The Origins of the Village Revisited: From Nuclear to Extended Households Kent V. Flannery American Antiquity, Vol. 67, No. 3. (Jul., 2002), pp. 417-433. Stable URL htp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=0002-73 16% 28200207%2967%3A3%3C417%3ATOOTVR%3E2.0,CO%S American Antiquity is currently published by Society for American Archaeology Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.org/journals/sam. html ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ ‘Sun Apr 23 11:14:26 2006ARTICLES, THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED: FROM NUCLEAR TO EXTENDED HOUSEHOLDS Kent V, Flannery “InMesoamerica and the Near East, the emergence ofthe village seems to have imvolved two stages. In the ist stage, Indiv uals wer distributed dhrougha series of small erelay-to-ovalsructures, accompanied by communal or shared” storage fea tures. Inthe second sag, nuclear families occupied substantial rectangular houses with private storage rooms. Over the [ast [30 years 2 wealth of data from the Near Bast, Egypt the Trant-Caucasus, nd, Africa, and he Southwest U.S hae ewiched ‘our derstanding of ths phenomenon. And i Mesoamerica and the Near East evidence suggests that nuclear fami house olde eventually gove way t0 a third tae, one featuring extended family households whose greater labor force made posible ‘extensive mulifaceed economies. Bn Mesoamérica y el Cercano Oriente, la evolucién de las primers aldeas parece haber pasado por dos etapas. Ena primera ‘etapa, ls miembros dl grupo ocupaban una sere de pequetosabrigs circuaresw ovalados, ymantenan depéstoscomunales ‘para el uso de todos. Bn a segunda etapa familias nacleares vivian en casas rectangular con cuaras de depstoprivados. arante los whimas 30 aos, dats del Cercano Orient, Esito, Indi, Africa, el Saroeste de los .E UU. y la rep Trans ‘Caucésica han amplifcado el conocimieno de tales cambios residencaes. Adem, en Mesoamerica yl Cercano Orient, se ha rotado wa terceraeapa: casas parafamilas clears fueron reemplazadas por residencias mas gravdes, en las cuales wna familia exendida de 15-20 personas proporcond mano de obra para una economia complejo published a seminar volume heavy with setle- ment pattern and urbanization studies. Having worked on early villages in Mesoamerica and the Near East, [contributed a paper comparing and con- trasting them (Flannery 1972). have now been asked by American Antiquity to revisit, in the light of new data, some of the issues raised by that paper, In the course of so doing I will discuss a later stage of vil- lage organization, one which followed the period I covered in 1972, ‘Atte time ofthe original seminar, [believed that in the early villages of Mesoamerica and the Near East I could recognize two types of societies, each documented in the ethnographic literature: The first {ype lived in encampments or compounds of circu lar huts. Many of those huts seemed too small to house an entire family, and virtually all of the soci- ety’s storage units were out in the open, as if their contents were to be shared. Such societies seemed analogous to peoples in the ethnographic present whose encamped group is essentially a large I: 1972, Ucko, Tringham, and Dimbleby (1972) extended family, often patrilocal and polygamous. Incases where a man has only one wife, the marital pair may live together ina relatively large hut; when amanhas multiple wives, each has her own relatively small hut. Widows, widowers, and unmarried young ‘men may also have their own huts, and there can be large ht for entertaining visitors. The group'sinfor- ‘mal headiman may have larger-than-average storage facilities, so that he can feed needy members ofthe seitlement, Examples ofthis settlement type can be found in Archaic Mesoamerica and in the Natufian and Prepottery Neolithic A PPNA) cultures ofthe [Near East (Flannery 1972:30-38). ‘The second type of society lived in tre villages ‘ofrectangularhouses, each large enough foranuclear family. In Mesoamerica the houses were of watle- ‘and-daub and had storage pits adjacent to them; in the Near East the houses had walls of mud, mud brick, or drylaid stone masonry and wer divided into rooms, some of which served for storage. Archaco- logical examples include Early Formative Mesoamerican site and Prepottery Neolithic B vi ‘Rent V. Flannery ® Museum of Anthropology, Unvenity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI-8108-1079 American Antiquity 673), 2002, pp $17-483, Copyrigtn © 2002 bythe Society for American Archaeology a7a0 lages ofthe Near East. Such villages might have spe- cial structures that could be shrines, temples, ormen's houses, but their Food was not stored in such a way fas to suggest communal sharing (Flannery 1972:38-46), In both Mesoamerica and the Near East, villages of rectangular, nuclear family houses tended to replace settlements of small, circular huts over time. [ suggested in 1972 that the village of nuclear fam- ilies had certain advantages that might have led to this transition, Among other things, there is more incentive for intensification of production when each, family can “privatize” its storage (including any sur- plu), rather than having to share with neighbors. ‘At the time, I fully expected that someone work- ing on Natufian or Prepottery Neolithic sites would ‘eventually test my model fo the first settlement type bby doing the following: (1) excavating each circular hut in such a way as to keep its inventory separate; (2)using