WORLD NEOLITHIC CONGRESS 2024
4 - 8 NOVEMBER 2024 SANLIURFA, TÜRKİYE
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Parallel Sessions (Sitting: 2)

G02 - Early Productive Behaviour, or the Regional and Global Problems with the Terms Neolithic/ Neolithisation

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.
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Room: A

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

G06 - Climate Change as a Pacemaker of Neolithic Cultural Change: Global Perspectives

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.
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Room: D

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

G09 - Putting Domesticates in their Place

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.
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Room: B

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

G15 - Bioarchaeological Perspectives on the Neolithic Transition

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
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Room: C

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

G18 - The Impact of Neolithic Architecture – the Emergence of Human Built Environment

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?
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Room: H

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?

G23 - The Neolithic in Art. Iconography and Society in the First World Agricultural Communities of Eurasia.

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.
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Room: E

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

G24 - Treating Dead Bodies in the Neolithic: Exploring the Increasing Social Complexity

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.
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Room: F

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

G26 - On people, tools, and plant foodways: defining new proxies for the Neolithization(s)

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.
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Room: G

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

R07 - Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Taurus Foothills

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.
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Room: I

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

R16 - Anatolia and the Balkans During the Neolithization Process: Connections, Similarities and Differences

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’.
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Room: L

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 ?

R22 - The Caucasian Neolithic

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.
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Room: J

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

R31 - Neolithic Migrations and Adaptations: From East Asia to the Indo- Pacific

Session Organisers: Hsiao-chun Hung, Hirofumi Matsumura, Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen
Category: Different Neolithics
Session Abstract:
This session delves into human migrations dating back to the Neolithic period in the East Asian mainland, when ancient rice and millet farmers migrated from the core areas of early agricultural zones in Central China to various other regions, including different parts of China, Taiwan, Japan, Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The session aims to present and analyze state-of-the-art evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics across the region. Participants in this session will offer insights into the timing, routes, motives, processes, and adaptations of these Neolithic dispersals, which have played a significant role in shaping the contemporary landscape of East Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region.
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Room: K

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
13:00 - 13:20 Hirofumi Matsumura, Hsiao-Chun Hung “Two Layers” of Ancient Hunting-gathering and Farming Populations in Eurasia, Revealed through Analysis of Cranial Morphometrics
13:20 - 13:40 Hugh Mccoll, Eske Willerslev Ancient DNA in Southeast Asia
13:40 - 14:00 Zhenhua Deng Reconstructing the Spread of Agriculture into Southeast Asia: Insights from Archaeobotanical Evidence
14:00 - 14:20 Xinxin Zuo First Island Farmers in the South China Coast

P - Recent Finds, Recent Recoveries

Session Organisers:
Category: P Group
Session Abstract:
Site-based or recent recoveries group
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Room: M

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
13:00 - 13:20 Rafael M. Martínez-Sánchez, M. Dolores Bretones García, M. José Martínez Fernández, J. Carlos Vera-Rodríguez Big caves and Neolithic open air settlements in the Upper Guadajoz river (Andalusia, Southern Iberia). Latest archaeological works in Mármoles Cave and Cerro del Cercado (Priego de Córdoba, Spain))
13:20 - 13:40 Thomas Saile Digging ditches: The Mangolding Neolithic earthwork complex (Bavaria)
13:40 - 14:00 Ursula Warnke, Wolters Harrie Route of Megalithic Culture - A Cultural Route of the Council of Europe
Parallel Sessions (Sitting: 3)

G02 - Early Productive Behaviour, or the Regional and Global Problems with the Terms Neolithic/ Neolithisation

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.
Read More

Room: A

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

G06 - Climate Change as a Pacemaker of Neolithic Cultural Change: Global Perspectives

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.
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Room: D

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)

G09 - Putting Domesticates in their Place

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.
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Room: B

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

G15 - Bioarchaeological Perspectives on the Neolithic Transition

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
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Room: C

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)

G18 - The Impact of Neolithic Architecture – the Emergence of Human Built Environment

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?
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Room: H

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

G23 - The Neolithic in Art. Iconography and Society in the First World Agricultural Communities of Eurasia.

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.
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Room: E

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

G24 - Treating Dead Bodies in the Neolithic: Exploring the Increasing Social Complexity

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.
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Room: F

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

G26 - On people, tools, and plant foodways: defining new proxies for the Neolithization(s)

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.
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Room: G

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)

R07 - Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Taurus Foothills

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.
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Room: I

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

R16 - Anatolia and the Balkans During the Neolithization Process: Connections, Similarities and Differences

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’.
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Room: L

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

R22 - The Caucasian Neolithic

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.
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Room: J

