the domestication of Mind
14:00 - 14:20	Bill Finlayson	Searching for a beginning

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Maxime Brami	Childe’s ‘neolithic revolution’ and its relevance to the archaeology of Southwest Asia
15:05 - 15:25	Gary Rollefson	Neolithic Food Production Hunting Technology in Arid Landscapes Across the World
15:25 - 15:45	Alison Betts	Neolithic Foundations and Neolithic Dispersals Across Asia: Some Comparative Considerations
15:45 - 16:05	Andrey Tabarev, Alexander Popov	""Neolithic Eve"": Personal view on the local and global perspective

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Tanja Schreiber	Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers? Rethinking “Neolithic trajectories” through a Siberian case study
16:50 - 17:10	Chao Zhao	When Neolithic began in North China: A Debate on Divergent Interpretations of Early Neolithic
17:10 - 17:30	Cédric Bodet	Production and Reproduction: the mingled infrastructures of the Neolithic Social (R)evolution
17:30 - 17:50	Frédérique Brunet	Long-Term Neolithisation Processes in Central Asia: The Key Role of Mobility, Territories and Interactions

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Alexander Wasse, Joanne Clarke	Choice in the Face of Change. How 'Neolithic' Were Cyprus and the Greater Syrian Desert in the 7th and 6th Millennia BC?
10:20 - 10:40	Hamil Samira	The Neolithic in north-west Algeria
10:40 - 11:00	Arkadiusz Marciniak	The Central Anatolia Neolithic – a globalization perspective
11:00 - 11:20	Xiaoran Wang	Reassessing Regional Economy During the Neolithization: Nevali Cori and Yumin from the Fertile Arcs of Western and Eastern Asia

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Mingjian Guo	The Neolithisation in Northwestern Hebei Area, China
13:20 - 13:40	Yoshihiro Nishiaki	Is the Jomon culture “Neolithic”?
13:40 - 14:00	Jian-Ye Han	New Discoveries at Nanzuo Site and the Dawn of Early State in the Loess Plateau, China
14:00 - 14:20	Claudia Speciale, Domenico Lo Vetro, Carmine Collina, Vincenza Forgia, Maria Rosa Iovino, Domenica Gullì, Giuseppe Bazan, Enrico Giannitrapani	New insights on the cultural, social, and economic domestication of Sicily

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 16:15	All Participants (Peer-Moderated)	Final Session Discussion: Lessons for Future Regional and Global Neolithic Research

Session Organisers: Peter Bellwood, Hsiao-chun Hung

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: This session examines six major regions, located around the globe, of transition from foraging to food production. Presenters are asked to give their current opinions, for their regions of expertise, about the following basic issues: a) trajectories of animal and plant domestication; b) trends in settlement sedentism and patterning; c) changes in human population density; d) trends in human population history, acknowledging current debates in genetics and linguistics. Were the transitions driven mainly by indigenous enterprise, or did they involve contact with, or immigration by, food producing populations from external sources? Presenters should outline what we think we know at present, and suggest important goals for future research. The aim of the session is to generate broad multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives. Taking stock is important, and we will invite speakers both from the Scientific Committee and from beyond to express succinctly (in 20-minute bursts) how they perceive their region of expertise. Suggested regions: 1. Southwest Asia 2. East Asia 3. Africa 4. New Guinea 5. Mesoamerica 6. South America

Room: A

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Peter Bellwood, Hsiao-Chun Hung	Introduction to Session G03: Foraging to food production, and the consequences: a global review and perspective.
16:50 - 17:10	Henny Piezonka, Natal’ya Chairkina, Ekaterina Dubovtseva, Lyubov’ Kosinskaya, Tanja Schreiber	The world’s oldest forts? Amnya and the acceleration of hunter-gatherer diversity in Siberia 8000 years ago.
17:10 - 17:30	Joaquim Fort	Interbreeding and demic diffusion in the spread of the Neolithic in Europe.
17:30 - 17:50	Jean-Denis Vigne, François Briois, Jean Guilaine	The Southwest Asian Neolithic transition scrutinized from the island of Cyprus.

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Hans Georg K. Gebel	Marginal? The roles of grasslands in the establishment of Middle Eastern Neolithic lifeways.
10:20 - 10:40	Koen Bostoen, Peter Coutros, Jessamy Doman	The Bantu expansion and low-level food production in central Africa.
10:40 - 11:00	Donatella Usai	Thinking globally: the Neolithization of the Nile Valley.
11:00 - 11:20	Steven Brandt And Roger Blench	Late Pleistocene Ethiopian hunter-gatherer origin of Afroasiatic peoples and the role of food production in their Holocene dispersals.

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Amaia Arranz-Otaegui	The origins of agriculture in southwest Asia: a regional overview
13:20 - 13:40	Zhenhua Deng	The formation and early development of farming society in the Yangtze Valley, southern China.
13:40 - 14:00	Qin Ling	The neolithization process in northern China: emergence of pottery, sedentary societies and millet agriculture.
14:00 - 14:20	Dongdong Tu	Rethinking the emergence of early village life in North China: perspectives from the recent archaeological discoveries.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Ben Shaw, Glenn Summerhayes	A Neolithic of the New Guinea region and its relevance to global discussions of the human past.
15:05 - 15:25	Dolores R. Piperno	The origins and spread of agriculture in Mesoamerica, Central, and South America: where are we now?
15:25 - 15:45	Douglas Kennett, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra	Maize domestication and dispersal in the Americas.
15:45 - 16:05	Keith M. Prufer, Dolores R. Piperno, Nadia C. Neff, Mark Robinson, Richard J. George, Douglas Kennett	New advances in understanding the early adoption of plant-based diets in the northern neotropics.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Richard G. Lesure, Reuven J. Sinensky	On the two-step Agricultural Demographic Transition in Mesoamerica.
16:50 - 17:10	Jose Iriarte	Forest islands, anthrosols, and drained fields: foraging to food-production trajectories in Amazonia.
17:10 - 17:30	Mike Heckenberger	Domestication of earth and sky in later Holocene Amazonia.

Session Organisers: Peter Turchin, Daniel Kondor

Category: Population - Network

Session Abstract: While theorists originally assumed that population dynamics of early farmers can be described by a logistic S-shaped curve, evidence is accumulating that initial increases were often followed by population declines. This pattern is evident both in population proxies based on archaeological indicators, and in regional and continental-scale studies of aggregated radiocarbon (14C) dates. In the session we want to address the question whether boom/bust cycles are a universal feature of early farming societies, and if not, what is the relative frequency of such dynamics? We welcome comparative studies, either among different regions, or among different population proxies in the same region. To facilitate a meaningful discussion and debate, we also highly encourage the participation from scholars whose work shows evidence against boom/bust patterns in any region. In line with the above, we aim to have a session that covers the following topics in a balanced way: - Case studies of estimating population numbers and main conclusions. - Case studies from outside of Europe specifically Africa would be very welcome. - Studies that perform a systematic comparison among world regions and argue for or against universal patterns. - Studies that compare 14C-based results with other proxies; studies that take a multi-proxy approach and estimate population numbers from a combination of evidence. - Studies that build and present large-scale databases of available evidence and develop methodology for preprocessing, processing and analyzing the data in them. - Studies that present and evaluate possible causes of population declines.

Room: C

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Peter Turchin	A Paradigm Shift in Understanding Human Population Dynamics
10:20 - 10:40	Jacob Freeman, Judson Finley, Erick Robinson, Adolfo Gil	A multi-scalar study of population growth dynamics in small-scale societies
10:40 - 11:00	Joe Roe, Martin Hinz	Estimating the Prevalance of Post-Agricultural Population Declines through the Global Radiocarbon Record
11:00 - 11:20	Johannes Müller	Population densities and social levelling mechanisms: from small to mega-sites

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Hinz Martin, Roe Joe	ESTER: Estimation of the prehistoric population of Eurasia based on a large number of records
13:20 - 13:40	Daniel Kondor, Peter Turchin	Approaching population proxies from a modeling perspective
13:40 - 14:00	Ian Kuijt, Arkadiusz Marciniak	Reconsidering arguments for Near Eastern Neolithic high population density, population growth, and early urbanism
14:00 - 14:20	Michael J. O’brien, Simon Carrignon, Bisserka Gaydarska, John Chapman, Brian Buchanan	Modeling Cultural Responses to Disease Spread in Neolithic Trypillia Mega-settlements

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Giacomo Bilotti	Population dynamic in the southwestern Baltic during the Neolithic and Bronze Age
15:05 - 15:25	Hilpert Johanna, Fischer Anna-Leena, Scharl Silviane, Kern Oliver A., Wegener Christian	Moving on? Early Neolithic Population and Settlement Potential in Central Europe (LBK; 5400 – 4950 BCE)
15:25 - 15:45	Detlef Gronenborn, Daniel Kondor, Peter Turchin	A multiscale approach to understanding boom-bust dynamics in European Neolithic societies
15:45 - 16:05	Kaarel Sikk, Aivar Kriiska, Valter Lang, Mari Tõrv	Exploring the population gap of the transition period from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age in Estonia with radiocarbon data

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Frantisek Trampota, Vaclav Hrncir, Petr Kvetina	Reconstruction of population dynamics in early farming societies using Bayesian modelling of C14 settlement data. Case study from Morava River basin, Central Europe
16:50 - 17:10	René Ohlrau	Prehistoric Progress: Innovations, Population Growth, and Human Well-Being among Cucuteni-Trypillia Societies
17:10 - 17:30	Timothy Kohler, Darcy Bird	Population, subsistence, and wealth dynamics in three precocious, non-state North American societies: Exploring and Enhancing Malthus-Boserup models
17:30 - 17:50	Robert Drennan, Adam Berrey, Christian Peterson	Demography in Non-state Farming Societies Is More than Just Population Size

Session Organisers: Neil Roberts, Catherine Kuzucuoğlu

Category: Natural Environment

Session Abstract: The idea that changes in climate have acted as a stimulus for events in human history is a long-standing one. Some of this work sees the relationship as a deterministic one, in which climatic adversity prompted societal decline or collapse, often inferred from archaeological evidence of regional site abandonment. But whether determinist or possibilist in character, the relationship between climate and society has generally been envisaged as one in which periods of favourable climate would expand the food supply and hence allow human populations to grow. By the same logic, adverse climatic conditions, such as major droughts, have been linked to societal and demographic crises, as the food supply shrank and human populations exceeded the available resources. In regions such as southwest Asia it has long been hypothesized that the beginnings of Neolithic agriculture were connected to the major shift in global climate at the end of the last Ice Age from cold (and generally dry) to warmer and generally wetter. This session will explore the links between climatic changes and the emergence and spread of early farming societies in different geographical settings where agriculture and sedentary life developed, from Mesoamerica, through Africa and Europe to South and East Asia. It seeks to explore research that critically evaluates the available evidence and is genuinely interdisciplinary in character.

Room: D

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Liviu Giosan	Noah’s Flood in the Black Sea and the Spread of Neolithic into Europe: Quo Vadis?
13:20 - 13:40	Marta Andriiovych	Around the Black Sea: the spread of Neolithic settlements before and after the cooling event 8.2 KY BP
13:40 - 14:00	Caroline Heitz, Joe Roe	3000 years of climate change impact on early ‘pile-dwelling’ farming communities around the Alps: New tree-ring-based archaeological and paleoclimatic proxies.
14:00 - 14:20	Lech Czerniak, Joanna Święta-Musznicka, Anna Pędziszewska, Agnieszka Matuszewska	Changes in LBK settlements correlate with fluctuations in climatic conditions. A palynological view on the Neolithisation of Central Europe

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Arman Tekin	Paleoclimatic Changes on The Southern Kahramanmaraş Region During The Neolithic Period: The Macrophysical Climate Model Approach
15:05 - 15:25	Neil Roberts	Climate as a driver of Neolithic human-environment dynamics on the Konya plain, south central Anatolia
15:25 - 15:45	Peter F Biehl, Arkadiusz Marciniak	Archaeological and palaeo-environmental evidence for the 8.2k cal BP climate event at Çatalhöyük
15:45 - 16:05	Ayşin Konak, Tolunay Bayram	Environmental and Climatic Factors Affecting Settlement Location Selection in the Lake District (Turkey)

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Andrew M.T. Moore, Alexia Smith, Loïc Harrault, Peter Rowley-Conwy, Karen Milek	New evidence from Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic Abu Hureyra, Syria, for the development of agriculture in Western Asia
16:50 - 17:10	Caroline Malone	A Neolithic that fails: The Maltese Temple Culture and climatic instability

Session Organisers: Stephen Rostain, Geoffroy de Saulieu

Category: Different Neolithics

Session Abstract: Archaeological research was slow to start in the tropics. However, it has often known important developments, especially in recent years. The archaeology carried out along the equatorial belt shows specificities that distinguish it notably from that practiced elsewhere. It has been the source of original and fruitful theoretical and methodological approaches, in which interdisciplinarity has generally played an essential role. Contrary to what has long been believed, tropical societies have had very different social and political experiences from our own. If the opposition between hunters-gatherers and farmers seems less important there than in other parts of the world, social developments have nevertheless experienced a significant diversity whose mechanisms are not yet well understood and which are already present with the Neolithic processes. These initial developments show specificities that are not found in temperate regions and that goes beyond the simple fact of not breeding animals. Thus, the question of the tropical centers of plant domestication and birth of agriculture has recently given the tropics their rightful role. Similarly, several major inventions that have marked human history over the last 10,000 years have taken place in the tropics. More than elsewhere, the relationship between man and his environment has been posed, and shows how much the current equatorial environments are the result of complex interactions between societies and their landscapes, in short, the result of a history in which these tropical worlds have entered and whose effects on the environment, as well as on non-European knowledge, are exceptional.

Room: K

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Doyle Mckey	Domestication, landscape management, food production systems, and societies in lowland South America: Insights from a major crop, manioc
10:15 - 10:30	Stéphen Rostain	Far From Being Marginal: The Cultural Cradle of Amazonia
10:30 - 10:45	Claudia Rodrigues-Carvalho, Célia Boyadjian, Davi Duarte, Murilo Quintans Ribeiro Bastos	Parallels and divergences: the complex occupation of the coast of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) as an example of the specificities and particularities of tropical regions.
10:45 - 11:00	Celia Boyadjian, Rita Scheel-Ybert, Tais Capucho	Diet And Food Production of The Brazilian Shellmound Builders
11:00 - 11:15	Umberto Lombardo	The Pre-Columbian Green Revolution of the Bolivian Amazon

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	João Darcy De Moura Saldanha	The Rise of Monumentality in Eastern Amazonia and its link with the Neolithization Processes in South America
13:15 - 13:30	Geoffroy De Saulieu	Social Implications of domestication in the Tropics
13:30 - 13:45	Champion Louis, Dorian Q. Fuller	Tropical cereal agriculture: domestication and dispersal rates compared in Africa
13:45 - 14:00	Hermine Xhauflair, Timothy Vitales, Xavier Galet, David Codeluppi, Maricar Belarmino, Gerard Palaya	Unveiling linked stories between humans and the environment in Palawan Island, Philippines.
14:00 - 14:15	Dylan Gaffney, Annette Oertle, Alvaro Montenegro, Erlin Djami, Abdul Razak Macap, Tristan Russell, Daud Tanudirjo	Animal taming, translocation, and the punctuated Neolithisation of island rainforests

Session Organisers: Melanie Roffet-Salque, Richard Evershed

Category: Archaeometry

Session Abstract: The most significant developments in the past 30 years in the study of Neolithic people have been the emergence of biomolecular and stable isotope proxies. The most widely applied approaches include stable isotope analyses of skeletal remains and lipids preserved in pottery vessels. The use of these proxies is underpinned by extensive investigations of reference materials and experimental studies, as well as analyses of thousands of finds from prehistoric cultures around the world. Likewise, ancient DNA is delivering important levels of understanding of human, animal and plant origins and relationships, and aspects of their evolution. Beyond these a number of new proxies are in the offing, notably proteins in pottery and dental calculus, which are set to add new dimensions to palaeodietary reconstructions. Even when used alone these biomolecular proxies have achieved spectacular new levels of understanding of Neolithic cultures. This conference session will explore the future potential offered by existing and emerging new biomolecular and isotope proxies for Neolithic studies. Contributions are encouraged that present new proxies, address the validation of existing proxies and demonstrate the integration of different lines of evidence. Multi-proxy studies, and the development of “big data” and statistical approaches to explore more deeply complex phenomena underpinning the adaptation of humans, animals and plants to new environments and the living of sedentary lifestyles are especially welcomed. We are particularly interested in receiving contributions presenting new biomolecular or stable isotope proxies for environment and subsistence stressors, such those related to crop failures, zoonotic diseases and climate change/deterioration.

Room: C

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Cheryl Makarewicz	A Critical Assessment f Stable Isotopes As a Proxy for Neolithic Mobility: Lessons from the Tessellated Neolithic (Geo)environments of the Southern Levant
10:20 - 10:40	Adrià Breu Barcons, Hadi Özbal, Rana Özbal, Pınar Özükurt, Cafer Çakal, Ayla Türkekul Bıyık, Sidar Gündüzalp	Tracing Anatolian Neolithic Foodways Through Isotopic And Biomolecular Proxies In Organic Residues From 7th And 6th Millennium Pottery Vessels.
10:40 - 11:00	Sidar Gündüzalp, Ayla Türkekul Bıyık, Adrià Breu Barcons, Rana Özbal	Unveiling Neolithic Cooking Practises: Organic residue analyses of the Initial Neolithic pottery from the 7th Millennium BCE, Sumaki Höyük in the Upper Tigris Basin
11:00 - 11:20	Rana Özbal, Adrià Breu Barcons, Hadi Özbal, Laurens Thissen, Ayla Türkekul Bıyık, Fokke Gerritsen	The Emergence and Evolution of Dairying in Neolithic Northwest Anatolia: Insights from Barcın Höyük

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Chloé Stevens	A Multi-Proxy Geoarchaeological Investigation of an Early Holocene Soil Feature at the Page-Ladson Site (Florida, U.S.)
13:20 - 13:40	Isabel Wiltshire, Charlie Maule, Iman Abdelgani, Timothy D. J. Knowles, Richard Evershed, Harald Stäuble, Caroline Hamon, Michael Ilett, Mélanie Roffet-Salque, Matthias Conrad, Matthias Halle, Isabel Hohle, Saskia Kretschmer, Germo Schmalfuß, Sabine Wolfram, Lamys Hachem	Biomolecular approaches to investigating wild resource exploitation in Neolithic Europe
13:40 - 14:00	Peter Tóth, Miriam Nyvltová Fišáková, Johana Malíšková, Filip Ševcík	Stable isotopes reveal animal management practices at the LBK settlement of Tešetice-Kyjovice, Czech Republic
14:00 - 14:20	Rosalind Gillis	Into the woods: Exploring the use of wood-pastures in early European animal husbandry practices.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:25	Mark Thomas	Plenary Talk: Integrating different data sources: A multi-proxy approach to understanding the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe
15:25 - 16:15	all participants	Discussion

Session Organisers: Melinda Zeder

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: This session brings together researchers working in different areas of the world to explore the context of initial domestication of plants and animals and their subsequent dispersal. Participants will provide an overview of the ecological setting of domestication and dispersal, as well as the subsistence strategies developed in world areas from which domesticates either emerged or were merged into. Papers will explore questions of the richness and diversity of endemic plants and animals in these different settings, trade-offs between sedentism and mobility, the interaction of resident hunter-gatherers and migrant farmers, and the overall role of domesticates within subsistence strategies of groups with both emergent and introduced domesticates.