measures of association to search for men’s ‘and women’s tool kis; (3) searching forrelationships ‘between tool kts and hut size, presence/absence of hearths, presence/absence of mortars, etc.; and (4) using multidimensional scaling to determine which hut inventories were most alike and which most dif- ferent, tying the results not only to hut size but also tothe location of huts relative o each other. My sus- picion was that larger huts would have both men’s ‘and Women’s toolkits; some small huts with hearths would have only women’s toolkits; some small huts ‘without hearths would have only men’s tool kits; and some adjacent huts might share artifact style prefer- ‘ences. Stratum Il of Nahal Oren seemed to ery out for such an analysis, since the preliminary report on Huts 9 and 10 showed suggestive differences (Fig- ure D. ‘Tobe sure, Idid not expect that every item in such ‘a hut would be lying exactly where it was last used: \we are all familiar with discard and postoccupational disturbance, What expected we might get isthe pat- tem we see when we piece:plot tools on numerous floors in Mexican caves and early villages: positive and negative associations that show up (00 often to be accidental. Despite the ravages of site formation processes, we cannot simply assume that no patterns willbe left to detect, While we still do not have such an analysis for ‘Nahal Oren, many Near Eastern archaeologists have recently published Natufian or Prepottery Neolithic residential plans and artifact scatters, and wrestled AMERICAN ANTIQUITY (ol 67, No. 3, 2002 ‘with the relationship between house type and social organization (see, for example, Byrd 1994; Rollef- son 1997; and many of the authors in Bar-Yosef and Valla 1991 and Kuijt 2000). While not everyone agrees on what the evidence means, auseful dialogue is growing. ‘What I Would Do Differently Today A lot has happened since the early 1970s, allowing ‘me to reflect on what I would do differently were I ‘o write the article today. I will list only a few pos- sible changes. I. seeking ethnographic analogies for settlements composed of circular huts, I drew heavily on the compounds of central African horticulturalists and herders. Today I would rely much more heavily on the circular hut camps of hunters and gatherers, who provide better analogies for the Natufians and Late ‘Archaic Mesoamericans. Today we have plans from ‘many more hunter-gatherer camps than we did in 1972 (see, for example, Binford 1983; O’Connell 1987; Yellen 1977). Ironically, in the same volume as my original paper, Woodburn (1972) presented the plan of'a Hadza camp that would have suited my pur- ‘pose well, had I seen it before I began writing. Let us look at it now. Site: A dry-season camp made by Hadza hunter- gatherers Location: Near Ugulu hill, Tanzania Date: October 1959 Observer: J, Woodburn (1972) Background: In 1959, roughly 400 Hadza occupied. 2,500 km? of bush tothe east of Lake Eyasi in north- em Tanzania, Teritorial rules were sufficiently flex- ible so that any Hadza could live, hunt, or gather ‘wherever elshe wanted; camps usually moved every few weeks, and could rangein size fromasingle per- son to almost 100 people. The average camp, while not a fixed unit, might hold 18 adults (Woodburn 1972:193), ‘The Hadza settlement system provides consider- able information for archaeological model building. ‘The Hada studied by Woodburn like to live in rock- shelters or in the open, but avoid deep-chambered. ccaves because they contain insect pests. During rainy periods they tend to return over and over again to the ‘same rockshelters, but inthe case of open-air camps. they prefer to choose a fresh site, because pests areFlannery ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED a9 18 10 gaenn Structure 9 12945678901 12191615 ‘Axes, adzes, and picks Sickle blades and knives. Arrowheads Borers Awils 6 8 9. 1 1 Burins 7. Scrapers Denticulated tools Notched tools 10. Retouched flakes 11. Retouched blades Structure 10 12, 13. 14. 12345678 9101 1219761516 Bladelets and microliths Planes Stone tools Basalt pestles Obsidian blades Figure 1. Top: Prepottery Neoltle hus from Ll I of Nahal Oren, Israel. The dash lines indicate terraces on the tals slope below the eave. Bottom: Histograms comparing tol percentages inthe asemblages from large hut (Hut 9) and is Sand 8) Saal hut (Hut 1) at Naka Ore. (Redrawn from Stkels tnd Vizraely 196320 attracted to their previous refuse. Favored camping areas are often identified with a landmark (such asa ‘prominent hill), which is given toponym. Forexam- ple, within a one-mile diameter surrounding the favored landmark known as Ugulu hill, Woodburn says that one could find traces of atleast 20 camps. from previous years. Archaeologists working on hhunter- gatherers often find ancient versions of such favored landmarks; the Mt, Carmel range in Israel (Garrod and Bate 1937) and the Mitla “Fortress,” a chert-bearing mesain Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley (Flan- nery and Marcus 1983:300), were the focal points of repeated encampments. Figure 2 shows a Hadza dry-season camp mapped by Woodburn. The camp, roughly 28 m in diameter, hhad 17 shelters. The shelters were simple, circular, above-ground huts consisting of a framework of branches covered with grass and “put up by the ‘women in an hour o two” (Woodbum 1972:194), ‘The place chosen for the camp was, as customary, several miles from the nearest human neighbors and away from the