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

R31 - Neolithic Migrations and Adaptations: From East Asia to the Indo- Pacific

Session Organisers: Hsiao-chun Hung, Hirofumi Matsumura, Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen
Category: Different Neolithics
Session Abstract:
This session delves into human migrations dating back to the Neolithic period in the East Asian mainland, when ancient rice and millet farmers migrated from the core areas of early agricultural zones in Central China to various other regions, including different parts of China, Taiwan, Japan, Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The session aims to present and analyze state-of-the-art evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics across the region. Participants in this session will offer insights into the timing, routes, motives, processes, and adaptations of these Neolithic dispersals, which have played a significant role in shaping the contemporary landscape of East Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region.
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Room: K

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
14:45 - 15:05 Hsiao-Chun Hung The Neolithization of Taiwan and Hainan Islands: The Emergence of Austronesian and Kra-Dai Peoples
15:05 - 15:25 Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen Exploring Unique Settlements: Circular Earthwork Sites in Southern Vietnam, Mainland Southeast Asia
15:25 - 15:45 Chin-Yung Chao A Reconsideration of the Fragmentation and Continuum of Cultural Aggregates in Neolithic Eastern Taiwan
15:45 - 16:05 Yue Zhang Human Migrations and Ancient Tooth Ablation Custom in Southeast Asia (5000–2000BP)

P - Recent Finds, Recent Recoveries

Session Organisers:
Category: P Group
Session Abstract:
Site-based or recent recoveries group
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Room: M

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
14:45 - 15:05 Hao Wu, Fen Wang The Neolithic Trajectory and Social Complexity in the Shandong region in eastern China
15:05 - 15:25 Xiaobing Jia The Niuheliang Complex and the Social Complexity Process of Hongshan Culture
Parallel Sessions (Sitting: 4)

G02 - Early Productive Behaviour, or the Regional and Global Problems with the Terms Neolithic/ Neolithisation

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.
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Room: A

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

G06 - Climate Change as a Pacemaker of Neolithic Cultural Change: Global Perspectives

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.
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Room: D

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

G09 - Putting Domesticates in their Place

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.
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Room: B

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

G15 - Bioarchaeological Perspectives on the Neolithic Transition

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
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Room: C

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.

G18 - The Impact of Neolithic Architecture – the Emergence of Human Built Environment

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?
Read More

Room: H

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

G23 - The Neolithic in Art. Iconography and Society in the First World Agricultural Communities of Eurasia.

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.
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Room: E

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

G24 - Treating Dead Bodies in the Neolithic: Exploring the Increasing Social Complexity

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.
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Room: F

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

G26 - On people, tools, and plant foodways: defining new proxies for the Neolithization(s)

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.
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Room: G

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

R07 - Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Eastern Taurus Foothills

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.
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Room: I

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

R16 - Anatolia and the Balkans During the Neolithization Process: Connections, Similarities and Differences

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’.
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Room: L

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

R22 - The Caucasian Neolithic

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.
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Room: J

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

R31 - Neolithic Migrations and Adaptations: From East Asia to the Indo- Pacific

Session Organisers: Hsiao-chun Hung, Hirofumi Matsumura, Khanh Trung Kien Nguyen
Category: Different Neolithics
Session Abstract:
This session delves into human migrations dating back to the Neolithic period in the East Asian mainland, when ancient rice and millet farmers migrated from the core areas of early agricultural zones in Central China to various other regions, including different parts of China, Taiwan, Japan, Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. The session aims to present and analyze state-of-the-art evidence from archaeology, physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics across the region. Participants in this session will offer insights into the timing, routes, motives, processes, and adaptations of these Neolithic dispersals, which have played a significant role in shaping the contemporary landscape of East Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region.
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Room: K

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
16:30 - 16:45 Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao Crops Domesticated in East Asia Spread Across the Himalayas to South Asia
16:45 - 17:00 Roger Blench An Aceramic Neolithic in Northeast India
17:00 - 17:15 Yoshiyuki Iizuka, Yu-Shiang Wang Revealing Two Types of Nephrite and Their Trading Systems in Prehistoric Japan: Non-Invasive Lithological Investigation of Stone Artifacts from Early Jomon Sites
17:15 - 17:30 Andrey Varenov Neolithic Prototypes of Sanxingdui Ritual Bronzes
17:30 - 18:00 All Participants Comments, Discussion and Conclusion

P - Recent Finds, Recent Recoveries

Session Organisers:
Category: P Group
Session Abstract:
Site-based or recent recoveries group
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Room: M

Start Time - End Time Authors Title
16:30 - 16:50 Jhon Cruz Quinones The High-Altitude Macroband Camp of Tuco Ragra: Aggregation and Ceremonies During the Neolithic in the Peruvian Andes (5000 - 3800 BP)
16:50 - 17:10 Souhila Merzoug, Samia Aouimeur, Louiza Aoudia, Akila Djellid The Epipaleolithic-Neolithic transition at Medjez II (north-eastern Algeria): New insights into the neolithization process in Northwest Africa
17:10 - 17:30 Varada Khaladkar First Farmers of the Deccan: Reconfiguring the Entrenched Narratives