Room: B

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Melinda Zeder	Putting Domesticates in their Place: Opening Remarks
13:20 - 13:40	Robert Spengler	Insularity Syndrome: Exploring the roles of ecological release and habitat islands in driving early domestication
13:40 - 14:00	Nicholas Conard, Saman Haman-Zarhani, Mario Mata-González, Christopher Miller, Simone Riehl, Brett Starkovich, Moshen Zeidi	Settlement dynamics and the technological context of early harvesting and hunting in the Zagros and Anti-Lebanon
14:00 - 14:20	Simone Riehl, Doğa Karakaya, Mohsen Zeidi, Nicholas John Conard	Plant resource diversity and wild cereal harvesting in the eastern Fertile Crescent 80.000 years ago

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Mario Mata-González, Iván Rey-Rodríguez, Britt Marie Starkovich, Simone Riehl, Mohsen Zeidi, Nicholas John Conard	Chogha Golan And The Evolution Of Human-Animal Interactions In The Foothills Of The Zagros Mountains During The Aceramic Neolithic
15:05 - 15:25	Hojjat Darabi	Eco-cultural Settings of Initial Domestication in the Central Zagros
15:25 - 15:45	Canan Çakırlar	Plenty and more: Fish and other aquatic resources in settings of Neolithic emergence in Southwest Asia
15:45 - 16:05	Jean-Denis Vigne , Thomas Cucchi	Domestication of insular ungulates during the Cyprus-PPNB

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Elisabeth Hildebrand	Highlands vs. Rift: Diverging pathways to food production in adjacent regions of eastern Africa
16:50 - 17:10	Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Shayla Monroe	Africa’s unique domestication processes: early sedentism, indigenous plants, introduced livestock, significant contributions from African aurochs
17:10 - 17:30	Xuexiang Chen, Zejuan Sun, Jianfeng Lang	Plant Evidence of early crop cultivation from the Xiaogao site (9000-7500B.P.),Shandong province,eastern China
17:30 - 17:50	Hua Wang, Yao Gao, Jianfeng Lang, Chen Wang, Thijs Van Kolfschoten	Intensive exploitation of pheasants at the Early Holocene site of Xiaogao in Northern China

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Xinyi Liu	Conceptual bridges between biological domestication and early food globalization
10:20 - 10:40	Sarah Mcclure	The social ecology of the spread of farming in the Adriatic: new insights from the Mesolithic to Neolithic transition
10:40 - 11:00	Peter Rowley-Conwy	Voyagers in search of land and resources: the early agricultural colonisation of Britain and the West Mediterranean
11:00 - 11:20	Anne-Brigitte Gebauer, T. Douglas Price	The northern Frontier of European farming, Evidence from Southern Scandinavia

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Andrew Somerville, Isabel Casar	The Environmental Context for the Adoption of Agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico
13:20 - 13:40	Francisco Javier Aceituno	Other ""Neolithics"" were possible: the case of Northwestern South America (Colombia) in the context of the New World.
13:40 - 14:00	Natalie G. Mueller	Considering plants as people in the process of domestication: A view from eastern North America

Session Organisers: Ceren Kabukcu, Eleni Asouti

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: Pre-agricultural traditions of plant food preparation are often overlooked in archaeological and anthropological discourses portraying culinary innovations as corollaries of 'Neolithisation', particularly in the context of Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean basin. This session brings together researchers using novel, cutting-edge archaeobotanical methods to explore the deep time histories and evolution of regional hunter-gatherer plant-based subsistence strategies. Recent archaeobotanical discoveries clearly demonstrate that the plant food consumption practices of late Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were complex, diverse and often included multiple steps of labour-intensive processing. Such practices have long been perceived by prehistorians as the hallmarks of Neolithic food producing societies and the origin of cuisine as we understand it today. These discoveries point to a much deeper and longer ancestry of culinary practices, predating the start of agriculture by thousands of years, and open new frontiers in hunter-gatherer archaeobotany beyond reconstructing plant resource choice. More significantly, they also question long-standing paradigms about the nature of the transition from foraging to cultivation and farming, including exploring homologous developments in pre-agricultural plant management and uses in Southwest Asia and the Mediterranean basin during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

Room: B

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Ceren Kabukcu, Eleni Asouti	Plant use and subsistence practices during the Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the eastern Fertile Crescent
10:15 - 10:30	Marc Cardenas, Amaia Arranz-Otaegui	Plant food choices and culinary practices in the transition to food production in southwest Asia
10:30 - 10:45	Ernestina Badal, Yolanda Carrión-Marco, Carmen Maria Martínez-Varea, Guillem Pérez-Jordá	Before farming. Management and use of plants by hunter-gatherers of the western mediterranean
10:45 - 11:00	Tony Brown, Sam Hudson, David Jacques, Ben Pears	“Stonehenge Before Stonehenge” Mesolithic-Neolithic sedaDNA-based Environmental Reconstruction from the Avon Valley and Its Bearing on Hunter-Gatherer-Pastoralists Interactions
11:00 - 11:15	Oksana Yanshina, Elena Sergusheva	Evidence for ?illet ?onsumption in the Lower Amur River Basin during the Early Holocene

Session Organisers: Kamilla Pawłowska, Joanna Pyzel

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: Research into past diet has usually focused on the acquisition, production, processing, and consumption of plant and animal products. Yet foodways can also include food circulation, a so-far under researched topic that is, however, imperative to providing a comprehensive insight into diet in the past. This session will focus on food circulation in the Neolithic by considering the border between choice and dietary imperative. Food circulation is one cause of dietary diversity, and can occur in many forms ranging from commensality to trade and exchange. However, tracing food circulation pathways and dietary variability poses methodological challenges in archaeology. Various scales of analysis of dietary evidence can be used in methodological approaches, as can a range of sources (animals, plants, bioarchaeological evidence, and material culture). Evidence from Southwest Asia and Europe that touches on these issues in an archaeological and environmental context is welcome. In particular, we want to consider the following issues: were food choices and circulation the realm of individual or community decisions and to what degree were they the result of cultural traditions? To what extent was choice driven by the availability of resources and the nutritional needs of different consumers, or by other factors such as moral imperatives encoded in nutrition—i.e., the decision of what one should and should not eat? We welcome both studies focusing on the changes that occur along the stratigraphic sequence of a site and studies that compare between sites.

Room: B

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Merryn Dineley	The Importance of Being Malted: Processing Cereals to Make Malt Sugars in the Natufian and the Neolithic
13:20 - 13:40	Kamilla Pawlowska, Joanna Pyzel, Marek Z. Baranski, Mélanie Roffet-Salque	Detecting of commensality in Neolithic Çatalhöyük household: Faunal, architectural and pottery approaches
13:40 - 14:00	David Bloch	“Challenging the Conventional View of the advent and Origins of Agriculture” with the harvesting of common Salt and a Sodium Age that shaped the primitive Industry of Early Neolithic Hunters:
14:00 - 14:20	Agnieszka Czekaj-Zastawny, Anna Rauba-Bukowska, Harry Robson	Early Neolithic diet north of the Carpathians: result of interdisciplinary analysis

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Magdalena Moskal Del Hoyo, Magda Kapcia, Gabriela Juzwinska, Maria Litynska-Zajac, Marek Nowak, Anna Glód, Pawel Jarosz, Anita Szczepanek, Maciej Debiec	Plant remains from the Early Neolithic sites of southern Poland: the same diet or dietary variability?
15:05 - 15:25	Marek Nowak, Gabriela Juzwinska, Magda Kapcia, Maria Litynska-Zajac, Magdalena Moskal Del Hoyo, Sylwia Pospula-Wedzicha, Krzysztof Wertz, Jaroslaw Wilczynski	The Significance of Variability in Subsistence Patterns in East-Central Europe Between the Late 6th And Late 4th Millennia BC. The Case of Multicultural Site in Miechów, Southern Poland

Session Organisers: Joaquim Fort

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: This session is devoted to analyzing the spread of farming and herding in different regions of the Earth. We have two main aims. The first one is to cover specific case studies, from several world areas. The second aim is to pave the ground in order to perform comparisons between different regions from several perspectives, not only in this session but also in future work. Qualitative descriptions are welcome, based both on specialized and interdisciplinary approaches. Quantitative estimations will be also addressed, for those regions where they are possible by the data available at present. Among others, quantitative estimations may refer to spread rates, the relative effects of demic and cultural diffusion, interactions between farmers/herders and hunter-gatherers, genetic clines, genomic results, linguistic inferences, etc.

Room: C

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	João Zilhão	The emergence of farming communities in westernmost Eurasia: New evidence from central Portugal
10:15 - 10:30	Ramazan Parmaksız, António Faustino Carvalho, Abu B. Siddiq, Cláudia Costa	Neolithization of Iberia: from the shore to hinterland
10:30 - 10:45	Oreto García-Puchol, Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau, Joan Bernabeu Aubán, María Barrera-Cruz	Modeling neolithic demographic transition at the Western Mediterranean by coupling radiocarbon dates, settlement and cultural data
10:45 - 11:00	Marta Fitula	Eastern Sicily environment and Neolithic strategies
11:00 - 11:15	Angelo Vintaloro	The arrival of the Neolithic in Sicily and in the western Mediterranean

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Stephen Shennan, Simon Carrignon, Enrico Crema, Anne Kandler	Post-marital residence rules and transmission pathways in cultural hitchhiking during demographic dispersal
13:15 - 13:30	Juan José Ibáñez, Fiona Pichon, Bogdana Miliç, Luis Teira	The spread of ideas, objects and people as a key factor for the coalescence of the Neolithic in South West Asia.
13:30 - 13:45	Graeme Sarson, Kavita Gangal, Anvar Shukurov	The Near-Eastern Roots of the Neolithic in South Asia
13:45 - 14:00	Christopher Edens	Emergence of food production in southwest Arabia
14:00 - 14:15	Maria Guagnin, Alexander Wasse	Neolithic Neighbours – Populations Dynamics and Material Culture in Northern Arabia and the Jordanian Badia

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Mathias Currat, Alexandros Tsoupas	Modelling population dynamics on the continental route of the European Neolithic expansion
15:00 - 15:15	Alan H. Simmons	The Neolithic on Water: Neolithic Seafarers and the Colonization of Cyprus
15:15 - 15:30	Joaquim Soler, Alejandro Sierra, Lídia Colominas, Isaac Rufí, Helena Ventura, Narcís Soler, Maria Saña	Reevaluating the Neolithic of the Margins: The Case of the Western Sahara
15:30 - 15:45	Tristan Carter, Rose Moir	The Appropriation of Hunter-Gatherer Sacred Landscapes as a Mode of Neolithisation: The Late Mesolithic – Early Neolithic Transition at Freston, Eastern England
15:45 - 16:00	Marco Merlini	Semi-Domestication of Deer. Exploring Post-Paleolithic Rock Art

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Menghan Zhang, Sizhe Yang	Inferring language dispersal patterns with velocity field estimation
16:45 - 17:00	Søren Wichmann	Climate-induced language spread in Africa, Eurasia, and South America: farming is not the whole story
17:00 - 17:15	Lasse Vilien Sørensen	Hubs of farming - modeling the spread of agriculture in South Scandinavia during the first half of the 4th millennium BC
17:15 - 17:30	Niels N. Johannsen	Niche construction: A general, comparative framework for studying neolithization processes?
17:30 - 17:45	Konstantina Saliari, Vlatka Cubric-Curik, Ino Curik, Preston T. Miracle, Eva Lenneis, Erich Draganits, Erich Pucher	Archaeozoological analysis of cattle and aurochs in Neolithic Austria
17:45 - 18:00	Hugo Rafael Oliveira, Bernardo Ordás López, Rui Machado	Sowing one’s wild oats: the domestication and spread of oat cultivation in Europe.

Session Organisers: Wolfgang Haak, Mehmet Somel

Category: Archaeometry

Session Abstract: This session will cover bioarchaeological advances that can or will shed new light on the Neolithic from the perspective of natural sciences, broadly including ancient DNA from animal, plants and humans, stable and dietary isotopes, microbiome, proteomics and residue analyses. The scope of the session is multidisciplinary and covers the many regions of the world that have witnessed a transition from foraging to food producing, sedentary lifestyles, including the domestication of plants and animals. Emphasis is placed on comparisons of data from before, during and after the transition, between foraging and farming groups, or between regions, which can identify and characterise modes of change or continuity, but also on patterns of assimilation, exchange and admixture. Cross-regional, comparative analyses of bioarchaeological evidence on Neolithic transitions, i.e., from different parts of the world, would also be highly welcome. We invite contributions of 20 minutes (incl. discussion time) on any of the four themes, or combinations thereof: 1) The roles of human movement and cultural interaction in processes of sociocultural change during the Neolithic transitions, studied through genetic continuity vs. discontinuity through time 2) Individual mobility, kinship practices and social organization in early sedentary communities 3) The domestication of animals and plants, with particular emphasis on the tempo of domestication processes 4) Evidence from dietary isotopes and residue analyses (e.g. proteomics or lipidomics) that are shedding light on changing lifestyles

Room: C

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Kevin G. Daly, Louis L’hôte, Ian Light, Valeria Mattiangeli, Matthew D. Teasdale, Áine Halpin, Lionel Gourichon, Felix M. Key	An 8,000 years old genome reveals the Neolithic origin of the zoonosis Brucella melitensis
13:15 - 13:30	Patrícia Santos, Maria Teresa Vizzari, Rajiv Boscolo Agostini, Claudio Ottoni, Andrea Quagliariello, Alessandra Modi, Martina Lari, Silvia Ghirotto	The Neolithic transition from a bacterial perspective: a population genetic approach
13:30 - 13:45	Sierra Blunt, E. Andrew Bennett, Marica Baldoni, Harmony De Belvalet, Fanny Mendisco, Claudio Ottoni, Mélanie Pruvost	Ancient metagenomic perspectives on the Neolithic Transition in France
13:45 - 14:00	Maria Teresa Vizzari, Silvia Ghirotto, Rajiv Boscolo Agostini, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Lara Cassidy, Andrea Manica, Andrea Benazzo	Robust demographic inference from low-coverage whole-genome data through Approximate Bayesian Computation
14:00 - 14:15	Mehmet Somel, Dilek Koptekin	Inter-regional mobility in SW Asia and E Asia following the Neolithic Transition: paleogenomic insights

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Jo-Hannah Plug, Kelly Blevins, Frédéric Abbès, Peter Akkermans, Anna Bach Gómez, Marie-Laure Chambrade, Bérénice Chamel, Eric Coqueugniot, Miguel Molist Montaña, Marie Orange, Jessica Pearson, Eva Eva Fernandez-Dominguez	Inter-Regional Mobility and Group Membership in Neolithic Northern Syria: A Diachronic Isotopic and Archaeological Investigation
15:00 - 15:15	Zia Ur Rahman, Kong Qingpeng, Li Yuchun	Contemporary Indus Valley population mitogenomes reveals substantial local transition and limited demic diffusion of early Neolithic farmers in South Asia
15:15 - 15:30	Snigdha Konar, Niraj Rai	Re-examining Sociocultural Dynamics in the Indus Valley Civilization: Perspectives from Genetic Persistence and Social Structure
15:30 - 15:45	Parasayan Oguzhan, Grange Thierry, Geigl Eva-Maria	Paleogenomics of Imputed Genomes Reveals and Dates Admixture Pulses and Associated Cultural Practices Throughout the European Neolithic
15:45 - 16:00	Juliette Sauvage, Maël Lefeuvre, Françoise Dessarps, Marine Delvigne, Sophie Lafosse, Marie-Claude Marsolier, Aline Thomas, Céline Bon	When cultural insight of admixture does not match genome ancestry: the case of the Cerny culture (Middle Neolithic, Northern France)

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Sergio Jiménez-Manchón, Cheryl Makarewicz, Hamzeh Mahasneh, Lionel Gourichon, Juan José Ibáñez	The Early Management of Caprines in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Southern Levant: New Insights from Animal Palaeodiet Reconstruction Using Dental Wear Analyses
16:50 - 17:10	Bendhafer Wejden, Cornet Sarah, Geigl Eva-Maria, Grange Thierry	Paleogenomics Of Wild Cattle and Their Domestication
17:10 - 17:30	Laurent Frantz, David Stanton, Aurelie Manin, Anna Linderholm, Thomas Cucchi, Allowen Evin, Keith Dobney, Greger Larson	Ancient pig genomes reveal the origin and legacy of pigs translocated during the Austronesian expansion
17:30 - 17:50	Dan Bradley	Ancient genomes of aurochs and cattle and the nature of domestication.

Session Organisers: Moritz Kinzel, Emmanuel Baudouin

Category: Architecture and Constructed Environment

Session Abstract: This session aims to highlight the impact of the emergence of architecture in the Neolithic on human social behaviour, the changes in the perception of space and development of building technology. Neolithic architecture can be understood as a largescale laboratory for testing structural and spatial solutions; some of them are lasting until today; e.g. the right angle. However, no buildings codes were established; resulting in constructions built without structural safety coefficients - stretching occasionally far beyond nowadays limits. Locally available material sources defined building techniques and materials. Environmental conditions, topographical settings and social constraints influenced shape and structural designs. In addition, recent anthropological and archaeological discussions have shown how architecture can be seen as an important form of symbolic representation, a material expression of concepts, values and social orders. The socio-cultural factor may have have played a significant role in the diversity of building techniques or the dynamics of changes (invention, convergence, diffusion, etc.). In other words, Neolithic people modified buildings to adapt them to their traditions, changing needs and diversifying activities as well as responded to climate changes and destructive events, e.g. earthquakes, flooding or fire. We would like to invite colleagues to discuss continuity, change and discontinuity of Neolithic architecture (on a global scale); its impact on social behaviour as well as the formation of group identities. Furthermore, we would like to investigate how Neolithic buildings were perceived and if this perception may have differed from the intended impact as well as the changes over time. What are the differences in perception for domestic and communal (special) buildings?

Room: H

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Emmanuel Baudouin, Moritz Kinzel	Introduction to the session: The Impact of Neolithic Architecture – the Emergence of Human Built Environment
13:15 - 13:30	Paul Bacoup	Understanding the evolution of architectural choices of Neolithic builders: the example of earth and wood constructions in the southern Balkans in the 5th millennium BC
13:30 - 13:45	Marcin Bialowarczuk	From Circle to Square. Evolution of the Architectural Plan and its Importance for Neolithic Architecture Development
13:45 - 14:00	Garima Thakuria	Neolithic dwellings in India: A study of house structures in Sikkim
14:00 - 14:15	Bahattin İpek	Architectural Development in Northern Mesopotamia in the Late Neolithic Period and Architectural Scenes on Halaf Pottery: Domestic or Sacred/Communal Structures?