paths taken by game. While topogra- phy and prevailing wind were taken into account, the layout ofthe huts was also determined by social fac- tors that would not likely be obvious to an archae- ‘ologist. For example, Hadza custom dictates that the hut of a married couple be placed so that the wife’ mother lives “neither too close nor too far away (Woodburn 1972:197). Overall, “the arrangement of huts within a campis ideally patterned in accordance with the social relations existing between at least some of the individual members of the camp” (1972:208) The camp shown in Figure 2 reinforces several points I made in 1972, Some huts were designed 10 house only one person, such as a widow/widower or an unmarried adult; others might hold two parents and a child. (Because Woodburn does not give the sizes of individual huts, my artist made them all the same size.) Thus some huts probably included only ‘a man's tool kit, others a woman's tool kit, still oth- cers both kits. If we knew more about stylistic pref- ‘erences, we mighteven be able to suggest which huts were occupied by a mother and daughter from the same family. For example, Huts b,c, and d housed. married daughters of the woman in Hut a; those ‘daughters had arranged their huts so as to leave their ‘mother “neither too close nor oo far away.” Assum- ing these daughters had learned various erafts from their mother, the women’s artifacts in Huts a,b, ¢, AMERICAN ANTIOUTY (Wok 67, No.3, 2002 “The woman in Hut has a son in Hut and daughters in is, ana ‘The man and woman in Hut a have daughters in Huts b,c, and. ‘The man in Hut qhas 2 son in Hut f the woman in Hut has @ daughter in Hut ‘Toe man in Hut ehas a daughter in Hut Figure 2 Plan ofa 1959 Hadza camp near Ugulu, Tanzania. ‘The sical relationships of some of the hus" occupants are sven (redrawn from Woodburn 1972: Figure N. and d might show stylistic similarities. The same could be suggested for the woman in Hut j and her daughters in Huts fh, and i 2. The fat that Hadza huts are “put up by the women in an hour or two" supports an important observa- tion by my colleague Raymond Kelly, who is cur- rently engaged in a reanalysis of hunter-gatherer societies (see Kelly 2000). In Kelly’ ethnographic sample, just asin an earlier cross-cultural study by Murdock and Wilson (1972), impermanent above- round huts tend to be made by womens thisisiner- esting, since it suggests that women are the ones making the eritical decisions about residence size, shape, and location. Once huts become more labor intensive, however (asin the case of diging subter- ranean foundations and lining them with drylaid stone masonry),housebuilding becomes increasingly the work of men. And men are even more likely 10 be the builders of rectangular houses with mud or ‘mud brick walls (Raymond Kelly, personal com- ‘munication 2001; Murdock and Wilson 1972). 3. In my 1972 paper I mentioned associations between circular houses and impermanent setle- ‘ment and between rectangular houses and permanent settlement (Robbins 1966; Whiting and Ayres 1968).Flannery] Unfortunately this led some readers to believe that the geometric shape of the residence was the crucial variable. Infact, my main distinction was between (1D) societies where small huts are occupied by i viduals and storage is shared and (2) societies where larger houses are occupied by whole nuclear fami- lis, and storage is private ‘A major improvement, therefore, would be to Incorporate more discussion of rsk and privatiza- tion of storage. Only a decade after my paper, Wiess- ner (1982)—drawing on a completely different ethnographic sample—proposed a dichotomy that complemented mine. She contrasted hunter-gatherer societies in which isk is assumed atthe level of the group with those in which risk is assumed at the level ofthe family Inthe irsttype of society, widespread pooling and sharing of food ensures that risk and reward are accepted by the group as a whole. Food storage is cut in the open and shared by all occupants of the settlement, as appears to have been the case wit the Natufian and PPNA sites I discussed (Flannery 1972:31). Ther is litle incentive to intensity pro- duction in such societies, since whateveris produced must be shared. Wiessner (1982:174) points out that when such a group settles, they have two basic ‘options, One is to build lage strcture to house the entire group, such asthe communal winter houses ofthe Ammassilik Inuit, or the lng houses of some Upper Paleolithic mammoth hunters (Soffer 1985). Altematively, they can distribute the members ofthe sroup trough aseries of smallerhuts, which is what the Hadiza do; I suspect that this is what the oocu- Pants of Nahal Oren did. Such hus ar often cireu- Jar, contain no storage facilites, and vary in size depending on whether they ae built fora marital pai, ‘an unmarried son, a widow, oF one ofthe wives of a polygamous headman, ‘The second ype of society acceptsrsk and reward atthe level ofthe individual nuclear family. As Wiess- ner (1982:173) put it, such societies have a more “elosed” site plan, “one which has either widely spaced houschold units or closed-in eating and stor- age areas, n order to avoid the ealousy and coniet ‘which might arse from one household visibly hav- ing more than another” Each nuclear family has its ‘own house and, most importantly its own private storage, Here exits more incentive to intensify pro- duction, since any resulting surplus does not have to be shared; each