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Lorenzo Nigro	The Round Tower and Neolithic Architecture at Jericho: its conceptual implications
15:00 - 15:15	Rémi Haddad	The False Pretense of Permanence: Early Neolithic Sedentism Seen from Cyprus
15:15 - 15:30	Martin Renger	Community Buildings - Building Communities. Architecture as a Modus of Social Assemblages
15:30 - 15:45	Paolo Taviani	Temples, sacred spaces, deities? Neolithic finds in Şanliurfa Province between Archeology and History of Religions
15:45 - 16:00	Varada Khaladkar	Home is People: Examining the Houses in the First Farming Societies in the Western Deccan, India

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Judit P. Barna, Gábor Kalla, Emília Pásztor, István Eke	Heavenly Planned, Humanly Built: The Identity-Forming Role of Lengyel Circular Ditches in Late Neolithic Western Hungary
16:50 - 17:10	Melissa Kennedy, Hugh Thomas, Laura Strolin, Jane Mcmahon, Ahmed Nassr	The Birth of Sacred and Profane Architecture in the Neolithic Northern Arabia
17:10 - 17:30	Ergül Kodaş	The Problem of Continuity in the PPNA Architecture of Çemka Höyük: Architecture, Space, Memory and Continuity
17:30 - 17:50	Ramie Gougeon	Domestic Built Environments in the Late Prehistoric Southeast North America

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Miroslav Kocic, Marija Kalicanin Krstic, Ana Kocic, Bryan Hanks	Islands in the Land of Forest – Vinca Culture Transformations of the Šumadija Region
10:15 - 10:30	Ivana Vostrovská, Petr Kocár	Domesticated water: multi-proxy analyses of Early Neolithic Water Wells from Czechia
10:30 - 10:45	Özlem Ekinbaş Can	The Pre-Pottery Neolithic Architecture in the Upper Tigris Region according to New Data from Gre Fılla: Continuity and Change
10:45 - 11:00	Jean-Noël Guyodo, Audrey Blanchard	The role of the island and coastal stone-walled enclosures of north-western France for the first connected seaways (4th-3rd Mill. BC)
11:00 - 11:15	Mariam Shakhmuradyan	The Morphological Examination of Desert Kites: Results of Interregional Comparative Analysis and Fieldwork

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Şakir Can	Intra-site Spatial Analysis during the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic Periods at Kendale Hecala
13:15 - 13:30	Jane Mcmahon, Hugh Thomas, Melissa Kennedy	Adaptation in the Arid zone: new perspectives on Neolithic occupation of the north Arabian hinterland
13:30 - 13:45	Ghania Hamane	Megalithic monuments in eastern Algeria, archaeological and tourist significance
13:45 - 14:00	Ekaterina Girchenko, Oleg Kardash	Architecture of the Neolithic Defensive-Residential Complex in the North of Western Siberia (based on materials of Kayukovo 2 site)
14:00 - 14:15	Aroa García-Suárez	The architecture of daily practices: unravelling Neolithic lifeways from domestic building sequences at Boncuklu and Çatalhöyük

Session Organisers: Andrey Tabarev, David Kilby, Yoshitaka Kanomata

Category: Technology

Session Abstract: The transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic brought about profound changes in human behavior and adaptations, including changes in mobility, social organization, settlement patterns, and subsistence practices. These changes are directly reflected in lithic technology, both in the development of new tools and technologies and the fundamental reorganization of technological systems. In some regions of the World this is manifested in the decline of the Paleolithic blade/microblade technologies, in the shift from the heavily curated to more expedient strategies, in the additional emphasis on prestige items (lithic caches,) etc. This session brings together presenters from around the World (Eurasia, Americas, Africa, and Australia) to review and examine the lithic technological developments that accompany the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition in their respective regions. The goals of this session are to survey the variety of patterns and perhaps identify cross- cultural regularities during this era of significant technological transitions. Technological analysis, use-wear studies, and experimental archaeology are among the effective approaches to understanding these changes and topics for discussion in the session.

Room: M

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Metin Kartal, Gizem Kartal	Körtik Tepe Chipped Stone Assemblage
10:20 - 10:40	Zeynep Beyza Agirsoy	Chipped Stone Artefacts and Human-Environment Dynamics: Insights from Gre Fılla during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A.
10:40 - 11:00	Liubov Golovanova, Vladimir Doronichev, Ekaterina Doronicheva	Changes in lithic industry during the Epipaleolithic to Neolithic transition in the North Caucasus: based on materials of the Alebastroviy zavod rockshelter
11:00 - 11:20	Antonella Minelli, Maria Rosaria Belgiorno	The lithic industry of the archaeological site of Pyrgos Mavroraki: new data for the reconstruction of the human presence on the island of Cyprus

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Andrey Tabarev	In the Shadow of Pottery: Lithics as one of the signals of Neolithisation (Siberia and Russian Far East)
13:20 - 13:40	Natalia Tsydenova	Paleolithic – Neolithic transition in North Asia: the context of lithic technologies
13:40 - 14:00	Ekaterina Bocharova, Pavel Chystyakov, Ravil Zhdanov	Evolution and Dissemination of Composite Slotted Tools in Eastern Siberia
14:00 - 14:20	Yoshitaka Kanomata	Major changes in stone tool technology in the Japanese archipelago during the transition from the Paleolithic to the Jomon period

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	David Kilby	The Reorganization of Technology: Trajectories of Change in Lithic Technological Organization in the North American Southwest
15:05 - 15:25	Ryan M. Parish	Spatial patterning in chert source networks during the Pleistocene/Early Holocene transition in southeastern North America
15:25 - 15:45	Jon C. Lohse, Mike Mcbride, Sébastien Perrot-Minnot	Paleoindian Origins of the Earliest Archaic Stone Tool Traditions in Mesoamerica: a Look at the Yucatan Shelf as Evidence for Cultural Diversity by 13,000 Years Ago

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Aouimeur Samia	Indication of Capsian-Neolithic transition through the typo-technological complex of the lithic industry at the Medjez II site eastern Algeria
16:50 - 17:10	Douglas Sain	Comparing reduction intensity of modified blades from the Topper Site, a Paleoindian chert quarry in South Carolina and Boncuklu, an Early Neolithic site in Turkey
17:10 - 17:30	Shane Miller, James Hardin, Stephen Carmody, Caleb Hutson	East Meets West: Comparing the Origins of Agriculture in Eastern North America and the Fertile Crescent

Session Organisers: Abu B. Siddiq, Benjamin S. Arbuckle

Category: Symbolism

Session Abstract: Various animals, ranging from fearsome carnivores, meat-providing ungulates, raptors, aquatic birds, fish, and reptiles to boneless insects, were depicted in a diverse array of Neolithic artifacts and features. At many Neolithic sites, items were crafted in the shape of animal heads or specific animal species, while burials often revealed the presence of animal bones or even complete skeletons interred alongside humans. Despite variations in geography, species preferences, and artifact types, animal imagery consistently emerges in cultural items across the Neolithic landscape. This opens new avenues for understanding intra-site as well as regional aspects of animal-based rituals and socio-symbolic complexities in animal-human interactions in the Neolithic world. This session aims to foster global discussions on the contemporary understanding of animals in Neolithic rituals and symbolism, asserting that cultural artifacts with animal imagery or scattered animal remains within ritual contexts are intrinsically linked to supernatural beliefs prevalent throughout the Neolithic world. Beyond the simplistic hunter–hunted dichotomy, the session will promote new ways of understanding the complexity and deep extent of animal–human interactions throughout the Neolithic, spanning from the 11th millennium BCE in West Asia and continuing up to the 1st millennium BCE in South Asia.

Room: E

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Vecihi Özkaya, Abu B. Siddiq	Animal symbolism at the 11th-10th millennium BCE Körtiktepe: Towards trends, exchange and spread across Upper Mesopotamia
10:20 - 10:40	Andrey Varenov	Demonic Dogs of the Chinese Neolithic Period on the Dadiwan Site Vessel and Posthumous Trials of the Human Soul
10:40 - 11:00	Eyyüp Ay	From Nomadic Hunter-Gatherer to Sedentary Hunter-Gatherer; A New Approach to the Transition Process from Sedentary Hunter-Gatherer to Producer Peasant: "The Woman makes, The Man conquers”
11:00 - 11:20	Aslı Kahraman Çınar, Güldane Sarica, Rabia Baydar, Mürüvvet Hiçyilmaz	An Evaluation on The Chalk Stone Relief from The Nevali Çori Finds

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Geigl Eva-Maria, Grange Thierry, Mattei Jeanne, Bendhafer Wejden	Animal Symbolism Unraveled Through Paleogenomics
13:20 - 13:40	Elena A.A. Garcea, Julia Budka, John Galaty, Salima Ikram, Shayla Monroe	Ceremonial ostentations of wild and domestic Bos in Sudan from prehistory to contemporary times
13:40 - 14:00	Laura Strolin, Melissa Kennedy, Hugh Thomas, Jane Mcmahon	Faunal remains from mustatils: animals and ritual in Neolithic Northern Arabia
14:00 - 14:20	Borut Toškan, Matjaz Simoncic, Lidija Korat, Tommaso Pilla, Anton Velušcek	The deer tamer? Pathological deformations as an indicator of human care of a lame stag in the 4th millennium BC on the Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Ulan Umitkaliev, Liudmila Lbova, Didar Zharmukhamedov, Pavel Volkov, Farkhat Aldilgazy	Zoomorphic Sacred Images on the Kyrykungyr Necropol Structure in Eastern Kazakhstan
15:05 - 15:25	Cláudia Costa	From life to death: Ovis/Capra phalanges as amulets integrated into funerary rituals of the 4th millennium BC in Portugal
15:25 - 15:45	Benjamin Arbuckle	Paths not pathways: ontological imperialism and the art of not seeing human animal relationships in prehistoric SW Asia

Session Organisers: Marion Benz, Barbara Helwing, Ewa Dutkiewicz

Category: Symbolism

Session Abstract: The early Neolithic of the Urfa Region is famous for its extraordinary imagery during the great transformation towards sedentary lifeways. Monumental architecture and a vast panoply of imagery seemed to indicate a turning point in media or even in cognition. Which role did symbolic systems play in constructing and maintaining communities during this transition? What were their predecessors and how did they develop further? Symbolic systems are of central importance for understanding structural continuities and changes in the social fabric and the dialectic relationship of communities and media in times of fundamental socio-economic transformations. This session aims to compare changes in mediality on a worldwide scale and in a long-durée perspective, applying a transdisciplinary approach. We consider the various symbolic systems, from signs to images, from built space to burial rituals, as polyvalent, intersubjective and contextual. Contributions should focus on the reflexivity, standardisation, ubiquity and materiality of imagery, and on spatial as well as on temporal aspects of archaeological records: Which symbols were represented, how and where? Did medial systems allow participation and interaction? Which role did these media play in socialisation? Was their use private or public, egalitarian or exclusive, monumental or small, random or canonised? Were they omnipresent or accessed only during specific moments? How did symbols contribute to the creation and stabilisation of collective memories? This session invites contributions from a wide range of disciplines, from prehistoric archaeology to social neurosciences, to share perspectives and case studies in this multidimensional approach to symbolic acts and artefacts.

Room: E

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Christina Marangou	Neolithic Symbolic Imagery: Reality and Fiction, Memories or Illusions in a Material World
16:50 - 17:10	Solange Rigaud	Exploring Cultural Dynamics: Mobility, Identity, and Exchange during the Neolithic transition in Europe
17:10 - 17:30	Mattia Cartolano, Silvia Ferrara	Pathways to code-making in the Neolithic. A semiotic investigation of symbols in south-west Asia
17:30 - 17:50	Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri	Rituals and Symbolic Systems in Early Prehistoric Cyprus: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of Social Cohesion and Transformation

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Eylem Özdoğan	A Glimpse into the Past: Sayburç Reliefs
10:20 - 10:40	Necmi Karul	Humanizing the World: Neolithic Art and Collective Buildings in Eastern Taurus
10:40 - 11:00	Sarah Dermech, Eric Coqueugniot, Sophie Desrosiers	A study of the wall paintings at Dja’de el-Mughara: structure of the decor, technical and cultural context, significance within the graphic manifestations of prehistory
11:00 - 11:20	Herman Lewis, Hakan Gülerce	Neolithic Sociology of the Fertile Crescent: Peace through Boundaries

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Cédric Bodet	The Neolithic Symbolic Language, or the ideograms of exogamy
13:20 - 13:40	I. Banu Dogan	On bullroarers, taboos and male initiation rituals
13:40 - 14:00	Elisa Palomino	From Arctic Inuksuit standing stones to Göbekli Tepe’s megalithic round enclosure: Entwining of practical and spiritual life
14:00 - 14:20	Andrey Varenov	Anthropomorphic Stone Sculptures and Carved or Painted Pottery of Chinese Neolithic and Mongolian Stag Stones

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Ewa Dutkiewicz, Christian Sommer	Paleolithic Art: What it’s all about?
15:05 - 15:25	Liudmila Lbova	Siberian Anthropomorphic Sculpture in a Context Paleoart’s Universals
15:25 - 15:45	Lekë Shala, Florian Cousseau, Marie Besse	When Craftsmanship Connects: Exploring Common Craft Styles in Anthropomorphic Stelae Across the Alpine Region in the 3rd Millennium B.C.
15:45 - 16:05	Monica Margarit, Adina Boronean?	Simple Decoration or Symbolic Meaning? Neolithic and Chalcolithic Osseous Artefacts at The Lower Danube (Romania)

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Christian Bentz, Ewa Dutkiewicz	Information Encoding in the Paleolithic
16:50 - 17:10	Mariana Diniz	Far from Eden: Symbols and Societies of the Iberian Peninsula Neolithic
17:10 - 17:30	Ekaterina Kashina	Who is in the house? Two examples of forest Neolithic East European hunters’ symbolic systems
17:30 - 18:00	All Participants	Final Discussion

Session Organisers: Svend Hansen, Ianir Milevski

Category: Symbolism

Session Abstract: In the past 30 years, a hitherto unknown pictorial world of the early Neolithic has become known in Urfa and the wider region. The transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic was not only associated with a fundamental change in the way of life and economy, but also with a media revolution. Life-size sculptures made of stone were an extraordinary craft, artistic and social innovation. The material, themes and size of these sculptures were inextricably linked and represented permanence, masculinity and monumentality. In the further development of the Neolithic, images of humans, but also of certain animals, played an important role in the farming villages. On a larger worldwide scale, the question of whether the paintings and sculptures played a role for all or only part of the peasant societies will be discussed. The Neolithic period worldwide is not only a time in which plant and animal domestication occurred and agricultural societies represented a revolutionary break from hunter-gatherer lifeways. The question is whether the transition to the Neolithic was connected everywhere, not only in Eurasia, with a production of images that were adapted to the achievements of the new mode of production. The aim of this session within the World Neolithic Congress is to evaluate different iconographies and their material culture aspects from Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic bearing communities and evaluate the ideological aspects of art against the background of the socio-economic basis of these communities and vice-versa.

Room: E

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Svend Hansen, Ianir Milevski	Iconography and Society during the Neolithic Revolution. An Introduction
13:15 - 13:30	Svend Hansen	The Media Revolution in the Early Neolithic
13:30 - 13:45	Ali Asker Bal	What Did Art See or Not See in Göbeklitepe?
13:45 - 14:00	Remziye Ercan	Göbeklitepe and Its Reflection on Works of Art
14:00 - 14:15	Michael Morsch	Markers of Subsistence Developments in Neolithic Art? Iconographic and Contextual Studies on the Sculptures of Nevali Cori

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Şeyma Çiftçi	A Unique Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Figurine Type in the Upper Tigris Region: A Hypothesis
15:05 - 15:25	Maria De Jesus Sanches And Joana Castro Teixeira	Neolithic Rock and Mobile Art from the North-west Iberia: When are Those Iconographies Shared with Settlements Decorated Pottery?
15:25 - 15:45	Malahat Farajova	Neolithic Period of Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape (Azerbaijan)
15:45 - 16:05	Lydia Zortkina	“Minusinsk” Style: Neolithic Rock Art from South-Central Siberia

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Sarah Dermech, Eric Coqueugniot	An Attempt to Interpret the Geometric Paintings from Dja’de el-Mughara (Syrai, 9th Mill. Cal. BC)
16:50 - 17:10	Ianir Milevski, Ofer Marder	On Artisans and Artists in the Neolithic Revolution and the Neolithic Iconography of the Levant
17:10 - 17:30	Morag Kersel	Consequences of Attachment to Neolithic Masks in the Southern Levant
17:30 - 17:50	Carlos Vítor Didelet	Neolithic and Chalcolithic Cranial Human Masks from Portugal

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Joanna Pyzel	Turning Left or Turning Right? Temporal and Regional Variability in LBK Pottery Decoration in Europe
10:20 - 10:40	Rebecca Bristow	Turning West: On the Disappearance of Figurative Representations in Neolithic West-Central Europe
10:40 - 11:00	Valeska Becker	Headless Anthropomorphic Representations in the Course of the European Neolithic
11:00 - 11:20	Michael Müller	Neolithic Anthropomorphic Figurines in Chalcolithic Contexts (Romania)

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Julia Luckner	Living Fauna Made of Clay? A Comparison of Animal Bone Findings and Interpretations of Zoomorphic Figurines in Eastern Europe
13:20 - 13:40	Dina Shalem	Continuity and changes in Zoomorphic Clay Figurines from the 7th and 6th Millennia in the Southern Levant
13:40 - 14:00	Arjun Rao	Cattle (Bos indicus): Iconic Animal in the Southern Neolithic Rock Bruisings and Ashmounds with Ethnographic Signatures in India
14:00 - 14:20	Andrey Varenov	Pairs of Deer Engraved on the Neolithic Pottery of China as a Reflection of Social Structure of Ancient Society

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Goce Naumov	The Neolithic Anthropomorphism and the Domestication of Human Body in the Balkans
15:05 - 15:25	Argyris Fassoulas	Giving Meaning to the Technique: The Socio-cultural Dimension of Figurine-making in Neolithic Aegean
15:25 - 15:45	Stella Katsarou, Adamantios Sampson	Human Representations and Farming Economy. Insights from the Advanced Farming Stage in the Aegean
15:45 - 16:15	All Participants	Discussion

Session Organisers: Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Françoise Le Mort, Stéphane Rottier

Category: Anthropology / Burial Practices

Session Abstract: Mortuary practices can be particularly enlightening on the evolution of behaviors during periods of transition. Along with the changes in lifeways that occurred during the Neolithic transition, a new type of bond was established between the living and the space in which the deceased left behind. The rich record of Neolithic settlements and burials in various space and time scales makes it possible to discuss the interferences between the attitudes of the societies facing death and the environmental and cultural context. A high range of practices, covering a large timescale, from the time of the death until the process of physical and immaterial transformation of the deceased is achieved, reflects the diversity of the attitudes of the Neolithic societies facing death. Burials vary in location, architecture, shape, size, type, number of dead buried, position and orientation of the dead, grave goods…. Specific treatments, that might be performed during or after the body deposit, or even the absence of burial have also been documented (e.g. manipulations, plastering the skull, cannibalism). This session aims to bring together scholars working on Neolithic mortuary practices in different geographical locations and in different timeframes to understand the diversity of the attitudes of the societies facing death at the local, regional, and interregional scales and to discuss their evolution through time. Presentations will focus on regional or micro-regional syntheses, interregional comparisons, diachronic studies discussing the evolution and/or diversification of practices through time and integrative interpretations. A large place will be given to discussion.

Room: F

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:30	Ian Kuijt, John Magnussen, James Fraser	I Live, I Die, I Live Again: Ritual heirlooms and the life history of Near Eastern Neolithic plastered skulls
13:30 - 13:50	Ergül Kodaş	Re -examination of the concept of ‘skull cult’ of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in the Near East through spatial and burial context: Archaeological data and anthropological approach
13:50 - 14:10	Cansu Karamurat, Çiğdem Atakuman	Palaeolithic origins of Southwest Asian Skull Cults
14:10 - 14:30	Youssef Kanjou	The Treatment of Skulls in the Neolithic Period at Tell Qaramel, Northern Syria

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Silvia M. Bello	The archaeology of death: a review of the taphonomic traits associated with the manipulation and butchery of human bodies.
15:05 - 15:25	Yılmaz Selim Erdal	Extensive Incisions and Delayed Burials in the Early Neolithic Settlements of Middle Euphrates
15:25 - 15:45	Gresky Julia, Clare Lee, Necmi Karul	Intentional Modifications of the Human Bone Fragments from Göbekli Tepe
15:45 - 16:05	Vassil Nikolov, Desislava Takorova, Kathleen Mcsweeney, Nadezhda Atanassova, Todor Dyakov	The Lives of the Dead: Treating dead bodies during the Neolithic in the Central Balkans - a case study from the Sofia plain

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Scott Donald Haddow	Disassembling the dead: making sense of human skeletal remains in “non-funerary” contexts at Neolithic Çatalhöyük
16:50 - 17:10	Marco Milella, Rafael M. Martínez-Sánchez, Juan Carlos Vera Rodríguez, Juan Antonio Cámara Serrano, María José Martínez Fernández, María Dolores Bretones García, Sylvia Alejandra Jiménez Brobeil, Julia Brünig, Inmaculada López Flores, Zita Laffranchi	As above, so below: deposition, modification, and reutilization of human remains at Marmoles cave (Cueva de los Marmoles: Southern Spain, 4000-1000 cal BCE)
17:10 - 17:30	Alexandra Mari, Anthi Tiliakou	Treating the dead, choosing the bone(s?): performing Neolithic secondary burials in the Cave of Pan at Marathon, Attica, Greece.
17:30 - 17:50	Filipa Rodrigues, Pedro Souto, Luís Gomes, Alexandre Varanda, João Zilhão	New people, new attitudes: the mortuary practices of the first Neolithic groups in central Portugal

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Eline M.J. Schotsmans	An interdisciplinary forensic approach to understanding multi-stage mortuary practices and manipulation of the dead in the Neolithic Near East: experiments at the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research
10:20 - 10:40	Argyro Nafplioti, Ioanna Serpetsidaki	The Neolithic cemetery at Katsambas (near Knossos) on Crete in Greece: Shedding light onto complex mortuary practices
10:40 - 11:00	Anastasia Papathanasiou	Ritual intensification and ancestral memory in Neolithic Alepotrypa Cave of Southern Greece.
11:00 - 11:20	Can Yümni Gündem	A ritual ceremony with a very large crowd

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Stella Katsarou, Fotis Georgiadis, Anastasia Papathanasiou, Anastasios Siros, Andreas Darlas	Burials and Caves: The Spiritual Aspect of Their Relationship
13:15 - 13:30	Paula Becerra Fuello, Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez, Marta Díaz-Zorita Bonilla, Miriam Vílchez Suárez, Sonia Robles Carrasco, Margarita Sánchez Romero	Fire in Megalithic funerary practices in Southeastern Iberia
13:30 - 13:45	Yasemin Yılmaz, Aslı Erim Özdoğan, Françoise Le Mort	Silent House: The Skull Building
13:45 - 14:00	Eline M.J. Schotsmans, Lily Canepari, Sacha Kacki, Christopher J. Knüsel	Taphonomy and archaeothanatology of plaster burials: an actualistic study of the effect of lime and gypsum on human remains for a better understanding of Neolithic plaster burials in Western Asia.
14:00 - 14:15	Ali Akın Akyol, Emine Torgan Güzel, Recep Karadağ, Kameray Özdemir, Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Yusuf Kağan Kadıoğlu, Abu B. Siddiq, Vecihi Özkaya	Archaeometric Analyses for the Characterization of Pigment and Textile Artifacts from the PPNA site of Körtiktepe, Diyarbakır, Turkiye

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Yılmaz Selim Erdal	Association with Mesolithic-related Ancestry or Demic Diffusion in Neolithic Northwest Anatolia
15:05 - 15:25	Ana Arzelier, Harmony De Belvalet, Marie-Hélène Pemonge, Pauline Garberi, Didier Binder, Henri Duday, Marie-France Deguilloux, Mélanie Pruvost	Ancient DNA sheds light on the funerary practices of late Neolithic collective burial in southern France
15:25 - 15:45	Geigl Eva-Maria, Parasayan Oguzhan, Grange Thierry, Thevenet Corinne, Ilett Michael, Hachem Lamys, Dubouloz Jerome	Unprecedented diversity of funerary practices in the LBK of the Paris Basin revealed through anthropology and paleogenomics
15:45 - 16:05	Melanie Pruvost, Vincent Ard, Ana Arzelier, Marie-France Deguilloux, Delphine Linard, Muriel Gandelin, Jérôme Rouquet	Diverse funerary practices and genetic insights in Late Neolithic France: The LINK Project

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Sabina Cvecek, Yılmaz Selim Erdal	Ghost Children: A diversity of mortuary practices in Anatolia during the Neolithic
16:50 - 17:10	May Alhaek	Child burials and associated ritual practices during the Neolithic period in Syria.
17:10 - 17:30	Anne Augereau	The funerary gender treatment as a marker of social organization: from the Early to the Middle Neolithic in the Paris basin and its margins (France)
17:30 - 17:50	Victoria Gingley Leyri	Materiality and the embodiment of the deceased: Rank, gender, and class as markers of identity

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Yasmina Chaid-Saoudi , Ichraq Larbi, Stephane Rottier	From lower to middle Holocene, unveiling funerary practices from Columnata necropolis (Algeria)
10:20 - 10:40	Krum Bacvarov, Nikolina Nikolova, Georgi Katsarov, Atanas Tsurev, Kathleen Mcsweeney	Regional ideologies vs local expressions: the Early Neolithic burial evidence from Nova Nadezhda in Upper Thrace
10:40 - 11:00	Alexandra Anders	The Diversity of Mortuary Practices in the 6–5th Millennium BC in Eastern Hungary: Case Studies from the Polgár Microregion
11:00 - 11:20	Raluca Kogalniceanu	Death in The South-East Europe during the Late Neolithic: Particular trends

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Claudia Speciale, Giuseppina Battaglia, Nunzia Larosa, Alessandra Magrì, Giuseppe Montana, Vito Giuseppe Prillo, Flavio De Angelis, C. Eduardo Amorim, Ilaria Arienzo, Vincenza Forgia, Bettina Schulz-Paulsson	The funerary complex of Ustica (Sicily, Italy): evidence of early Megalithism in the central Mediterranean
13:15 - 13:30	Rula Shafiq, Ted Banning	Mortuary Treatment in Late Neolithic Jordan
13:30 - 13:45	Ergül Kodaş	Human remains at Boncuklu Tarla: Peleodemography and Burial customs.
13:45 - 14:00	Osamu Kondo	Recent findings on the mortuary practices of sedentary hunter-gatherers, {Jomon} in Japan
14:00 - 14:15	Maciej Debiec	Bandkeramik ritual-burial complex from Nezvisko, Ukraine

Session Organisers: Lasse Sørensen, Michael Brandl, Laura Dietrich, Danny Rosenberg

Category: Technology

Session Abstract: The invention of polished stone tools, such as axes, adzes and chisels, played a crucial role in the processes involved in Neolithisation on a global scale. These tools were vital for establishing settled life and agriculture, by facilitating clearance of the land, woodworking, the construction of buildings and subsistence strategies. Accompanying the economic transformations caused by the introduction of polished stone tools, were processes associated with the social life of the early farming communities, attested by the use of rare exogenous raw materials, such as jadeite and nephrite. In this session, we invite researchers to explore and discuss the relationship between Neolithic societies – early and developed – across key areas witnessing socio-economic developments, involving the use of polished stone tools from various perspectives. These include techno-morphological, use-wear, contextual and raw material analysis, to reveal the full extent of the use and function of such implements, as well their role in the development of novel exchange networks, symbolic behaviour, wealth, status and social inequality.

Room: G

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Lasse Vilien Sørensen, Michael Brandl, Laura Dietrich, Danny Rosenberg	Studying polished stone tools – research history, current status and future perspectives
10:20 - 10:40	Özlem Çevik, Mine Uçmazoğlu	Common and Rarer Polished Stone Tools from Neolithic Ulucak
10:40 - 11:00	Thomas Strasser	Neolithic Stone Axes from Crete and their Implications for the Wider Aegean
11:00 - 11:20	Laura Dietrich, Barbara Horejs, Michael Brandl	Greenstone chisel-like adzes for carpentry were components of the Neolithic Package in Anatolia and the Balkans

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Lasse Vilien Sørensen	Tougher than the rest – quarrying jadeitite raw materials for polished stone tools in the Eastern Mediterranean region
13:20 - 13:40	Mariana Diniz, Ana Rosa, Andrea Martins, César Neves	{To Be or Not to Be an Agricultural Community…} Debating the Question from Portuguese Neolithic Polished Stone Tools Assemblages
13:40 - 14:00	Simone Meinecke, Roberto Risch, Laura Culi Verdaguer, Francisco Jose Martinez Fernandez	Neolithic axe production in Central Germany – technological aspects and lithic raw materials
14:00 - 14:20	Wulf Hein, Mihaela Savu, Kai Martens, Müller Michael, Marquardt Lund	Grinding flint axe heads – an experimental approach

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Michael Müller	To Grind or Not to Grind – Axe Heads from Depositions of Neolithic Groups in Central and Northern Europe
15:05 - 15:25	Anne Teather	Flint, chalk and pigment: Tracing the symbolism of axeheads in northern Europe
15:25 - 15:45	Lars Larsson	Ritual depositions in a local perspective
15:45 - 16:05	Sebastian Schultrich	‘Battle axes’, fragments, and cup marks

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Amber Roy	The Lifeways of Scandinavian Middle Neolithic B Battle-Axes
16:50 - 17:10	Mads Lou Bendtsen, Lasse Vilien Sørensen, Niels N. Johannsen	Newcomers: Tracing Corded Ware Expansion through Provenance of Battleaxes
17:10 - 17:30	Peter Bye-Jensen	Tracing Neolithic Craftsmanship: A Use-Wear Analysis of Polished Flint Tools from Stone Heap Graves in Mid-Jutland
17:30 - 17:50	Okopi Ade	A Functional Study of Ground Stone Axes (Gsa) Assemblages from Akwanga, Central Nigeria

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Michael Brandl, Lasse Vilien Sørensen, Michael Gostencnik, Iris Schmidt	NEOProvenance: The Potential of Non-Destructive Protocols for Provenance Analyses of Polished Stone Tools
10:20 - 11:30	All Participants	Final Discussion

Session Organisers: Laura Dietrich, Laure Dubreuil, Emanuela Cristiani, Caroline Hamon, Avi Gopher, Andrea Zupancich

Category: Technology

Session Abstract: The Neolithic marks a major turning point in human history, leading towards dramatic changes in lifeways, ideologies, societies and economies. In this session, our aim is to establish a global forum for research exploring people and plant intricate relationships within the context of Neolithization(s), considering their multifaceted nature encompassing technological innovations, dietary practices, agents, networks, and lifeways. We invite contributions that focus on the identification of new proxies - defined here as agents and components - of Neolithization, in addition to those related to the domestication of founder crops. These could encompass a wide range of topics, including plant food processing technologies, foodways and dietary habits, plant-people interactions, and the identification of specific tools and recipes at the onset of the Neolithization, local and over regional dietary strategies and plant resource management, along with long-term evolutions and changes in plant consumptions patterns such as storage, grinding, and cooking, techniques. To facilitate discussion on these topics, we encourage worldwide interdisciplinary contributions to the study of human remains and material culture. This includes new methodologies in use-wear and residue analyses, the study of dental macro - and micro-wear on teeth, ancient dental calculus, isotope analysis, metagenomics, as well as experimental and theoretical approaches applied for novel high-resolution reconstructions of Neolithic diets and food technology.

Room: G

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Anna Stroulia, Jérôme Robitaille, Laure Dubreuil	Cereal Grinding Rates: From Experimental Results to Ethnographic Facts
13:20 - 13:40	Atsumi Ishida, Akiko Horiuchi, Nobuo Miyauchi, Hitoshi Ozawa, Yoshiki Miyata	Uncovering Alternative Functions of Neolithic Grinding and Pounding Stones: An Analysis of Organic Residues Using Experimental Tools
13:40 - 14:00	Ceren Kabukcu, Maria João Fernandes Martins	A systematic review on experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeological case studies of plant food processing and cooking
14:00 - 14:20	Patrick Pedersen	Preparing a surface: The “seasoning” of food processing ground stone and its implications for use-wear analysis

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Jiajing Wang	Microbotanical dental calculus analysis provides a new proxy for understanding animal domestication during the Neolithization
15:05 - 15:25	Robitaille Jerome, Dubreuil Laure, Stroulia Anna	Transforming Grains, Shaping Societies: Insights into Ground stone Tool Use and Food Processing Techniques.
15:25 - 15:45	David Eitam	Late Natufian, the first pre-domestic agricultures [13,000 – 1,5000 Cal BP]
15:45 - 16:05	Fiona Pichon, Amy Richardson, Juan José Ibáñez, Maria Vega Cañamares, Carlos Pecharromán, Kamal Reuf Aziz, Roger Matthews, Saber Ahmed Saber, Sari Jammo, Akira Tsuneki	Evidence of Plant Exploitation during the Neolithic in the Zagros Foothills: A Functional Perspective of Stone Tools and People at Bestansur and Jarmo (Iraqi Kurdistan)

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Laure Dubreuil, Leore Grosman	Exploring the practices and social context of plants processing at Nahal Ein Gev II (Late Natufian, Southern Levant)
16:50 - 17:10	Laura Dietrich, Christoph Von Tycowicz, Julius Mayer	Wear marker, wear trajectories and wear states in the analysis of Neolithic grinding stones (case study Göbekli Tepe)
17:10 - 17:30	Sergio Taranto, Adrià Breu Barcons, Marta Portillo, Anna BachGòmez, Miquel Molist, Marie Le Miere, Cristina Lemorini	Enjoying ’focaccia’ in late-Neolithic Near East. A culinary tradition explored through integrated use-wear, phytolith, and organic residue analysis
17:30 - 17:50	Jaroslav Rídky, Carlos G. Santiago-Marrero, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Kristina Dolezalová, Daniel Pilar, Yasin Gökhan Çakan, Erhan Bıçakçı	Macrolithic artefacts and plant micro-residues in dental calculus as an important sources of information on dietary habits at the Neolithic Tepecik-Çiftlik site (~7,100 – 5,800 cal BCE) in Central Anatolia

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Agustina Vazquez Fiorani, Julian Salazar, Valeria Franco Salvi, Ian Kuijt, Meredith Chesson, Jordi Lopez-Lillo	A world up in the mountains: Neolithization and early villager lifestyles in the Southern Andes (Argentina, ca. 200 BCE-AD 900)
10:20 - 10:40	Sutonuka Bhattacharya, Kumar Akhilesh, Prachi Joshi, Naama Goren-Inbar, Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Shanti Pappu	From Quarry to Quern: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Grinding Stone Chaîne Opératoires in India
10:40 - 11:00	Weiya Li	New insights into the Neolithic denticulate sickles from Central China
11:00 - 11:20	Julia Reis, Laure Dubreuil, Lisa Janz	Investigating Plant Use Through Ground Stone Tools In The Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Wiebke Kirleis, Jingping An, Dragana Filipovic, Sara Krubeck, Lucy Kubiak-Martens, Tania Oudemans, Henrike Effenberger, Stefanie Klooß	Multiproxy analyses of human-plant interaction in the southwestern Baltic around 3100 BCE: following the {chaîne opératoire} from the fields to the meals
13:20 - 13:40	Caroline Hamon	Variability of grinding systems in neolithization contexts of the VIth millenium BC
13:40 - 14:00	Carlos G. Santiago-Marrero, Marianna Lymperaki, Efrossini Vika, Dushka Urem-Kotsou, Stavros Kotsos, Juan José García-Granero	Insight into Neolithic cuisine: a holistic approach for investigating charred food crust and absorbed residues from cooking vessels from Neolithic Stavroupoli (northern Greece)
14:00 - 14:20	Ana Duricic	If Ovens Could Talk: Bread Consumption in the Neolithic of the Central Balkans

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Alexander Minnich	How did bread come to Central Europe? Investigations into the role of the Neolithic settlement of Brunn am Gebirge near Vienna in the spread of the eating habits of Europe’s first farmers using grinding stones
15:05 - 15:25	All Participants	Discussion: on pleople, tools and plants
15:25 - 15:45	Organisers	Conclusion: on pleople, tools and plants

Session Organisers: Karol Szymczak, Michal Leloch

Category: Population - Network

Session Abstract: The aim of this session is to discuss the somehow forgotten lately problem of the Neolithic counting objects which probably reflect value of certain goods. Such artefacts appear in the very beginning of PPN A, and were in use till the Iron Age. If we agreed with an idea of the significance of tokens presented for the first time by L. Oppenheim in 1959, we would touch one of the far reaching consequences of neolithization. It led to radical changes not only in economic relations, food production, way of life, and beliefs, but also in social organization of the Neolithic societies. Exchanging goods with the use of tokens/counters needs acceptance of the whole token system by wide groups of people and create the special type of social ties, which after a few millennia led directly to urban and state civilizations. Reflection on this aspect of neolithization should help to understand better the far going importance of this process for further human history.

Room: H

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Karol Szymczak	Neolithic Clay Tokens and The Eastern Boundary of Their Occurrence in Central Asia
15:05 - 15:25	Michal Leloch, Karol Szymczak	Possible Neolithic Counting Objects Other Then Fired Clay Tokens
15:25 - 15:45	Sophie Juncker, Andreea ?erna	Tracing the Transformations: The Role of Clay Tokens in Neolithic and Copper Age Societies of the Carpathian-Dniester Region
15:45 - 16:05	Bahar Kıvrak, Aslı Erim Özdoğan	Clay Sealings from Neolithic Sumaki Höyük

Session Organisers: Çetin Şenkul

Category: Natural Environment

Session Abstract: The critical interaction between geology, active tectonics, and geomorphology and their impact on early human communities has long been a significant area of study in the natural sciences. The Neolithic period marks substantial advancements in human settlement and agriculture, profoundly influenced by the geological and tectonic contexts of the time. This session aims to explore how tectonic activities and geomorphological processes, particularly from the Last Glacial Maximum to the warmer Holocene epoch, affected landscape evolution and resource distribution. We are particularly interested in examining the transition from cold and dry climates to warm and humid ones and their dynamics in river valleys. We invite interdisciplinary research employing advanced methods and technologies to elucidate these dynamics. Contributions will investigate the effects of seismic activities and landform changes on Neolithic settlements, agricultural practices, and socio-cultural developments. This session aims to enhance our understanding of the resilience and adaptability of Neolithic communities to geological transformations.