family decideshow much orhow ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED at tle to produce. I suspect that this is what we see at ‘most Prepottery Neolithic B (PPNB) villages, inthe upper levels at Beidha and Tell Mureybit, and at Jarmo and Ali Kosh (Flannery 1972:40-43), nother words, some time between Late Natufian and PPNB in the Near East, villages of rectangular, nuclear family houses with private storage rooms replaced encampments of irregularly sized circular huts with shared or “group” storage. Why did this change take place? I suspect that Prepottery Neolithic societies grew so fast, and settlements became so large, that not every family considered itself closely enough related tots neighbors to be willing to share the risks and rewards of production. Privatization of storage—which can even include the closing off of ‘outdoor work space with a mud wall (Flannery 1972: Figure 5)—isa way of freeing one’s family fromhav- ing to share wit less-productive neighbors. And for the rest of the Neolithic period, families who were willing to work harder and store the products pri= vately began to outdistance their neighbors eco- nomically 4. Colleagues working in Egypt and the Southwest USS. have pointed out to me that itis not necessary to abandon circular residences in order to privatize storage: you simply have to make the circular houses larger and bring the storage inside. Predynastic Egyp- tians continued olive in circular, semisubterranean houses long after their neighbors inthe Levant had adopted rectangular residences. The Predynastic houses were variable in size, with many being large enough to accommodate a family; others appear to have been used for storage see for example Brun- ton and Caton-Thompson 1928) Wills (1992) makes a similar point in his contrast between Shabik’eschee village (Chaco region) and the SU site (Mogollon region). Shabik’eschee had circular pithouses that seem too small for entire fam- ilies (average floor area, 17.8 m?) and have no inter- nal storage pis. tthe SU ste, while many pithouses ‘were still curvilinear, they averaged 40:m* and could be as large as 80 m?. These larger pithouses, which ‘could accommodate a nuclear family, had storage pits inside the house that were presumably private. These storage pits provided an average of 2.8 m' storage capacity perhouse, which Wills(1992:165) converts 10 253 kg of maize—enough, he reckons, fora fam- ily of five for three months Wills suspects that increasing dependence on agrisaa culture is somehow involved nthe shiftto privatized storage, and he raises a number of intriguing possi- bilities. He cites Plog’s (1990) suggestion that while agriculture can raise the productivity of an economy, it offen does so at the cost of increasing variance around the mean output. He further draws on Win- {erhalder’s (190) conclusion that farmers are better off restricting their sharing to closely related indi- viduals because—since farmers have production cycles lasting months or years—itis hard to moni- {or people who “cheat” by not contributing as much as they receive. To this I would add a point made ear- lier in this paper: as villages grow, not all families are closely enough related by blood or marriage 10 bbe willing to share with neighbors Finally, Wills (1992:169) argues that reduced sharing, more restricted land tenure, and growing pri- vatization of storage greatly increased the economic ‘options of early farmers. Ifthisisso, we might expect 10 seein the archaeological record a lot more varia- tion inhouse size, house shape, storage facilites, rit- ual buildings, burial patterns, and other features. (I should add here that archaeologists working on ancient state, like Sumer or the Inca, find even ‘preater variety in storage strategies than T discuss here. Most of those strategies, however, were not ‘options for foragers or Neolithic farmers.) ‘5. Kohler (1993:280), also drawing on Southwest US. data, warns against a simple equation between (1) foraging societies and communal storage/pro- duction and (2) agriculturalists and household stor- age/production. Citing evidence from stable-carbon isotopes and coprolite analyses, he argues that dif- ferences in agriculture alone cannot explain the dif- ferences in architecture between the Chaco and Mogollon settlements, (Ina late section of this paper, examine differences between Zapotec and Mixe set- tlements in Mexico, which also reflect cultural vari- ables beyond the commitment to maize agriculture, Itappears that, farback in time, human agents made strategic decisions among alternatives for reasons ‘which are not always apparent archaeological.) Just as Wiessner (1982) calls atention to varia tionamong hunter-gatherersinthe level at which risk is shared, Kohler (1993:280) points to variation in the kinds of foods foraging people are willing to share. For example, among the Ache, Machiguenga, and Yanidmam®, things that come in “big packages” (like major game and fish) are shared, while things AMERICAN ANTIOUTYY (Wok 67, No. 3, 2002 that come in “small packages” (lik plants pathered by women) are not. Thus, if horticulture emerged in Southwest economies as an extension of women's gathering activity, “ts products may notbe so widely shared among households, particulary if production variance was low’"(1993:280).The implication that itis not enough to know whether a commitment 10 agriculture has been made; we must also know ‘whether a product was considered men’s or women's