Room: D

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Şule Gürboğa, Çetin Şenkul, Yasemin Ünlü	Geological Evolution of Southeastern Türkiye: in the concept of plate configuration and its recent effect on the human life
10:20 - 10:40	Mahmut Göktuğ Drahor, Ökmen Sümer, Necmi Karul	Geology and earthquake phenomenon about the Epipaleolithic and Early Neolithic Hunter-Gatherer settlements located in the Eastern Taurus Foothills
10:40 - 11:00	Ökmen Sümer, Mahmut Göktuğ Drahor, Necmi Karul	Gnammas; are phenomenal geological structures for Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolitich civilization?
11:00 - 11:20	Selman Er, Emre Güldoğan	Geological, Geomorphological, and Geoarchaeological Investigations at the Sefer Tepe Excavation Site in Şanlıurfa

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Bülent Arıkan	The Early Holocene (ca. 12,000-8000 BP) Paleoclimate of Anatolia: Assessing the Long-term Climate-Human Interactions
13:20 - 13:40	Maria Rosa Iovino, Giuseppe Moschella, Salvatore Chilardi, Beatrice Basile	The impact of environmental changes on semi-submerged neolithic sites in eastern Sicily
13:40 - 14:00	Güven Eken, Burçin Yaraşlı, Şafak Arslan, Enes Taşoğlu, Ahmet Karataş	The Ecosystems and Biological Diversity of Taş Tepeler
14:00 - 14:20	Mustafa Doğan, Ahmet Köse, Yunus Bozkurt, Seda Kaya Köse, Çetin Şenkul, Necmi Karul	Geographical Characteristics and Transformations of Neolithic Settlements: A Spatial Analysis of Anatolia and the Taş Tepeler Complex

Session Organisers: Özlem Sarıtaş, Derya Silibolatlaz

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: The dispersal of herding practices during the Neolithic period represents a significant milestone in human history, reshaping societies, and landscapes across Southwest Asia and beyond. This session aims to delve into the intricate processes and impacts associated with the spread of pastoralism, exploring the movement of herding practices and their profound influence on Neolithic communities. Through an interdisciplinary lens, we will examine the origins, trajectories, and mechanisms of herding dispersal and the socio-economic and environmental transformations it engendered. Key themes will include the routes of herding expansion, the interaction between herders and indigenous agriculturalists, and the ecological implications of pastoralism. These presentations will highlight the latest archaeological findings, genetic studies, and environmental data that illuminate the patterns and drivers of herding dispersal. Participants will gain insights into: • The initial domestication and management of livestock and their subsequent spread across Neolithic landscapes. • The role of environmental factors and climate change in shaping herding routes and practices. • The social and economic impacts of pastoralism on Neolithic communities, including changes in settlement patterns, trade networks, and cultural exchanges. • The adaptive strategies herders employ in diverse ecological zones and their interactions with sedentary agriculturalists. This session will provide a comprehensive understanding of how herding practices are disseminated across Southwest Asia, transforming human-animal relationships and ecosystems. Attendees will leave with a deeper appreciation of the complexity and dynamism of Neolithic pastoralism and its lasting legacies. Join us for an engaging exploration of the pathways of pastoralism and the critical role of herding in shaping the Neolithic world. This session promises to offer valuable perspectives for scholars and enthusiasts interested in the history of human-animal interactions and the development of ancient societies.

Room: B

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Louise Martin, Joy Mccorriston	Cattle Cults, Social Symphysis and Pastoral Systems in the Southern Arabian Neolithic
15:05 - 15:25	Özlem Sarıtaş, Louise Martin	Evolution of Herding Practices: The Dispersal of Sheep and Goats from the Epipaleolithic to the Neolithic in Anatolia.
15:25 - 15:45	Derya Silibolatlaz	Exploring Pig Domestication During Pre Pottery Period B (PPNB) at Gre Fılla in the Upper Tigris Region, Southeastern Turkey
15:45 - 16:05	Gülçin İlgezdi Bertram, Banu Öksüz, Semra Balcı	Human-Animal Relations at Sırçalıtepe

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Can Yümni Gündem	Unveiling Neolithic Dispersal: Early Cattle Herding in the Highlands of Central Anatolia, Tepecik Çiftlik
16:50 - 17:10	Saiji Arai, Farhad Guliyev, Azad Zeynalov, Yoshihiro Nishiaki	Does the emergence of domestic animals coincide with pastoralization?: The rapid introduction and delayed development of livestock economy in the Southern Caucasus

Session Organisers: Çiler Altınbilek Algül, Çiğdem Atakuman, Douglas Baird, Semra Balcı

Category: Near East

Session Abstract: Many features of the Southwest Asian Neolithic seem to have gradually emerged during the Epipaleolithic period. For this reason, the detailed study and interpretation of archaeological data from the late Pleistocene and often beginning of Holocene in particular areas is extremely important for understanding the Neolithization process of the larger region. Although the Epipalaeolithic period is well defined in the Southern Levant, our knowledge from sites in Anatolia, the Aegean Islands, Cyprus and the Northern Levant is limited. An important factor has been the lack of research on the late Pleistocene in the region outside the Southern Levant. This situation is gradually changing with the recent discoveries of Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic sites in various areas of Anatolia, indicating that the potential of the region is much higher than initial perspectives. The aim of this session is to re-evaluate the presence and nature of the Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic communities of Anatolia, the Aegean Islands, Northern Levant and Cyprus in light of recent discoveries. In this respect, presentations are expected to focus on material cultures, regional variability, residential strategies and mobility, subsistence and economy, responses to climate and environmental changes, long-distance relationships and socio-cultural networks, and choice of settlement areas. Furthermore, we also welcome the discussion of ancient DNA studies regarding the early pre-Neolithic contexts in SW Asia.

Room: I

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Çetin Şenkul	Climatic and Environmental Dynamics in Anatolia: From the Last Glacial Maximum to the Early Holocene
10:20 - 10:40	Metin Kartal, Gizem Kartal	A New Epi-palaeolithic Site in Western Taurus: Kızılin
10:40 - 11:00	Göknur Karahan, Kadriye Özçelik	Epipaleolithic Layers of Karain B (Mediterranean Region, Turkey)
11:00 - 11:20	All Participants	Discussion

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Çiler Altınbilek Algül, Orkun Kaycı, Semra Balcı, Avi Gopher, Damase Mouralis, Hale Tümer, Derya Silibolatlaz	Epipalaeolithic Hunter-Gatherers of the Central Taurus: Eşek Deresi Cave (East Mediterranean/Türkiye)
13:20 - 13:40	Jean-Denis Vigne , Briois François, Cucchi Thomas, Hadad Remi, Mazzucco Niccolo, Mylona Pantelitsa, Rousou Maria, Zazzo Antoine	New light about the Epipaleolithic in Cyprus: the settlement of Pakhtomena
13:40 - 14:00	Douglas Baird, Gökhan Mustafaoğlu	The Epipalaeolithic in central Anatolia; excavations at Pınarbaşı
14:00 - 14:20	All Participants	Discussion

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Cevdet Merih Erek	A General Overview of the Epipaleolithic Cultures of Direkli and Yusufun Kayası Caves and Material Culture Assessment
15:05 - 15:25	Yoshihiro Nishiaki	Natufian phenomenon in the northern Levant: A case at Dederiyeh Cave, North Syria
15:25 - 15:45	Ergül Kodaş	The Epipaleolithic period in the Mardin Area
15:45 - 16:05	All Participants	Discussion

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Yavuz Aydın, Eşref Erbil	Late Epipaleolithic Hunter-Gatherers of Northwestern Anatolia: Ballık Cave, İzmir/Turkey
16:45 - 17:00	Deniz Sarı	Gedikkaya Cave in North-western Türkiye: the Epipalaeolithic layer that connected to ritual activity
17:00 - 17:15	Hülya Çalışkan Akgül	Koskarlı Cave: The First Epipaleolithic Site Excavation in the Southeastern Black Sea Area
17:15 - 17:30	Çiğdem Atakuman, Cansu Karamurat, Hasan Can Gemici, Dilek Koptekin, Mehmet Somel	Patterns of the Neolithization in the Aegean: A synthesis of Material Culture and a-DNA Evidence
17:30 - 17:45	All Participants	Discussion

Session Organisers: Camilla Mazzucato

Category: Population - Network

Session Abstract: Over the past decade the study of the past has been increasingly influenced by network thinking, a period in which archaeological research has seen a sharp increase in the use of network concepts and formal applications across different scales and methodologies. Network methods offer flexible and effective concepts and statistical tools for describing, investigating and analyzing how entities relate to other entities within complex and integrated structures. The flexibility of network methods is manifested in the wide range of approaches that have been applied to archaeological data that span from studies drawing on physics and complexity theory to others inspired by sociology or by Actor Network Theory (ANT), assemblage and entanglement theory. Recent studies have revealed the Neolithic transition as a protracted and multi-centered process defined by a diverse landscape of social and subsistence strategies across Southwest Asia. Within this context, networks have been increasingly used as both conceptual devices and formal applications to model relations at different scales using diverse datasets. This workshop provides a venue for showcasing new research that applies network methods to the study of the Neolithic transition and for discussing how network representations and models can be of help in disentangling the way the Neolithization process developed in Southwest Asia and beyond.

Room: H

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Fiona Coward	Multiscalar and multiply-material: archaeological networks are not the poor relative of social networks but key to understanding the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia.
16:50 - 17:10	Fiona Pichon, Juan José Ibáñez	Modeling Obsidian Exchange Networks during the Establishment of Neolithic in Southwest Asia
17:10 - 17:30	Damase Mouralis, Çiler Altınbilek Algül, Orkun Kaycı, Semra Balcı	Cilicia between Central Anatolia and the Levant: Evidence of obsidian exchange from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic period
17:30 - 17:50	Camilla Mazzucato, Michele Coscia	Using network variance to investigate social relations at a micro-scale. Socio-material archaeological networks and biological ties at Çatalhöyük

Session Organisers: Julien Vieugue, Peter Akkermans, Arkadius Marciniak, Akira Tsuneki

Category: Symbolism

Session Abstract: The decisive shift made by the Near Eastern societies towards a fully developed Neolithic way of life (the so-called Second Neolithic Revolution) occurred during the 7th millennium cal. BC. This pivotal period is characterized by deep economic (eg. emergence of pottery, development of pastoralism), social (eg. emergence of villages structured in neighborhoods) and symbolic (eg. scarcity of burials, increase of figurines) changes. However, this major turning point in the history of Near Eastern communities remains poorly understood due to the fragmentation of research in terms of chronological periods (Pre-Pottery Neolithic vs Pottery Neolithic), geographical areas (Northern vs Southern Levant, Upper vs Lower Mesopotamia, etc.) and disciplines (physical anthropology, archaeozoology and archaeobotany, pottery and flint studies, etc.). This session questions the paces (When?), the causes (Why?) and the processes (How?) of the various changes that led to the consolidation of the Neolithic way of life during the 7th millennium cal. BC. in the different regions of the Near East. We would like to invite various scholars who have studied this historical transition from the thorough analysis of the multiple artefacts (stone and ceramic vessels; lithic tools; stone and clay figurines) and ecofacts (faunal and botanical remains; human bones) found at major stratified sites in the region (Mesopotamia, Levant and Anatolia). We will favor case studies comparing several categories of prehistoric remains or Neolithic villages.

Room: H

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Gary Rollefson	And Now for Something Completely Different: Between the LPPNB and PN in the Early 7th Millennium.
10:20 - 10:40	Julien Vieugue, Anna Eirikh-Rose, Kamen Boyadzhiev, Brent Whitford, Carine Harivel, Eyal Marco	Understanding socio-economic and symbolic changes during the PPN-PN transition in the Levant: the renewed excavations at Sha’ar Ha`Golan.
10:40 - 11:00	Miquel Molist, Anna Bach Gómez	Change or Break? Elements for the analysis of the transition between the PPNB and the PN. Observations based on the data from Tell Halula (Middle Euphrates Valley, Syria).
11:00 - 11:20	Douglas Baird, Andrew Fairbairn, Gokhan Mustafaoglu	From Boncuklu to Çatalhöyük; transformations in 8th Millennium BC central Anatolia from ‘PPN’ to ‘PN’.

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Hitomi Hongo, Saiji Arai, Can Yümni Gündem, Özlem Sarıtaş, Yutaka Miyake, Aslı Erim Özdoğan	Animal economy during PPN-PN transition: Dispersal of domestic ungulates to the eastern upper Tigris basin and beyond
13:20 - 13:40	Fiona Pichon, Juan Antonio Sánchez Priego, Rémy Crassard, Victoria Reina, Isabela Oltra Carrió, Cheryl Makarewicz, Mohammad Tarawneh, Wael Abu-Azizeh	Functional Evidence of Mass-hunting Practices: Exploring Socio-Economic and Symbolic Behaviours of the Desert Kites Users during the Late PPNB (Jibal al-Khashabiyeh, Jordan)
13:40 - 14:00	Marie Anton, Fanny Bocquentin	Populations and Burial Practices at The End of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in Southern Levant (7100-6300 Cal BC): Cultural and Biological Aspects of Shifting Agro-Pastoral Societies.
14:00 - 14:20	Sari Jammo	The Transition of the Relationship between the Living and the Dead from PPN to PN Societies: Tracing Funeral Practices

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Makoto Arimura	The PPN-PN Transition in Lithic Technology: Insights from Tell el-Kerkh in northwestern Syria
15:05 - 15:25	Takahiro Odaka	Clay Containers during the PPN-PN Transition: The Case of Tell el-Kerkh, Northwest Syria
15:25 - 15:45	Sidar Gündüzalp, Aslı Erim Özdoğan	Searching for the Initial Pottery Production with New Data, Sumaki Höyük and its setting in SW Asia
15:45 - 16:05	Natalia Petrova	Cultural and historical processes in the Neolithic of eastern and central part of the Fertile Crescent according to pottery technology

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Halil Tekin	Reflection of the Turkish Eastern Mediterranean’s Late Neolithic Lifestyle on Pottery: The Case of Domuztepe
16:50 - 17:10	Çiğdem Atakuman, Deniz Erdem, Burçin Erdoğu	Pits, Pots and Bodies at Uğurlu Höyük: The Case of the Poly-Pod Box Pottery
17:10 - 17:30	Shahmardan Amirov	A look at the Halaf culture evolution through the prism of the painted pottery morphology.
17:30 - 17:50	Julien Vieugue, Anna Eirikh-Rose, Lucile Beck, Emmanuelle Delque-Kolic, Omry Barzilai, Yosef Garfinkel, Avi Gopher, Edwin Van Den Brink, Alla Yaroshevich	Earlier or later? New insights on the chronology of the main Early Pottery Neolithic cultures in the Southern Levant

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Corine Yazbeck	Filling the blanks: The Pre pottery and Pottery Neolithic settlements in Tabarja Wata Slam (TWS100), Lebanon
10:20 - 10:40	Michele Miller	Changes in Human Representation in Southern Levant in transition from pre-pottery Neolithic to pottery Neolithic – a Preliminary Analysis
10:40 - 11:00	Mehmet Somel	Genomic insights into changing social structures and gender roles in Neolithic Anatolia
11:00 - 11:20	Akira Tsuneki	From the Display of Identity to the Beginning of Book-keeping: The Seals and Sealings in the PPN-PN Societies

Session Organisers: Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Marin A. Pilloud

Category: Anthropology / Burial Practices

Session Abstract: For a long time, archaeologists and anthropologists have studied the perception of death in the Neolithic Near East populations with very different types of evidence. Among the striking results observed in these studies is that rituals related to death show similarities in communities that seem to have adopted the new lifestyle, but also have many differences. It can be estimated that the intra-regional and inter-regional evaluations of the similarities and differences observed in death practices are useful in understanding the worldview and social structures of the Neolithic people, as well as in discussing the relations between settlements in different geographies. In addition, the use of pigments observed in funerary practices, the diversity in terms of different burial types and grave goods continue to be important issues worth examining, while the examinations made in the settlements show that people lived with their dead in most Neolithic settlements and their remains were used in the rituals of the living. Post-burial interventions (secondary burial practices, dismemberment) or plastered skulls seem to emphasize the functionality of rituals related to death in maintaining order in these communities, dealing with the dead and their remains, or that rituals related to death are deeply involved in life. In addition to all these, bioarchaeological information about Neolithic human societies reveals important lines of adaptation to the natural environment and social transformation. Therefore, it would be appropriate to include the results of the bioarchaeological research on lifestyles in our session. In this context, the main purposes of this session are to showcase the local characteristics of the practices, and to examine the evidence of rituals related to death as a tool of socio-cultural transformation in these societies, along with other bio-cultural adaptations that generate the new lifestyle.

Room: F

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Michelle Bonogofsky, Gary Rollefson	Transforming the skulls of males, females, and children in Neolithic Anatolia and the Levant
10:15 - 10:30	Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Özden Ormancı, Burak Falay, Fabio Cavalli, Yasin Gökhan Çakan, Erhan Bıçakçı	Evaluation of the results of archaeometric studies of plastered skulls found at Tepecik-Çiftlik
10:30 - 10:45	Bogdana Milic, Juan José Ibáñez, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Alice Vinet, Yasin Gökhan Çakan, Luca Campione, Emanuela Cristiani	Towards the interpretation of cut marks on plastered skulls from Neolithic Tepecik-Çiftlik, Central Anatolia (Türkiye) through a new programme of combined use-wear analyses
10:45 - 11:00	Marin Pilloud, Scott Donald Haddow, Christopher J. Knüsel, Clark Spencer Larsen	Social memory and mortuary practice in Çatalhöyük
11:00 - 11:15	Eline M.J. Schotsmans, Gesualdo Busacca, Sam Lin, Milena Vasic, Ashley Lingle, Rena Veropoulidou, Camilla Mazzucato, Belinda Tibbetts, Scott Donald Haddow, Mehmet Somel, Fatma Toksoy-Köksal, Christopher J. Knüsel, Marco Milella	Commemoration of the dead through mortuary and architectural use of pigments at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Dana Allan	Investing in the Dead: Exploring Funerary Treatments in the Levantine Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic Transition
13:15 - 13:30	Corine Yazbeck, Tania Zaven	A unique early-middle PPNB funerary area from the Lebanese coast : Tabarja Wata Slam 41 (TWS41)
13:30 - 13:45	Andrew Mccarthy	Burying Memories: A Ritual Pit Complex at Neolithic Prasteio Mesorotsos, Cyprus
13:45 - 14:00	Peter Magee, Noura Hameli, Richard Cuttler, Kevin Lidour	Life and Death on the Fertile Coast: New Evidence For Neolithic Lifeways and Burials On The Islands Of The United Arab Emirates.
14:00 - 14:15	Hakob Simonyan Nanar Kalantaryan	Architecture of the Voskehat burial ground

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Serpil Eroğlu, Özlem Ekinbaş Can, Fabio Cavalli, Ekim Gümeler, Özden Ormancı	Mortuary Practices of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period at Gre Fılla, Diyarbakır, Türkiye
15:05 - 15:25	Jo-Hannah Plug	Mortuary Pathways at Late Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria
15:25 - 15:45	Yasemin Yılmaz	Archaeotanatological Analysis of the Graves found at Pendik Höyük in İstanbul
15:45 - 16:05	Yaren Emmez, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya	Mortuary Rituals in Neolithic Anatolia: New insights into Social Change and Cultural Interactions

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Kameray Özdemir, Benjamin Titus Irvine, Handan Üstündağ, Joris Peters, Necmi Karul	Palaeodietary Analysis of the Gusir Höyük Neolithic Population utilising Stable Isotope Analysis
16:50 - 17:10	Handan Üstündağ, Donald Kale, Necmi Karul	Physiological Stress in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Population of Gusir Höyük
17:10 - 17:30	Kameray Özdemir, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya, Benjamin Titus Irvine, Turhan Doğan, Furkan Kulak, Can Yümni Gündem, Yasin Gökhan Çakan	Determination of Dietary Patterns in the Tepecik-Çiftlik Neolithic Population through Stable Isotope Analysis
17:30 - 17:50	Benjamin Irvine, Kameray Özdemir, Turhan Doğan, Furkan Kulak, Yasin Gökhan Çakan, Ali Metin Büyükkarakaya	Sub-adult diet and the weaning process at Neolithic Tepecik-Çiftlik

Session Organisers: Ali Umut Türkcan, Arkadiusz MARCINIAK

Category: Anatolia / Southeastern Europe

Session Abstract: Archaeological study of the Neolithic of Central Anatolia started seriously in the 1950s with pioneers from the British Institute of Archaeology. After 60 years of intensive research, especially at Çatalhöyük, Aşıklı and Can Hasan, it became clear that the region had a far-reaching impact on both Near Eastern and Anatolian archaeology. The early years of the Mellaart era yielded spectacular discoveries that have yet to be surpassed, as the iconic Fat Lady figurines, paintings, and reliefs on the walls of elaborate shrines showed a different and more developed phase of the Neolithic universe and triggered the development of different theories pertaining to egalitarian and urban society. The scope of Çatalhöyük Research Project resulted in a better understanding of the settlement's spatial extent and changes over time, as interpreted in social and regional terms. On the other hand, the first real attempt at discussing the Central Anatolian Neolithic started only with the CANeW (Central Anatolian e-Workshop) project. The 2001 meeting allowed the results of previous research to be summarized and Central Anatolia to be placed in the context of Neolithic lifeways on a pan-regional scale. As it has now been more than 20 years since this meeting was held, there is a need for a new synthesis that takes into consideration both the work carried out during this period and changes in the domain of archaeological praxis. How has it progressed with intensive excavations of Boncuklu, Çatalhöyük, and Cappadocian sites, primarily Aşıklı Höyük, taking into account a variety of new discoveries, the use of innovative methods and techniques, and an open access policy that makes the data available to the public? How far has the Çatalhöyük and Boncuklu Research Projects influenced our understanding of the Anatolian Neolithic in the "grand picture" of cultural history between East and West? The session is also aimed at presenting current work at Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic sites, as evidenced by new excavations (Canhasan, Gökhöyük) and many intensive surveys over the last 10 years.

Room: I

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Başak Boz, Handan Üstündağ, F. Arzu Demirel, Donald Kale	Reassessing the Neolithic Çatalhöyük Inhabitants’ Perception of Life and Death
10:15 - 10:30	Kent M. Johnson	Re-evaluation of evidence for ""practical"" kinship at Çatalhöyük
10:30 - 10:45	Katarzyna Harabasz	Late Neolithic Funerary Structures at Çatalhöyük
10:45 - 11:00	Arkadiusz Marciniak	The Late Neolithic non-residential quarter in the East Area at Çatalhöyük
11:00 - 11:15	Serap Özdöl-Kutlu	Discussion of Çatalhöyük and Central Anatolia Neolithic Pottery Sequences in the Light of New Research

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Ali Umut Türkcan	“A Neolithic Town: Çatalhöyük” and its Urban Quandary: A new discussion of old debate within recent evidence.
13:15 - 13:30	Nurcan Yalman	The Intertwinement of Mundane and Symbolic Behavior in the Neolithic: The Example of Cooking Pots at Çatalhöyük
13:30 - 13:45	Patrycja Filipowicz	Late Neolithic imagery of Çatalhöyük East Area
13:45 - 14:00	Ramazan Gündüz	South of the Konya Plain (Current studies Current data)
14:00 - 14:15	Yasin Gökhan Çakan, Erhan Bıçakçı	A View from the Highlands to the ‘Central Anatolian Neolithic’: New Insights from Tepecik-Çiftlik (Niğde, Türkiye)

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Vinet Alice, Denis Guilbeau	Manufacture and Function of Engraved Obsidian Arrowheads from Tepecik Çiftlik (Cappadocia, 7th Millennium BCE)
15:00 - 15:15	Semra Balcı, Çiler Altınbilek Algül, Sidar Gündüzalp	Contextualising Sırçalıtepe 8th Millennium BCE site near obsidian sources – new highlights from the Neolithic of Cappadocia, Central Anatolia
15:15 - 15:30	Işıl Demirtaş, Pınar Çaylı	The Neolithic at the Çakılbaşı (Aksaray) Site
15:30 - 15:45	Fevzi Volkan Güngördü	Prehistoric Investigations in Nevşehir, Cappadocia
15:45 - 16:00	Ozan Özbudak, Bogdana Milic, Sidar Gündüzalp	Northernmost Frontier of the Central Anatolian Neolithic – New Evidence from the Çorum Prehistoric Surveys

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Salih Kavak	Archaeobotanical Analysis of Neolithic Çatalhöyük North Terrace Area Excavations
16:50 - 17:10	Salih Kavak, Ali Umut Türkcan Salih Kavak	Investigation of Agriculture in Inner West Anatolia in the 6th millennium: Archaeobotanical Analysis of Kanlıtaş Höyük
17:10 - 17:30	Emma Jenkins, Michelle Feider, Paul Clarkson, Katerina Papayiannis, Sabrina Renaud, Greger Larson, Kristina Tabbada, Lisa Yeomans, Thomas Cucchi, Emilie Hardouin, Douglas Baird	Telling Small Tales: Revealing the Hidden Stories of Pınarbaşı, Boncuklu Höyük and Çatalhöyük, Anatolia through their microfaunal assemblages
17:30 - 17:50	Ali Güzel, Cansu Karamurat, Çiğdem Atakuman, Çağla Akgül	Archaeometric Investigation of Neolithic Çatalhöyük Plaster Samples

Session Organisers: Necmi Karul, Eleni Asouti, Joris Peters

Category: Near East

Session Abstract: The foothills of the Eastern Taurus, including the Upper Euphrates and Tigris basins, contain some of the earliest and best-known habitation sites associated with the beginning of cultivation and herding in Southwest Asia. Since the mid twentieth century, archaeological fieldwork has revealed several late Epipalaeolithic and early aceramic Neolithic habitation sites dating from the 11th to the 9th millennia cal BC. Currently the region is witnessing a resurgence of intensive large-scale fieldwork in the context of the Tas Tepeler project, focused in the Urfa region, alongside ongoing projects in South-Eastern Anatolia generating increasing evidence for a higher density and diversity of settlement than previously thought. Despite some local differences, the available data suggest the existence of societies from the very beginning that were well organized and had a complex social life. The aim of this session is to query old and emerging data from different perspectives including settlement organization, the development of architecture, new technologies, the relationship of sites to the changing landscape and climate, plant and animal resource exploitation and management, and regional networks and symbolic expression, in order to explore the environmental, economic and socio-cultural dynamics that framed the motivation for the transition to settled life. Comparative perspectives with neighbouring regions including the Levant and northwest Zagros, will also contribute novel insights to our understanding of the diversity of the Neolithization process across Southwest Asia.

Room: I

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Eleni Asouti, Douglas Baird, Ceren Kabukcu	From cave to village and back: revisiting old theories with new data in the Epipalaeolithic of the Taurus-Zagros arc
13:20 - 13:40	Aslı Erim Özdoğan	Not to Domesticate the Landscape But to Adapt to it! (Local Environmental Crises Motivated New Inventions in Architecture from PPNA to PPNB: Çayönü)
13:40 - 14:00	Ayşe Tuba Ökse	Continuity and Change in the Northern Border of the Upper Tigris Region throughout the Neolithic Period: Evidence from Gre Fılla and Kendale Hecala
14:00 - 14:20	Yutaka Miyake	Special buildings found at Hasakeyf Höyük in the Upper Tigris Valley

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Douglas Baird, Eleni Asouti	Comparative perspectives on the south-east Taurus foothills. The view from Jebel Sinjar to the Chamchamal valley in the 11th-8th millennia cal BC.
15:05 - 15:25	Ergül Kodaş	Diversity and similarity of material culture and its interpretation at the beginning of neolithization in Upper Mesopotamia: a general outlook.
15:25 - 15:45	Bakiye Yükmen Edens	Neolithization west of the Euphrates: New evidence from both sides of the Amanos
15:45 - 16:05	Gülriz Kozbe	Settlement Pattern of Şırnak/Cizre, Silopi, İdil and Mardin/Nusaybin Archaeological Survey Area during Neolithic Halaf

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Necmi Karul	Karahantepe: in the context of construction of the Neolithic Societies.
16:50 - 17:10	Fatma Şahin	The Beginning of Sedentarisation in the Şanlıurfa Plateau: Çakmaktepe
17:10 - 17:30	Eylem Özdoğan	Sayburç a mid-9th millennium settlement on the Şanlıurfa Plateau.
17:30 - 17:50	Kazuya Shimogama, Celal Uludağ, Ryota Moriwaki, Toshihiro Tada, Nurcan Küçükarslan, Wataru Satake, Kenta Suzuki, Saiji Arai, Fumika Ikeyama, Yoshihiro Nishiaki	A Pre-Pottery Neolithic View from Another Stone Hill: Renewed Excavations at Harbetsuvan Tepesi

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Emre Güldoğan	Sefertepe Project
10:20 - 10:40	Mücella Erdalkıran	A Neolithic Mega Village in the Harran Plain: Gürcütepe
10:40 - 11:00	Edward (Ted) Banning	Searching for Answers: Identifying the Evidence we Need to Understand the Taş Tepeler Sites

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Joris Peters, Stephanie Emra, Nadja Pöllath, Özlem Sarıtaş, Necmi Karul	Setting the stage for archaeofaunal comparison in the Taş Tepeler project: how different are Göbekli Tepe and Karahantepe?
13:20 - 13:40	Ceren Kabukcu, Ferran Antolín, Eleni Asouti, Hüreyla Balcı, Birgül Ögüt	Archaeobotanical Research In the Taş Tepeler Project: Challenges And Prospects
13:40 - 14:00	Ferran Antolin, Birgül Ögüt	Recent Advances in Plant Research at Göbekli Tepe: Evaluating Previous Findings and Introducing New Insights

Session Organisers: Jesus Gil Fuensanta, Alfredo Mederos Martin, Güner Coşkunsu

Category: Anthropology / Burial Practices

Session Abstract: The Neolithic in various regions of the world (Western Asia, Central Europe) has been associated with one of the first periods of human history where the greatest abundance of archaeological records with evidence of interpersonal violence took place. During the Early Neolithic (so-called Pre-Pottery, PPN A and B) Period of Southeastern Turkey, c. 9500-7000 BC, a series of buildings associated with the idea of central or communal sanctuaries appeared. The transition from Aceramic Neolithic (PPN) A to B in many regions of the Near East entails evident changes in the archaeological record on material culture; and there is evidence of the existence of the changes due partially to some conflict. From the advanced phase of the Early Neolithic (PPNB) the presence of human remains coupled with the idea of interpersonal violence began to abound (eg. beheadings, sealing the ritual buildings of Neolithic Göbekli Tepe final phase with chopped human bones), a type of presence that already was listed in earlier phase (PPNA) locations at the Levant (such as Jerico in the Jordan Valley) or the use of stone mace-head in burials at Kortik Tepe (Eastern Turkey). These desecrations of the human body seem not only characteristic of the pre-pottery phase of the Neolithic of the Levant or eastern-central Turkey, since in later phases of the Neolithic of Western Asia (as example, the Halaf culture) reliable evidence has been found not only of conflicts, but of consumption of human remains (Domuz Tepe, Eastern Turkey). In addition, the existence of lithic materials typical of the eastern area (for example, arrowheads from the cultures of the Israel-Jordan area) associated with the area of the Göbeklitepe buildings is supplementary evidence regarding this “conflict” issue. Such discoveries, made gradually in the last decades of the research on the Neolithic of the region, put into question a new reinterpretation of some aspects and mentality of the final phase of Prehistory regarding the human violence.

Room: F

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Rustam Khamidovich Suleymanov, Alisher Gaffarovich Muminov	Introduction to the “culture of violence” in the Neolithic of Western Asia: An anthropological vision regarding aggression in Prehistory
15:05 - 15:25	Alfredo Mederos Martin	Defensive spaces and circulation: The obsidian network associated with the “self-protected” villages of the Anatolian system
15:25 - 15:45	Vanesa Toscano Rivera	Anthropology on the women of PPN Central Anatolia: Cases of Psychological and Physiological Violence.
15:45 - 16:05	Alisher Gaffarovich Muminov	Peaceful nomads in Central Asia and a Culture of violence in the Neolithic of Western Asia?: Comparisons and differences.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Jesus Gil Fuensanta	A History of Violence: The “cultural” spread of the South Levant Pre-Pottery Neolithic into Western Asia.
16:50 - 17:10	Otabek Uktamovich Muminov	Reflections on Epipaleolithic man and the probable connections on the violence in the Aceramic Neolithic of Western Asia
17:10 - 17:30	Ariel James	Buildings as spaces of peace or aggression during the Neolithic of Northern Mesopotamia.

Session Organisers: Hojjat Darabi, Hassan Fazeli Nashli

Category: Near East

Session Abstract: Since the 1940-50s, the Neolithic period in Iran has been sporadically explored by a number of archaeologists. Following the pioneering work by R. Braidwood in the central Zagros in 1959-60, attention was given to question-oriented investigations, especially on the onset of domestication and sedentary life. Subsequent political instabilities put research in hiatus for about three decades. This severely limited our understanding of Iran’s Neolithic in comparison to other regions of Western Asia. In the last two decades, however, not only have some previously excavated sites or collections been re-evaluated, but new archaeological activities have also been undertaken. As recently suggested by aDNA data, an important approach to better understand the emergence and spread of the Neolithic lifestyle on the Iranian plateau is the inter-regional connections between the western and central parts of Asia. Current evidence points to a distinct pattern of Neolithic eco-cultural zones that interacted intensively with their neighbors via networks through which ideas, raw materials or commodities circulated and were transported. However, little is known about the possible impact of climatic or demographic factors on the development of the Neolithic lifestyle throughout Iran. Moreover, it remains unclear to what extent the secondary centers/learning or adoptive zones were influenced by the primary/formative ones. With the main goal of addressing the above issues, this session aims to bring together researchers to present the latest available data on the emergence and development of Neolithic lifeways in Iran, a region that encompasses a mosaic of diverse Neolithic cultures but is still only vaguely known. It is expected that the session can contribute to our better understanding of the extent to which Neolithic societies were in contact throughout the Iranian plateau and its neighbors, and how Neolithic lifeways are most likely to have evolved across this vast region linking the western parts of Asia with the central parts.

Room: J

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Tobias Richter	Doing it Their Way: The Zarzian and Natufian Compared
10:15 - 10:30	Joseph Harris	The Zagros in the Epipaleolithic to Neolithic Transition: The Braidwood assemblages from Asiab and Gird Chai
10:30 - 10:45	Yoshihiro Nishiaki	Tell Seker al-Aheimar, Northeast Syria, in the context of the East Wing of the Neolithic Fertile Crescent
10:45 - 11:00	Arkadiusz Soltysiak	Burial customs and social identity in the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent during the late Pre-Pottery Neolithic: a comparison of Nemrik 9 (Iraq) and Ali Kosh (Iran)
11:00 - 11:15	Julien Riel-Salvatore, Silvia Gazzo, Stéphanie Falardeau	The funerary treatment of Burial 39 from Ganj Dareh

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Michael Brandl, Hojjat Darabi, Christoph Hauzenberger, Peter Filzmoser, Barbara Horejs	Tracing Lithic Resource Management: A Geochemical Chert Provenance Pilot Study at East Chia Sabz, Iran
13:15 - 13:30	Andrea Ricci, Ahmad Azadi, Daniele Moscone	Neolithic in the Mountains: new evidence of early sedentism in Kohgiluyeh, southwestern Iran (HighStepLands)
13:30 - 13:45	Natalia Petrova, Anna Babenko, Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter	The origins of pottery technology and its connections with house-building technology in the Central Zagros
13:45 - 14:00	Sanaz Shirvani	Patterns of Deliberate Breakage in Zoomorphic Figurines from Ganj Dareh
14:00 - 14:15	Dlshad A. Marf	Symbolism on the Upper Mesopotamian and Zagros Prehistoric Ceramics

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Mohammad Hossein Azizi Kharanaghi	Southern Iran During Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period
15:00 - 15:15	Morteza Khanipour	Development of the Fars Cultural zone during the Neolithic Period, Iran
15:15 - 15:30	Nasir Eskandari	Look to the East: Southeastern Iran in the Pottery Neolithic Period
15:30 - 15:45	Jan Lentschke	Holocene landscapes changing and his impacts of potential early farming grounds in the Beshahr area (NE-Iran)
15:45 - 16:00	Soudeh Eftekhari, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Stefano Campana, Dimitrios Alexakis	Landscape reconstruction of North Central Plateau of Iran during Neolithic period by integration satellite images, digital elevation model and gis

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Hassan Fazeli Nashli	Report of the recent excavations of Mesolithic and Neolithic Caves in the southeastern of the Caspian Sea
16:45 - 17:00	Mozhgan Jayez	Lithics: From Mesolithic to Neolithic in the southeast of the Caspian Sea
17:00 - 17:15	Seyyed Kamal Asadi Ojaei, Rahmat Abbasnejad Seresti	New Insights After Seventy Years: From the Mesolithic to the Pottery Neolithic in the Northern Iran
17:15 - 17:30	Fatemeh Naderi, Roger Matthews, Judith Thomalsky, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Mojtaba Safari	The Emergence of Complex Ritual Systems during the Mesolithic Period in the South-eastern Caspian Sea
17:30 - 17:45	Xinying Zhou, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Mojtaba Safari	Early Holocene cereal consumption and climatic influences on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Roya Khazaeli, Hossein Davoudi, Hassan Fazeli Nashli	Animal Resource Exploitation during the Transitional Neolithic in the Southeastern Shore of the Caspian Sea: Preliminary Report on the Faunal Remains from Komishani Tepe, Mazandaran, Iran
10:15 - 10:30	Rahmat Abbasnejad Seresti	The Caspian Neolithic Software: New Excavations at Two Pottery Neolithic Sites
10:30 - 10:45	Mojtaba Safari, Hassan Fazeli Nashli, Roger Matthews, Judith Thomalsky, Hedayat Kalvari Janaki	An Investigation of the Emergence of Pottery Neolithic Period in the Southern Caspian Sea, Based on the New Excavations at Hotu Cave
10:45 - 11:00	Catherine Marro, Rémi Berthon, Alexia Decaix, Judith Thomalsky, Veli Bakhshaliyev	Anatomy of the Kültepe I culture. Its significance for unravelling the formation processes of the Caucasian Neolithic
11:00 - 11:15	Sinan Kılıç	Neolithic Around Lake Van, Eastern Turkey

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Akbar Abedi	Neolithic Iranian Azerbaijan and Lake Urmia: Regional Interactions and Influence; The position of North-Western Iran in the West Asian Neolithic Studies
13:20 - 13:40	Ferran Antolín, Pauline Scheiffele	New archaeobotanical evidence of early farming practices south of Lake Urmia (Iran)
13:40 - 14:00	Judith Thomalsky	Transit(s), transect(s) and transmission(s): explaining neolithic heterogeneity in NW-Iran
14:00 - 14:45	All Participants	Final Remarks

Session Organisers: Anna Belfer-Cohen, Nigel Goring-Morris

Category: Near East

Session Abstract: Recent Neolithic research in the Southern Levant has provided less spectacular results than that of the more northerly regions. This said, the picture of local Neolithisation is much more complex and thought-provoking than previously assumed. Interestingly, the findings provide new insights into the processes that modified and shaped the transition from ephemeral, extractive life-ways into a permanent, productive mode of existence. Updated excavation and research methodologies enable charting the ways and means human groups tackled the challenges involved in that transformation as numerous intensive field projects, conducted in various regions of the Southern Levant considerably modify previous comprehension of Neolithic processes in the area. It appears that the initiation of such processes extend much deeper in time than was assumed a few decades ago. What was considered as strictly new, Neolithic, phenomena, can be now observed not only in the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian but also in earlier Epipalaeolithic archaeological entities. There is on-going debate whether, and to what degree, human societies consciously promoted the developments that finally rendered the ‘Neolithic worldview”. Moreover, it seems that it was truly a “bumpy ride to village life”; we observe significant variability in the intensity and tempo of evolving events, differences stemming from both the inner, social realm of the communities partaking in the Neolithic transformation, as well as the external, environmental ‘envelope’ that defined the ecological conditions enabling or restricting the processes involved.