work. 6. According to Kober (1998:281), “the first sette- ments in the Southwest that clearly corespond to Flannery's rectangular-house type appeared in the northern Southwest about A.D. 760." Storage by this time was “clearly associated with the household” (1993:281) and circular pit structures were evolving into ritual buildings often shared by 2-3 households who now lived in rectangular surface structures. (In a later section of this paper we will see a circular jing type which may have played a similar role the early Near Eas) ‘The transition fom circular to rectangular houses in the Southwest U.S. has been described forthe Anasazi ofthe Four Comers region by Gross (1992), ‘The Tres Bobos subphase (A.D. 600-700) had rela- tively shallow circular pithouses with antechambers, accompanied by round-to-oval freestanding surface rooms of brush and mud. During the Sageill sub- phase, pithouses became deeper and were more nearly square; surface structures also became more nearly square, and had a more substantial super- structure. By the time of the Dos Casas subphase (AD. 760-850), pit strctures had become square and had vents rather than antechambers. Single ‘dwelling sites had given way to multiple dwelling units of rectangular rooms. Surface rooms formed. contiguous blocks, with larger rectangular rooms in frontand smaller rectangular rooms behind them. By now it was clear that the back row of rooms were substantial storage structures with postsupported roofs and stone slab-einforced walls, while pit structure function had changed from residential to ritual Based on these Southwestern data, were Ito rewrite my 1972 paper I would reinforce the point that architectural changes depended on many vari- ables—some economic, some social—and that in some regions, storage rooms might be better built than the houses they accompanied.Fanner] 7. We have already mentioned the fact that circular huts lasted longer in Egypt than inthe Near East. Fur- therevidence that replacement by rectangular houses ‘could take place at any time period comes from the “Trans-Caucasus region of Azerbaijan and the Geor- gian Republic. There Sagona (1993) reports that sixth-millennium B.C. Neolithic settlements like ‘Shulaveris Gora had circular-hut compounds of sun- dried mud brick (and some watte-and-daub), party subterranean. Houses were small (5-7 m?) and had even smaller storage cells (1.25-2.0 m?) attached to them, either directly or by a wattle-and-daub fence. ‘These communities resembled the encampments of the Hadza or Natufian, in that many huts were t00 ‘small to have housed a family By the early Bronze Age (early fifth- to middle fourth-millennium B.C.) sits like Kvatskhelebi had standardized, rectangular two-room houses with rounded comers. These houses were of wattle-and- daub over a framework of posts; while the main room was clearly residential, the second room may have been an attached rectangular porch. The floor space ofthese houses was 25~40m?, adequate fora nuclear family. Each house had a beaten clay floor, a central circularhearth, anda bench set against the back wall This transition from circular huts to nuclear fam- ily houses took place relatively late in the Trans- Caucasus. Sagona (1993) attributes the more ephemeral-looking Neolithic compounds to the fact that transhumant herding mitigated against perma- nentsettlements. By he Bronze Age, there were per- ‘manent settlements of nuclear-family households at lower elevations, while the higher elevations stil had less-permanent settlements for the summer pastur- ing of animals, We should thus bear in mind thatthe relative importance of herding in a mixed farming- herding economy can be another variable influenc- ing house design and settlement type. 8, Several colleagues have pointed out that the shift inrisk acceptance from group to family was no ire- versible; changing economic conditions could revive both earlier house types and paters of risk accep- ‘ance. will mention only one well-documented ease. ‘On the Deccan Plateau of wester India, farmers ofthe Early Jorwe phase (1400-1000 B.C, fived in large, rectangular houses with wattle-and-daub walls over a low mud foundation (Dhavalikar 1988). Houses had 15-35 m?of floorspace, with the lager ones divided into two rooms by partition walls. This ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED 420 is considered a period of relative prosperity, with cereal agriculture and herding supported by adequate rainfall In the Late Jorwe phase, however, itis believed that a drop in rainfall at 1000-700 B.C. led to a “decline in agriculture” and “resulting poverty” (Dhavalikar 1988:20). As Late Jorwe peoples tumed toasemi-nomadic herding economy. the lange houses ‘of the previous period gave way tosmall circular huts, which tended to occur in clusters of 3-4 or more. The huts were of perishable material, though post- molds were found along the edges of the floor. Langer huts seem to have been for humans, while smaller ‘ones were for domestic animals. Most significantly, the hearths and storage bins were located where they could be shared by whole clusters of huts (Dkava- likar 1988:13). Dhavalikar attributes the changes of Late Jorwe to deteriorating economic conditions, ‘which is reasonable in this case; elsewhere in the ‘world, of course, there could be altemative reasons, fora shift to semi-nomadie herding. 9. Finally, were Ito rewrite the paper today, I would be able to draw on a much wider range of formulae for calculating population from floor space. In my “original paper Ichose touse Narol’s (1962) straight- forward measure of 10 m? of roofed space per per- son, while mentioning Cook and Heizer’s (1968) suggested improvement (2 m? per person up to six. Persons, thereafter 10 m?per person). Now LeBlane (1971) has offered his own improvement to Naroll’s approach, and Watson (1979) and Kramer (1979) have derived formulae from the ethnoarchaeology of the Near East. For that same part of the world, Henry Wright now recommends the figure of 1.2 persons per room, which emerges from Gremliza’s (1962) study of present-day Iranian villages (Henry ‘Wright, personal communication, 1998). While each of these authors’ approaches is different, none of them doubts the existence of a relationship between population and floorspace. I suspect that while more sophisticated measures work well in the regions from which they were derived, itis probably allright tousea simple method when working inalless-stud- ied area ‘Taking the Next Step: From Nuclear to Extended Households Having considered a number of improvements to my 1972 paper, let me now examine the next step in thea6 0 1 2m — Figure 3. Prototype muclar family house from Operation 1X, Level 2 at Matarra, rag (redrawn from Braidwood et al 1952-Fgure 3). evolution of some villages—the emergence of the extended household For the period 6500-5500 B.C. (uncalibrated) in the Near East the house shown n Figure 3 would be prototypical. tcould easily accommodate family of five and had larger rooms for sleeping or for enter- taining visitors, plu at east one smaller room for pr- vate storage, Indeed, in many parts ofthe worl, nuclear houschols like this one contnucd for thou sands of years tobe the basic units of which villages vere composed, However, in some regions —includ- ing both the Near East and Mescamerica—they were ‘gradually replaced by households that could have held 15-20 people, or even more. Some of those larger household had multiple hearths, multiple kitchens, multiple ses of features and storage facilities. It appears that as some offspring reached adulthood and maried they remained tached othe parental house- holdratherthan moving away oformtheirown. will devote the rest ofthis paper to that next stage of vil lage developmen, the replacement of miclearhouse- holds by extended family households ‘One can think of several reasons why extended households might emerge. The most obvious seco- nomic: in some subsistence systems, the nicleafam- ilyissimply nota viable economic unit Inmany pars ofthe Near East, married sons remain attached tothe household of ther father because the combination of two tasks—cereal agriculture and the grazing of herd animals requires a division of labor beyond AMERICAN ANTIOUTY (Not 67, No.3, 2002 the capacity of a nuclear family. By 5500 B.C. many [Near Eastern villages not only grew wheat, barley, lentils, and peas for food, but also raised flax for linen. and had added cattle and pigs tothe herding of sheep and goats. A family of 15-20 simply had more man- power to perform all the disparate tasks in such an economy, which could include some kind of craft production as well. Between 5500 and 5000 B.C., some parts of the Near East developed households that were not only large, but had stereotyped ground plans and a trimodal room-size distribution, Extended households also emerged in Formative Mesoamerica, but there we cannot argue that it was encouraged by a mixed farming-herding economy. Rather, it appears that genuine strategic differences inland clearance and agricultural landholding devel- ‘oped, even between neighboring cultures in broadly similar environments, Some groups chose to accept risk at the level of the individual family or farm- stead; others chose to buffer risk by collaborating in larger social groups. In a classic study, geographer Oscar Schmieder (1930) contrasted the agricultural strategies of the Zapotec and Mixe peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico. Among the Mixe, he noted, each family cleared the land it needed for cultivation and built its house beside its fields. The settlement pattern became one of isolated farmsteads, where each family “was con- fronted by all the tasks of everyday life” and “the distance from neighbor to neighbor was often great” (Schmieder 1930-77). In contrast, Zapotec families collaborated in clearing land by means of large work groups, then distributed the land among the families ‘who participated, Because the big work gangs moved from place to place a family who participated could ‘wind up owning parcels of land scattered through several environments. This process not only spread risk among many families, it also minimized the chances that a local environmental disaster would damage all of a family’s plantings. As Schmieder points out, it also promoted the growth of larg, per- ‘manent villages; since there was no point in moving ‘one’s house to fields that were scattered over so large an area, families continued to live within the larger ‘cooperating group. Inthese larger and more compact villages, “a differentiation of activities became pos- sible. Crafts, art, and science developed and were ‘maintained by the mass ofthe population which nev- ertheless remained agricultural” (Schmieder 1930:76).Flannery Another variable leading to extended households in Mesoamerica waselite status, Elite families ofthe Middle Formative (850-500 B.C., uncalibrated) tended