Room: J

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Danielle Macdonald, Lisa Maher	Pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers and the production of place
15:15 - 15:30	Seiji Kadowaki, Nanako Kimoto, Yasuhisa Kondo	Continuity and changes in marine shell exploitation from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic in Southern Jordan near the Red Sea
15:30 - 15:45	Tobias Richter	From the Natufian to the EPPNB in the Jordanian Badia: Chronology, change and interaction across the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transition
15:45 - 16:00	Abraham Gopher	When did southern Levantine Neolithic worldviews fully divorce the H-G ethos?

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Bill Finlayson	Ordering the Neolithic world - communities of practice and localisation
16:45 - 17:00	Michal Birkenfeld	Paths of transition: Exploring Neolithic hunter-gatherers and pastoralists of the hyper-arid desert. The southern Negev as a test case
17:00 - 17:15	Bocquentin Fanny, Anton Marie	The funeral sequence as a compass for time and place in a changing world: long-term trends in Natufian and Neolithic mortuary customs
17:15 - 17:30	Marion Benz	Processes of segregation - social developments during the middle and late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B as seen from burial customs
17:30 - 17:45	Bogdana Milic, Juan José Ibáñez, Lionel Gourichon	Projectile points as indicators of socio-economic changes in the Southern Levantine Neolithic – the evidence from the PPNA-PPNB Kharaysin (Jordan)

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:15	Daniella Bar-Yosef	The Evolution of Neolithic Personal Ornaments in the Levant
10:15 - 10:30	Lena Brailovsky-Rokser	Reevaluating the southern Levantine PPNA: new insights in light of recent discoveries from Barkai, Israel
10:30 - 10:45	Cheryl Makarewicz, Nigel Goring-Morris	Close to home, close to community: Stable isotopic perspectives from Kfar HaHoresh
10:45 - 11:00	Ferran Borrell	Bidirectional blade technology and the Neolithization of the Levant: An updated assessment of its origin, dispersal, and significance
11:00 - 11:15	Liora Kolska Horwitz	Tracking Inter-Regional Variation in Levantine Animal Domestication: A Critical Examination

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Eugenio Nobile, Maurizio Troiano, Fabio Mangini, Marco Mastrogiuseppe, Jacob Vardi, Fabrizio Frezza, Cecilia Conati Barbaro	Cultural Subdivisions within the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Southern Levant: A neural network approach on the techno-typological analysis of the chipped stone industry
13:15 - 13:30	Juan José Ibáñez, Amaia Arranz-Otaegui, Carolyne Douché, Lionel Gourichon, Eneko Iriarte, Jesús Tapia, Juan Muñiz, Luis Teira, Fiona Pichon, Khaled Abdo, Josu Aranbarri, Andoni Mateos, Bogdana Milic, Aroa García-Suárez, Alejandra Calderón Ordóñez, Jonathan Santana, Aaron Morquecho, Marta Portillo, Andrea Zupancich	The PPNA-PPNB transition in the southern Levant: Contributions from Tell Qarassa north (Sweida, Syria) and Kharaysin (Zarqa, Jordan
14:00 - 14:15	Ehud Weiss	The Neolithic founder crops - updated data and opinions

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Eva Gabrieli	The development of pottery production in the Southern Levant: continuity and discontinuity of a step in the process of ‘containerization
15:00 - 15:15	Gary Rollefson	A house is not always a home: A re-evaluation of the function of Late Neolithic (c. 6,900-5,000 cal. BCE) architecture in Jordan’s Black Desert
15:15 - 15:30	Alexander Wasse, Yorke Rowan	Not a place for respectable people, but the ends of the Earth converge there: Transregional networks and the Steppe during the seventh and sixth millennia BC
15:30 - 15:45	Hans Georg K. Gebel	The Eastern Steppes’ interaction spheres of the LPPNB Southern Levant
15:45 - 16:00	Sumio Fujii	Northern Hijaz PPNB settlements and Late Neolithic pseudo-settlements: Arabian forefront of the southern Levantine Neolithic

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 18:00	All Participants	Final Discussion

Session Organisers: Jesus Gil Fuensanta, Alfredo Mederos Martin, Otabek Uktamovich Muminov, Alisher Gaffarovich Muminov

Category: Technology

Session Abstract: The premature disappearance of our colleagues, Prof. Petr Charvàt (West Bohemia University, Czech Republic) and Dr. Güner Coşkunsu (Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain), has left some of their own research on various fields of the World Neolithic unfinished. Throughout his long career, Prof. Charvàt carried out in-depth research on the birth of the first states and urban agglomerations, as well as the beginning of bureaucracy through the use of seals and their impressions. The eminent Czech archaeologist and historian personally viewed the Neolithic as a “Civilization of minds” in contrast to the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age cultures, which he considered “Civilizations of the stomach.” In her research on the Neolithic, Dr. Güner Coşkunsu was able to confirm her interest in archeology about childhood, the role of women in prehistory, and especially the Neolithic period, as well as in-depth research on stone tools, in which Her interest in an unprocessed material stood out, the magical volcanic crystal, which we call obsidian; within this lithic raw material, she highlighted an important attraction for the subject of “mirrors”. So this session will cover these mentioned aspects, or various in relation to them within the Neolithic sphere: seals and imprints, bureaucracy, centralized organization in the central Neolithic towns, "the mind of Neolithic men", women and the question of matriarchal clans in the Neolithic, the archeology of childhood in the Neolithic, organization of stone industries, as well as obsidian industry and trade, and last but not least, the obsidian mirrors.

Room: G

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Ariel James	Impersonal Powers in Göbekli Tepe: Temples as Cosmic Houses.
13:20 - 13:40	Tristan Carter	Of Divination and Portals: Reflections on Two Obsidian Mirrors from Early Neolithic Çatalhöyük (Konya Plain, Turkey)
13:40 - 14:00	Vanesa Toscano Rivera	Children for the Future: The Archaeology about the Infants from the Neolithic of Western Asia.
14:00 - 14:20	Pınar Arslan	Digital Textile Pattern Designs Inspired by Anatolian Civilizations Museum Neolithic Period Artifacts

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Alfredo Mederos Martin	The Halaf culture: A non-minimal approach
15:00 - 15:15	Alisher Gaffarovich Muminov	Juan Ibarreche Duque and the studies on Nomadic Populations of the Neolithic Age
15:15 - 15:30	Otabek Uktamovich Muminov	Paleolithic Migrations into Central Asia end its reflection on Asian Paleogenetics of the Neolithic Age
15:30 - 15:45	Jesus Gil Fuensanta	The importance of seals in the Neolithic societies of Mesopotamia
15:45 - 16:00	Jesus Gil Fuensanta, Güner Çoskunsu	“Neolithic Mirrors”: Peaceful and Secretive Objects of The Prehistory

Session Organisers: Mihael Budja, Dušan Boric , Zuzana Hofmanová, Maxime Brami

Category: Anatolia / Southeastern Europe

Session Abstract: The session will focus on archaeological, archaeogenetic, biomolecular, demographic, climatic, and paleoeconomic regional palimpsests. In addition to the processes of transition to farming, artefact assemblages and chronological trajectories, symbolism and social practices, the concepts of the Neolithic package, demic diffusion, migration, gene-culture coevolution, Neolithic demographic transition, and the agricultural frontier will be discussed.

Room: L

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Vesna Dimitrijevic, Ivana Zivaljevic, Goce Naumov, Ljubo Fidanoski, Sofija Stefanovic	The First Temperate Neolithic farmers and their herds: new archaeozoological and radiocarbon evidence from North Macedonia
10:20 - 10:40	Goce Naumov	Neolithization of Wetlands: the establishment of tells and pile-dwellings in the Balkans
10:40 - 11:00	Maxime Brami	Lepenski Vir & Çatalhöyük. Revisiting an old analogy using genetics
11:00 - 11:20	Adina Boroneanț, Andrei Soficaru, Monica Margarit	Brăilița and the transition to farming in south-eastern Romania

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Petar Zidarov, Zdravko Dimitrov	The Early Neolithic period at Sinagovtsi and its implications for the study of the contacts along the Middle and the Lower Danube
13:20 - 13:40	Maria Gurova, Clive Bonsall	Balkan Neolithization through the Lens of Flint Supply and Distribution
13:40 - 14:00	Ivana Jovanovic	Variability in the Neolithic lithic technology of the western Balkans
14:00 - 14:20	Lily Bonga	Say ""Cheese""? Rim-perforated pans and basins of the Aegean Neolithic

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Eszter Banffy	Lifeways and rituals. Clay representations of ambiguous creatures at the northern margins of the Balkans, early 6th millennium cal BC
15:00 - 15:15	Raiko Krauss, Jörg Bofinger, Elena Marinova, Oliver Nelle, Simon Trixl	Environmental factors and the use of resources of the oldest LBK in the Ammer Valley near Tübingen
15:15 - 15:30	Jerzy Sikora, Piotr Kittel, Miroslaw Makohonienko, Piotr Papiernik, Dominik Kacper Plaza, Joanna Rennwanz	The northern extent of early farming communities in Central Europe in the light of research in Ostrowite (northern Poland).
15:30 - 15:45	Miroslav Kocic, Ana Kocic, Marija Kalicanin Krstic	Starcevo bluprint – Vinca developers
15:45 - 16:00	Zhaneta Gjyshja, Premtim Alaj, Apostolos Sarris, Bardhyl Rexhepi	It Takes a Village: Craft Specialization at a Late Neolithic (5400–4600 BC) Site in Western Kosova

Session Organisers: Agathe Reingruber, Zafer Derin, Eylem Özdoğan

Category: Anatolia / Southeastern Europe

Session Abstract: The Circum-Aegean world is at the same time part of the Mediterranean and separated from it by large islands. This interactive space that formed around the Aegean Sea offered many advantages to seafaring peoples since Mesolithic times or even before: a well-connected and authentic place where not only people and materials, but, above all, ideas circulated rapidly. Since the Mesolithic, and especially with the Neolithic way of life, interactions between its eastern and western parts resulted in a material and immaterial culture distinguishable from the surrounding areas. Nevertheless, the Circum-Aegean is far from being a uniform space, since there are numerous differences traceable between the various regions, such as the islands, the Anatolian coast and the Greek mainland. Through new research carried out in recent years in especially in the eastern Aegean area (in Anatolia) but also in the west (in Macedonia and Thessaly), another aspect has become even clearer: the possibility of defining inside the broader regions local styles in pottery production and material culture. In this session, we aim to discuss both the beginnings of the Neolithic way of life against the background of the Mesolithic, as well as the subsequent transformations culminating in the early/mid sixth millennium BC. Special attention shall be given to the internal dynamics within the Aegean and the exchange with the surrounding areas: on the Anatolian side with the Marmara region up to the Bosporus in the north and with the Lake District down to the Mediterranean coast in the south; on the European side via river systems with the north and northwest. The session welcomes contributions on material culture, chronology and terminology, various aspects of regional cultures and interregional networks. As it is not possible to adequately study the Circum-Aegean Neolithic without interdisciplinary approaches, we explicitly welcome presentations on environmental aspects, archaeometry and bioarchaeology. In this way, we aim to highlight the originality of Aegean Neolithic societies in their various aspects.

Room: L

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	John Chapman, Bisserka Gaydarska	Exotics: kick-starting the earliest hunter-gatherer - farmer networks in Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balkans
13:20 - 13:40	Deniz Sarı	Short-term Hilltop and Cave Settlements during the Neolithic Period: The Case of Keçiçayırı and Gedikkaya Sites
13:40 - 14:00	Neyir Kolankaya-Bostancı, Erkan Fidan	Bahçelievler Neolithic Chipped Stone Assemblage: Local Tradition and Interregional Contacts
14:00 - 14:20	Ivan Gatsov, Petranka Nedelcheva	Lithic Technologies and the Raw Material Supply as an Adaptive Strategy in the Settlement Patterns of Marmara Sea Region During 7-6 mill BC

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Şengül Aydıngün	Istanbul Lagoons Neolithic Finds
15:00 - 15:15	Fulya Dedeoğlu	Looking the Aegean from Inner Southwest Anatolia: Ekşi Höyük and its relations and interactions
15:15 - 15:30	Harun Taşkıran	A Late Neolithic Cave Settlement in Southwest Anatolia: Suluin
15:30 - 15:45	Aslıhan Beyazıt	The Origin of Paint Decorated Pottery from the Neolithic Period in the Burdur-Antalya Region
15:45 - 16:00	Aysel Arslan	Unveiling Community Identities: Tracing Clay Object Makers via Ancient Fingerprints

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Zafer Derin	Yeşilova Höyük and the Neolithic “Coastal Aegean Culture”
16:45 - 17:00	Ahmet İhsan Aytek, Alper Yener Yavuz, Erhan Tarhan	Lion King and the others: Preliminary results of faunal analysis of Yeşilova Höyük, İzmir.
17:00 - 17:15	Ali Ozan, Haluk Sağlamtimur	An overview of the Neolithisation of Western Anatolia: What does the Ege Gübre settlement tell us about the Neolithisation of the coastal Aegean?
17:15 - 17:30	Aydın Cura	Spread of Round Shaped Objects identified as Sling Missiles in the Aegean during the Neolithic Period
17:30 - 17:45	Simona V. Todaro	Red Ochre and Seafaring? Some implications for connectivity in the southern Aegean during the Neolithic

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Dilek Koptekin, Ayça Aydoğan, N Ezgi Altınışık, Kıvılcım B Vural, D Deniz Kazancı, Cansu Karamurat, Ayça Doğu, Damla Kaptan, Hasan Can Gemici, Gülsün Umurtak, Erkan Fidan, Özlem Çevik, Burçin Erdoğu, Taner Korkut, Christopher J. Knüsel, Scott Donald Haddow, Eylem Özdoğan, Mehmet Özdoğan, Fokke Gerritsen, Rana Özbal, Uygar Ozan Usanmaz, Yasin Cemre Derici, Mine Uçmazoğlu, Anders Götherström, Çiğdem Atakuman, Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Füsun Özer, Mehmet Somel	Unravelling Cultural and Genetic Interactions during the Aegean Neolithization
10:20 - 10:40	Lily Bonga	Island Neolithic of the Aegean Sea
10:40 - 11:00	Michael Boyd, David Smith, Jill Hilditch, Evi Margaritis, Joshua Wright, Giorgos Gavalas, Demetris Athanasoulis, Marisa Marthari, Katerina Dellaporta, Colin Renfrew	Integrated approaches to emerging later Neolithic Islandscapes in the Cyclades
11:00 - 11:20	Peter Tomkins	Regional diversity in the adoption of pottery in the Aegean during the late seventh millennium BC. A new view from Knossos, Crete.

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Lia Karimali, Stella Papadopoulou	Neolithic obsidian Melian network in Greece: patterns of circulation and technical traits
13:15 - 13:30	Tristan Carter	Building Castles on Sand: Current Models on the Impact of Insular Aegean Hunter-Gatherer Populations on Neolithisation Processes
13:30 - 13:45	Denis Guilbeau	The relations between Aegean, Anatolia, Balkans between the 7th and the 5th millennium through the analysis of the chipped stone industry of Uğurlu (Gökçeada/Imbros Island)
13:45 - 14:00	Eylem Özdoğan	Early Neolithic in the Northern Aegean and Eastern Thrace: Cultural Contexts and Regional Connections
14:00 - 14:15	Hüreyla Balcı	An Archaeobotanical Perspective to the Neolithization of North Aegean through Hoca Çeşme Neolithic Site

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Katerina Trantalidou	Before surplus production: foragers and food producers in inland and island caves of the Southern Balkan-Aegean area
15:00 - 15:15	Agathe Reingruber, Giorgos Toufexis	Flat sites of the late 7th and early 6th millennium BC in Thessaly, Central Greece (and beyond)
15:15 - 15:30	Goce Naumov, Agathe Reingruber	Dating the Early Neolithic of Pelagonia: closing a chronological gap in Balkan prehistory
15:30 - 15:45	Jean-Paul Demoule	Kovacevo and the oldest Neolithic villages in the Balkans
15:45 - 16:00	Sevdalina Tsaneva, Vassil Nikolov, Galina Samichkova, Viktoria Petrova	Late Neolithic pit sanctuaries at Maritsa River Bend in Northern Thrace

Session Organisers: Barbara Horejs, Sofija Stefanovic, Tanya Dzhanfezova

Category: Anatolia / Southeastern Europe

Session Abstract: The extremely important role of Anatolia in the process of the Neolithisation is highlighted by recent discoveries and current research, as well as the important role of the Balkans in the spread of Neolithic achievements further across Europe. The mutual connections of these two regions, which were key to the process of the Neolithization and reshaped their worlds at that time, have been poorly researched until now. With this session, we want to open the possibility for young and senior scholars who have dealt with (western) Anatolia, the Aegean and/or the Balkans, to present their new data and theories about characterization, differences and similarities during the formation and establishing of the Neolithic. We believe that looking at new data and models on a site-based, regional and supra-regional level offers new insights into the diversity and complexity of the Neolithisation. All social, cultural, anthropological and economic aspects as well as their broader ecological contextualization are welcome to discuss for example the built environment, diet, funeral customs, production, technologies and innovations to contribute to a better understanding if or how these regions were connected in the early to middle Holocene. This session aims to bring together experts and young researchers of (western) Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balkans to discuss this key zone and its transformation during the Neolithisation within the ‘world Neolithic context’.

Room: L

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Lyndelle Webster, Barbara Horejs	Setting the absolute chronology of Neolithic Çukuriçi Höyük, western Anatolia
13:15 - 13:30	Rahmi Asal, Mehmet Ali Polat, Sırrı Çölmekçi, Emre Öncü, Hüseyin Yıldırım, Yasemin Yılmaz	An Old Village in The Historical Peninsula: Neolithic Settlement of Yenikapi Istanbul/Turkey
13:30 - 13:45	Nikolina Nikolova, Atanas Tsurev, Krum Bacvarov	The Early Neolithic of the Middle Maritsa Valley
13:45 - 14:00	Malgorzata Grebska-Kulow	The Early Neolithic in South-west Bulgaria; causes and consequences
14:00 - 14:15	Camille De Becdelièvre, Tamara Blagojevic, Jelena Jovanovic, Aleksandra Zegarac, Stefanovic Sofija	Trajectories of Neolithization in the Danube Gorges: confronted identities, incorporated alterities or hybridized entities ?