to have bigger houses, more outbuildings, and more storage facilities, which were often built of adobe rather than wattle-and-daub (Marcus and. Flannery 1996:131-138), Having more members allowed a chiefly extended family to produce more food and more craft goods. Inhis analysis of Moala, an island in Fiji, Sahlins (1962) discovered many ofthe same principles seen among the Zapotec by Schmieder. Inthe village of Ketcia, forest clearing was done by large work gangs and had led to “traditional pattem of dispersed land use” by extended famil nuclear family existence could be depending as it did on the productive ability of only ‘one adult of each sex. Inequalities in subsistence pro- duction among nuclear households could be “miti- ‘gated through extended family pooling of labor and ‘goods” (Sahlins 1962:123). As among the Zapotec, extended families could mobilize a large labor force when needed, or could “release some men for work in distant gardens without hardship for those remain- ing inthe village” (1962:124). ‘The pressure to maintain large extended families was even greater if one were a chief in Moala, since the chief's household was expected to produce reserves of food for external distribution, Thus, A large extended family embracing effective ‘gardeners jelous of their social prerogatives maintains chief's strength; it enables him to produce, to accumulate, and to distribute as a Chief should, Thus the chiefly family of Naroi, paramount on the island, with six nuclear con- stituents is twice the size and more of other houses ofthe village [Sahlins 1962:125] In the next section of this paper, we will look at three archaeological examples of early extended ‘households, one from the Near East and two from Mesoamerica. The firstexample is particularly infor- mative, because it shows us five consecutive stages in the transition from nuclear to extended families. ‘Name: Tell Hassuna (Levels Ie-V) Location: In the arable Y created by two seasonal ‘wadis which join atributary ofthe Tigris, 30km south ‘of Mosul, Irag. Hassuna lies on the border between, the cultivated Assyrian plain and the arid grazing lands of the al-lazireh. ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED 425 Probable date: 5500-5100 B.C. (uncalibrated) Excavators: Lloyd and Safar (1945) Description: The extent of the Level Ie village is hard toestimate, but may have been 1.0-1.5 ha, The ste later grew into a rectangle 200 by 150 m (3.0 ha) in extent, Levels lV reflect a fully sedentary village of muedl-brick houses, with the kind of mixed econ- omy one would expect atthe “edge area” between alluvium and grazing land, Storage facilities: Useful information s provided by circular storage bins at Hassuna, of which more than 30 were found. The excavators describe these as unfired storage jars (.6-1.5 m in diameter, with a ‘mean of about 1,0 m) whose thick walls were made from straw-tempered clay. Outside, they were heav- ily coated with bitumen (natural asphalt) in some cases they were also given a coat of gypsum plaster ‘om the interior. They had been constructed above ground, but instead of being fired they were lowered {nto pit until their mouths were level with the floor, then fixed in place with ill. Decayed chaff and car- bonized grain inside the bins suggest their use as rain silos, with broken bowls used as dippers to remove grain when needed. Using the formula forthe volume of a sphere, one canestimatethe capacity of these storage bins to have ranged between 11 and 1.77 m*, with a mean of 52 im? The largest number recovered in any level was six, with an estimated total capacity of 3,120 liters. If we assume that atypical nuclear family consisted ‘of 5 persons (2 of them children, this quantity of ‘rain could have satisfied the annual cereal require- ments for half a dozen nuclear families. The storage bins therefore provide a second line of evidence for extended households, independent of the architec- tural plan. Architectural stratigraphy: Few sites document the emergence of the extended houschold as clearly as Hassuna. The earliest buildings atthe site (Lev- cls Ib and Ic) were apparent nuclear family houses of 3-5 rooms. Although each house might share a courtyard with one or two others, each seemed to be 2 small, self-contained unit. By Level III, however, there were irregular complexes of 15-20 rooms flanking 2-3 sides of an open court. Often one part of the complex looks more “planned” than the rest, asifit were an original nucleus to which later rooms ‘were added by accretion. What may be implied is that as families grew, they did not fission when they reached 5-6 members, their offspring moving awayos semen arr vtec aso lan] < a) N=76 X=67 s.d.