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Hostettler Marco, Van Vugt Lieveke, Ganz Kathrin	Exploring land use dynamics and human impact in the Southern Balkans during the Neolithic ca. 6600–3300 cal BC/8550–5250 cal BP
15:00 - 15:15	Hafner Albert, Bogaard Amy, Kostas Kotsakis, Tinner Willy	Submerged settlements of the South: early farmers between the Adriatic and the Aegean.
15:15 - 15:30	Vlatka Cubric-Curik, Konstantina Saliari, Ino Curik, Preston T. Miracle	The importance of Anatolia and the Balkans for the domestication of cattle in Europe; modern and ancient genomic perspectives
15:30 - 15:45	Rudenc Ruka, Edlira Andoni	Unwinding the Late Mesolithic-Early Neolithic transition in Albania
15:45 - 16:00	Michael Brandl, Bogdana Milic, Barbara Horejs	Through the Lithic Lens: The Socio-Economic Dimensions of Chipped Stone Tools at Neolithic Svinjaricka Cuka, South Serbia

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:45	Ivana Jovanovic	Stone raw material economy and distribution networks in the western Balkans Neolithic
16:45 - 17:00	Sonja Kacar, Bogdana Milic, Michael Brandl	Diversity and Regionalisation in the Early Neolithic of Central-Western Balkans: Lithic Economy and Cultural Interactions
17:00 - 17:15	Darko Stojanovski, Barbara Horejs	A New ‘Balkan Fashion’ Developing Through the Neolithization Process. The Ceramic Annulets of Amzabegovo and Svinjarička Čuka
17:15 - 17:30	Tanya Dzhanfezova	Flexible Habits: The Faces of Novelty in the Early Neolithic Eastern Balkan Pottery Uptake
17:30 - 17:45	Raiko Krauss, Dan Ciobotaru	New insights into the buildings of the oldest Neolithic in the Carpathian Basin

05/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Stella Souvatzi	Ring-shaped Settlements in Neolithic Greece and Turkey: Social Significance and Diverse Habitation
10:20 - 10:40	Sabina Cveček, Sofija Stefanović, Yılmaz Selim Erdal, Rana Özbal, Fokke Gerritsen, Meliha Melis Koruyucu	Infant Burials Associated with Houses in Central Balkans and western Anatolia during Neolithic: Similarities, Differences, and Exceptions
10:40 - 11:30	All Participants	Final Discussion

Session Organisers: Johannes Müller, Wiebke Kirleis

Category: Different Neolithics

Session Abstract: Monuments, especially megaliths shape huge regions of European landscape, even today, when the majority have been destroyed. The reconstructed number of monumental buildings in the whole area is estimated to several tens of thousands. In many European regions the increase in monuments is contemporary with first enclosures, increased human economic impact on the environment, extended external relations, and of a distinct increase in elaboration and diversity of material culture. In many regions a first boom in megalithic monumentality is followed by a second boom in individual burial mounds during the beginning of the third millennium BCE. Social and ideological developments connected to these formal changes are visible in the cultural landscape. In order to link observations to models of social change, to an understanding of ideological developments and to combine those topics to the physical background, the climate, environment and landscape developments, different case studies are already available with systematic data sampling, the integration of all data sources available and syntheses that account for different spatial scales and have a proper temporal resolution: important social, environmental and cultural transformations within the European Neolithic become visible. The session aims at linking individual case studies on these socio-environmental transformations with general contributions on early monumental architecture, social and environmental changes and the creation of the earliest cultural landscapes of Europe.

Room: D

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Johannes Müller, Wiebke Kirleis	Introduction: Monuments, landscapes, environments
10:20 - 10:40	Pawel Jarosz, Anita Szczepanek, Eva Horváthová	The Tradition and Development of Monumental Funerary Structures: Insights from Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age Communities in Southeastern Poland and Eastern Slovakia
10:40 - 11:00	Aldona Mueller-Bieniek, Piotr Papiernik	Archaeobotanical data from the monumental cemetery of the Funnel Beaker culture at Gaj, Kuyavia

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Ann-Katrin Klein, Ingo Feeser, Wiebke Kirleis, Johannes Müller	From Landscape to Social Meaning – Megaliths and Societies in Northern Central Europe
13:20 - 13:40	Christoph Rinne, Robert Hofmann, Ben Krause-Kyora, Nadine Schwarck, Magdalena Wieckowska-Lüth	Wartberg: The Multifaceted Formation of an Archaeological Group
13:40 - 14:00	Peter Bye-Jensen	Unearthing Neolithic Narratives: Flint Artefact Biographies and Depositional Practices at a selection of North European Causewayed Enclosures
14:00 - 14:20	Kata Furholt, Martin Furholt, Niklas Dopp	Rondels as Neolithic monuments and their visibility in the local landscape in Central Europe

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Audrey Blanchard, Jean-Noël Guyodo, Bettina Schulz-Paulsson	Le Plasker in Plouharnel: standing stones and hearts in a newly sector of the large megalithic complex of Carnac (France, 5th millenium cal BC)
15:05 - 15:25	Anna-Lena Titze	Exploring Gender Inequalities in the Neolithic Using Ancient Human Genomes from Southern France
15:25 - 15:45	Noah Steuri	Neolithic Collective Graves in the Alps: Social and Symbolic Landscapes in the 5th and 4th Millennium BCE

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Jadranka Verdonkschot, Felipe Criado-Boado	Cycles and Circles in Stone. Societal Rationalities in the Megalithic Monuments of Northwestern Iberia
16:50 - 17:10	Mónica Corga, Miguel Almeida, Maria De Jesus Sanches, Thierry Aubry, Sílvia Coelho	A (pre)view of an unknown Neolithic landscape: the lower Vouga basin, in the Atlantic western Iberia
17:10 - 17:30	Nikolina Nikolova	Opening the Earth: Monumentalizing Ditch Enclosures from the Early Neolithic in the Eastern Balkans.

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Daniel Pullen, Anastasia Papathanasiou, Michael Galaty, William Parkinson	Monumentality and Memory in Death at Ksagounaki (Alepotrypa Cave), Greece
10:20 - 10:40	Robert Hofmann, Johannes Müller, Wiebke Kirleis, Frank Schlütz, Liudmyla Shatilo	Trypillia Mega-Structures – Monuments of an egalitarian Ideology
10:40 - 11:00	Schlütz Frank, Hofmann Robert, Videiko Mykhailo, Müller Johannes, Kirleis Wiebke	How to feed mega-populations? An isotopic study on the chalcolithic food production and consumption of Trypillia societies (Ukraine, Moldova)
11:00 - 11:20	Scholtus Lizzie, Vindrola Padrós Bruno	More than meets the eye: How eye-tracking techniques highlight how monuments shape our perception of the world

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Bruno Vindrola-Padrós	The Emergence of waste monumentality in Europe: A discussion
13:20 - 14:30	all participants	Final Discussions

Session Organisers: Hakan Öniz, Ehud Galili, Liora Kolska Horwitz

Category: Near East

Session Abstract: Myths about great floods are known from ancient cultures (e.g., Noah’s Ark, the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, and Plato's Atlantis). In the nineteenth century, scientists realized that the equilibrium of water on earth involves cycles of ice ages (glacial periods) with associated fluctuations in sea level ranging from a drop of -120m during a glacial period and a high sea level of up to +10m during an interglacial period. Thus, there is potential in finding inundated settlements on the sea bottom. Until recently scholars had limited access to submerged prehistoric remains, but recent decades have seen a turning point in research possibilities. Both natural and human-induced erosion processes have facilitated the exposure of sites, enabling their discovery. Developments in technology have made it possible to develop a methodology for detecting, documenting and studying these submerged prehistoric sites. Hundreds of sites are known in the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and in the Mediterranean Sea ̶ where long term research has been undertaken. For example, on the submerged prehistoric sites of Işıldaktepealti (Dardanelle-Çanakkale) in Turkey and Atlit-Yam in Israel, while many others await discovery and study. The discipline of submerged prehistory has become an essential part of underwater archaeology. It can fill gaps in knowledge and add another dimension to the research of prehistory. This session aims at presenting and discussing the chronological and cultural settings of prehistoric sites, especially dating to the Neolithic period, discovered on the sea bottom, clarifying the relationship between coastal cultures and the sea and the contribution of marine resources to their subsistence, as well as their resilience and adaptation to the changing coastal environment.

Room: H

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Hakan Öniz	A View at Sunken Prehistoric Settlements off the Turkish Coast
15:05 - 15:25	Orkun Kaycı	Potential prehistoric island communities in Cilicia to the north of the Eastern Mediterranean
15:25 - 15:45	Katarina Jerbic	The Submerged Late Neolithic Pile-dwelling at Zambratija Bay, Croatia
15:45 - 16:05	Mirco Brunner, Adrian Anastasi, Kristi Anastasi, Andrej Maczkowski, Matthias Bolliger, Martin Hinz, Sönke Szidat, Ilir Gjipali, Albert Hafner	Lake Maliq revisited: Fresh Perspectives on Neolithic submerged Settlements at former Lake Maliq, Albania.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Hinz Martin, Anastasi Adrian, Brunner Mirco, Anastasi Kristi, Yermorkhin Maxim, Gjipali Ilir, Hafner Albert	Discovering the wooden pillars of the Neolithic settlement: the waterlogged site Lin 3, Albania
16:50 - 17:10	Ehud Galili, Liora Kolska Horwitz	Exploring submerged settlements off the Mediterranean coast of Israel
17:10 - 17:30	Vered Eshed	Paleo-demography and health status of the population of Atlit-Yam, a Submerged Neolithic site off the Carmel coast, Israel.

Session Organisers: Yoshihiro Nishiaki

Category: Different Neolithics

Session Abstract: In 2023, it is proposed to hold a session on the Caucasian Neolithic within the framework of the World Neolithic Congress in Turkey. The reason for this is the joint archaeological investigations done in the recent 10 years at the archeological complexes of the Neolithic period in the South Caucasus by local and foreign researchers, and as a result, a lot of new information was obtained. In the Caucasus, small conferences have been organized in several countries related to archaeological research, mainly in the South Caucasus. A large number of scientific articles and even monographs have been published in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia related to the scientific information obtained by archaeologists. Thus, at the World Neolithic Congress, the emergence of the pre-pottery Neolithic at the territory of the Caucasus in the 7th millennium BC and the main genetic roots and influence of the late pottery Neolithic which was still on progress in the 6th millennium BC are among the most relevant topics on the problem of Neolithic cultures. The role of Eastern Anatolia in the formation of the Neolithic cultures of the Caucasus and the opposite influence of the South Caucasus on Anatolia are also important part of the topic discussed here. Considering all this, joint archaeological investigations by archaeologists from Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia and other foreign specialists working with local scientists in these countries will be included in the session on the topic of the Caucasian Neolithic. The mutual comparison with the Neolithic cultures of Anatolia through the issues of the Neolithic cultures of the South Caucasus, distinguished by its local characteristics, will be the subject of discussion.

Room: J

04/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Yoshihiro Nishiaki, Farhad Guliyev, Yaqub Mammadov	The last Mesolithic hunter-gatherers at Damjili Cave, west Azerbaijan, the South Caucasus
13:20 - 13:40	Solange Rigaud, Alain Queffelec, François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec, Véli Bakhshaliyev, Catherine Marro	Personal ornaments from the South Caucasus: highlighting a hub of past cultural exchanges
13:40 - 14:00	Perle Guarino-Vignon, Johanne Adams, Maël Lefeuvre, Amélie Chimènes, Catherine Marro, Céline Bon	Genetic continuities and discontinuities in the South Caucasus during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic
14:00 - 14:20	Irena Kalantaryan, Marcin Bialowarczuk	Getahovit 2. New Evidence of Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic Occupation in Northern Armenia

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Zeyneb Guliyeva	On the problem of the origin of Neolithic cultures in the South Caucasus and their connection with the Middle East
15:05 - 15:25	Levan Kvakhadze	Kazreti Ortvala Cave New Agricultural sites
15:25 - 15:45	Liubov Golovanova, Ekaterina Doronicheva, Vladimir Doronichev, Elena Revina, Maxim Volkov, Tamara Tregub	New data on the Neolithic settlement from the Elbrus region, North-Central Caucasus
15:45 - 16:05	Serhii Telizhenko	Trapeze projectiles of Starobilsk-1 site in the Siverskii Donets River Basin

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	Valery Manko	Taubodrakian industry of Crimea
16:50 - 17:10	Ilia Heit	When Does the Neolithic End? Bayesian Chronology of Settlement Phases and Gaps in the South Caucasus and Adjacent Regions 6000-4500 cal BCE

Session Organisers: Ekaterina Dolbunova, Marianna Kulkova, Viktor Karmanov, Evgenia Tkach

Category: Different Neolithics

Session Abstract: Vast areas of the both sides of the Urals with different ecotones were populated by foraging communities that sustained their way of life for several millennia. The instability of ecological niches due to climatic and/or anthropogenic factors and the variability of biodiversity may have forced societies to change their adaptation mechanisms - through the development of new habitats, the adoption of innovation, the formation of new social and economic systems and networks. Crucial changes of the 7th- 6th mill calBC within these hunter-gatherer societies are marked by settlement of larger areas, appearance of ceramics which became of a wide use in the whole hunter-gatherer world, increase of sedentism, changes in foraging strategies, and new settlement systems manifesting all a new way of life. The asynchronous appearance of these changes in different societies may have been due to their rate of acceptance of innovations, the speed of the process, the way how they were transferred. The new ‘Neolithic’ networks established might have been limited both by natural and, possibly, cultural borders. The session aims to show how local foraging groups reacted to the new reality, accepted and adapted to it or not. We are encouraging papers showing changes occurred comparing to the preceding Mesolithic time, the speed of these processes; the innovations emerged, whether these processes were triggered by global and local paleoclimatic changes through archaeological studies and implication of natural scientific methods.

Room: K

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:15	Ekaterina Dolbunova	Introduction
13:15 - 13:30	Eugen Kolpakov	The Neolithic in archeology
13:30 - 13:45	Alexander Vybornov, Marianna Kulkova, Sergey Glushenko	The impact of natural and climatic factors on the development of the Neolithic processes in the Lower Volga region
13:45 - 14:00	Konstantin Andreev	Transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic in the forest-steppe Volga region (Eastern Europe)
14:00 - 14:15	Andrey Mazurkevich, Ekaterina Dolbunova, Yolaine Maigrot, Piotr Kittel, Mateusz Plóciennik, Michal Slowinski, Dominika Luców, Monika Rzodkiewicz, Daniel Okupny, Emilie Gauthier	The last hunter-gatherers of NW Europe: global vs local paleoclimatic trends and ways of adaptation

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:00	Daria Kiseleva, Evgeny Shagalov, Tatyana Okuneva, Natalia Soloshenko, Anna Rybakova, Elizaveta Pankrushina, Anastasia Ryanskaya, Victoria Igosheva, Anastasia Fokina, Victoria Fedorova	Regional Bioavailable Sr Isoscapes for the Urals and Black Sea regions and Caucasus
15:00 - 15:15	Ekaterina Dubovtseva, Henny Piezonka, Tanja Schreiber, John Meadows	Dating the Taiga Forts: New chronological and archaeological evidence on Stone Age fortified hunter-gatherer settlements in the West Siberian taiga
15:15 - 15:30	Alexey Tarasov, Dmitry Blyshko, Oleg Lavrov, Alexander Zhulnikov	Quarrymen and artisans of the North-Eastern Europe in the final Stone Age. Lithic quarries and workshops of the western shore of Lake Onega
15:30 - 15:45	Alevtina Kiseleva	The adoption of pottery into Northeastern Fennoscandia: early pottery technology, variation and chronology on the Kola North
15:45 - 16:00	Evgeniia Tkach	New data of the Sub-Neolithic Zedmar culture on the South-Eastern Baltic

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
16:30 - 16:50	T.M. Gusentsova, M.A.Kulkova	Mineralogical, geochemical and technological characteristics of pottery as an indicator of cultural and chronological changes in the Neolithic and Early Metal Age in the Southern Ladoga Lake region (Eastern Baltic)
16:50 - 17:10	Evgeniia Lychagina, Elena Lapteva, Nataliya Zaretskaya	Palaeoenvironment of the Upper Kama basin at the early stage of Neolithization of the region

Session Organisers: Svetlana Shnaider, Robert Spengler

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: Central Asia has been, throughout a large part of human history, a primary conduit for the diffusion for cultural elements, technological innovations, and genes. Over the past few years, human ancient genomics projects, combined with growing data from archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, and isotopic analysis are allowing archaeologists to better contextualize their archaeological sites and associated artifacts. Despite major advances in scholarship, little remains known about the Neolitization processes of the Early and Mid-Holocene and the ways they underscored or reshaped population structures and cultural repertoires across Central Asia. This session seeks to bring together new insights into the transition to the food producing economies, and mobility dynamics of Neolithic populations that inhabited diverse environmental and cultural contexts across Central Asia. This session welcomes new perspectives derived from excavations, faunal and botanical analyses, and biomolecular and genomic records, with the overall aim of building holistic explanatory frameworks that better resolve the temporality and the cultural mechanisms associated with the origin and spread of farming and herding across the core of the ancient world. Among the question that we hope to grapple with in this session are: 1) what role did wild plants and animals play in the diet prior to the advent of cultivation behaviors. 2) Can we still discuss local innovations in economy or was the Neolithization of Inner Asia part of a demic wave spreading from southwest Asia. And, 3) what are the timing and routes of dispersal for the earliest crops and cultivation practices within this vast geographic region.

Room: B

08/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Svetlana Shnaider, Anna Molodtseva, Artem Yakovlev, Snezhana Zhilich, Greta Brancaleoni, Temirlan Chargynov, Saltanat Alisher Kyzy, William Rendu	Unearthing The Heart of Eurasia: New Insights Into Neolithic Central Asia
10:20 - 10:40	Robert Spengler	The Origins of Agriculture in Central Asia
10:40 - 11:00	Snezhana Zhilich, Valentina Alekseitseva, Temirlan Chargynov, Nuritdin Sayfullaev, Svetlana Shnaider	Advance in microarchaeological studies of Neolithic sites in Central Asia
11:00 - 11:20	Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Aida Abdykanova	Beyond the daily subsistence: rituals among the prehistoric farmers of the Inner Asian Mountains

Lunch Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Shogo Kume, Ayako Shibutani, Hikmatulla Hoshimov, Bokijon Matbabaev	Cereal storage or cereal processing or both? Some thoughts on post-harvesting activities in the Late Bronze Age Fergana Valley
13:20 - 13:40	Barbara Zach, Robert Spengler, Ricardo Fernandes	Earliest pathways of broomcorn millet to the west
13:40 - 14:00	Saltanat Alisher Kyzy, Svetlana Shnaider	Eastern Caspian culture in the late Stone Age
14:00 - 14:20	Kseniia Boxleitner, Robert Spengler, Temirlan Chargynov, Snezhana Zhilich, Aida Abdykanova, Nuritdin Sayfullaev, Valentina Alekseitseva, Svetlana Shnaider	Letting The Grass Grow Under Our Feet: Weedy Remains Of The Early And Mid-Holocene Neolithization In Central Asia.

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Kirill Kiryushin, Yaroslav Frolov, Alexander Schmidt	Neolithic-Chalcolithic burial complexes of the Barnaul Ob region: problems of chronology and cultural affiliation
15:05 - 15:25	Victor Merz	Origins of Production Economies in the Steppe Zone of Eurasia
15:25 - 15:45	Dragana Filipovic	Push and pull factors in the adoption of innovations in plant economy: learning from the Neolithic

Session Organisers: Ayça Avcı, Erhan Aydoğdu

Category: Different Neolithics

Session Abstract: The definition of the Neolithic Period of Asia differs from other parts of the world such as Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The Neolithic Age cultures, which continued the hunter-fisher-gatherer economy and nomadic lifestyle, are distinguished from the Mesolithic Period cultures by using pottery and some developments in the stone tool industry. Especially in Eurasian archeology, it is known that excavations belonging to the Neolithic Period were carried out in burial complexes due to these features. For this reason, cultures are mostly defined through burial traditions. On the occasion of the World Neolithic Congress, under the title of such a session, the Neolithic Period perceptions and research methods of researchers from different geographies can be recognized and evaluated.

Room: K

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
10:00 - 10:20	Ayça Avci Aydoğdu, Erhan Aydoğdu	About the Traces of Water-Related Beliefs in Southern Siberian Neolithic Cultures
10:20 - 10:40	Aleksandr Dudko, Yulya Vasilyeva	Evidence of Hunting Activity in the Middle Neolithic in the Surgut Ob Region
10:40 - 11:00	Ekaterina Dolbunova, Andrey Mazurkevich, Hamon Caroline, Yolaine Maigrot, Susanna Gorodetskaya, Igor Askeev, Mikhail Sablin, Piotr Kittel, Jacek Szmanda, Andrey Skorobogatov, Pavel Frolov	Shore and shell-midden Rakushechny Yar site: the neolithic way of foraging communities (the Azov Sea basin)
11:00 - 11:20	Aleksandr Dudko, Yulya Vasilyeva	The Most Ancient Burial Complex of the Middle Neolithic of the Surgut Ob Region