=6.1 Cl Trimodal at 2, 10, & 15 (T = -5.08) Totals > for levels Iv oN LJ [eh-/le ? | Hel sug fatal Bg gre. TE ls an aan rv ereslerres (Room ]Courtyard Possible courtyard Figure 4 Sizes ofall measurable rooms and courts in Levels eV at Hassuna, Iraq, rounded tothe nearest square meter [Note the trimodality at 2 me, 10m, and 18 me. to construct a new house. Instead, new rooms were ‘gradually added (according to no set plan) until the house could accommodate a dozen, or even 15-20, persons. Within this complex, the presence of sev- ‘eral storage rooms and several kitchens indifferent parts ofthe building suggests that meals were being prepared for several subgroups (nuclear families?) Finally, in Levels 1V and V, we see residential com. plexes of 15-20 rooms whose layout appears more planned. Rather than allowing the compounds to grow haphazardly, the architects now knew in advance that they needed to house more than a nuclear family. Not only was the layout more regu- Jar, it involved atrimodal distribution of room sizes that is statistically significant; a Student’s T test shows thatthe chance ofthe trimodality being ran- ddomisless than.001, based ona sample of 76 rooms. ‘The three main room types are (a) squarish rooms with an average of 2m: of floor space, likely forstor- age; (b) elongated rooms with an average of 10 m? of floorspace, probably for sleeping or working; and (©) rooms averaging 15 m: or larger, most of them probably courts (Figure 4). Level Ie (Figure 5). In an exposure of just under 500 m?, Lloyd and Safar (1945) found parts of three nuclear family houses. Flanking an open courtyard with storage bins ofthe type described above, the hhouses were equipped with ovens and heavy stone mortars, The northernmost house had roughly 25 m? ‘of bounded space divided into 5-6 rectangular units, the largest of which might have been an interior court. Level Ie also produced the partial plan of air: cular building whose function could not be deter: mined. Similar buildings, called by the Greek term ‘tholoi, occur at other sites ofthe same period. While ‘excavators dferin theirintrpretation of holo, most consider them ritual buildings associated with groups of related households. Level II (Figure 6). Ths level produced a com- plex of 18-20 rooms arranged around two sides of an open area. Here Lloyd and Safar clearly felt that they were dealing with two previously separate dwelling units that had coalesced over time. The southern sector seems to preserve the plan of a nuclear household with an open court, a large room, for sleeping or receiving visitors (10 m?), a pair of elongated rooms (3.5-5 m*) with an oven, and a pair of squatish rooms (3-4 m?) atleast one of which was for storage. The northern part of the complex. resembles a house that had formerly consisted of four large rooms (10-16 m?) surrounded by much smaller ones (1-5 m?), atleast some of which were for storage Level III (Figure 7). 500 m? exposure of this level produced the partial plans of two mud-brick hhouses separated by a narrow alley. The house tothe ‘west had more than 80 m? of bounded space, and looked like a former nuclear family house that hadFlannery] € Storage room a ae f THOLOS? | Court? | eee QD Sen ourauione (> siege we court \O 7. Oven = Sat om Figure § Plan of nuclear family houses around an open ‘court in Level Teat Hassuna (redrawn from Lloyd and Salar 1945:Figure 28). ez tt i. Des ieee a ‘Oven ue Figure 6 Iregular extended household from Level at “Lasuna (redrawn from Lloyd and Safar 194:Figure 29). ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED ar ‘grown haphazanily to extended family size. One «doorway, perhaps the primary entrance, hada paved threshold witha stone socket on which the door had pivoted. Once again, the basic components of the house were large, elongated rooms (12-15 m?) accompanied by smaller, usually squarish rooms (1.5-6 m?) Large storage bins were set inthe floors ‘of rooms and courtyards; most would have had vol- umes of .5 mor more, and te total capacity of the six shown in or near the western house would have been greater than 3,120 ltrs. Level IV (Figure 8). Level IV yielded an ‘extended family household that appeared to have been planned rather than growing by accretion. It ‘occupied three sides of a 15 m? courtyard, with the easter sector providing the most symmetrical plan Lloyd and Safar (1945:274) described that unit of five rooms and a corridor as similar to the houses of present-day villagesin the area; a slightly largereen- tral room (4.5 m) with an oven was flanked on the south by paired elongated rooms (each 3.5 m?), and on the north by paired squarish rooms (each 15m: The latter (presumably storage rooms) were filled with restorable pottery, Attached tothe eastern unit ‘were less-uniform rooms, one of which may have been a walled, outdoor work area with three mortars, and an oven, There were atleast three hearths and our ovens spaced around the household, suggesting the presence of several kitchens. This building must. have had more than 80:m? under roof, and if all the surrounding courtyards were associated witht there were over 120 m of bounded space. This is enough space to give us an estimate of 8-12 persons using [Naroll’s method, and there are enough rooms to give us 18 persons using Wright’s method, Based on the placement of ovens and hearths, I suspect that we are dealing with an extended household of perhaps three related nuclear families, each of which ground its own grain and cooked its own gruel or bread, but also shared storage and work space with coresidents. Level V (Figure 9) This level yielded a house {that appears to have been planned from the outset to accommodate an extended family. More than 140m? ‘of bounded space give us an estimate of 14-15 per- sons by Naroll’s method, and there are enough rooms to provide an estimate of 20 persons by Wright's ‘method. In Level V, the trimodal room-size distrib ution is particularly clear; there are big, elongated rooms (10 m?), courts (>15 m®), and small, squarish cubicles (2-4 m?), Lloyd and Safar saw the criticala8 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY (Wot. 67, No.3, 2002 Door pivot N Storage bins ‘Abundant whole pots % om Figure 8. Extended household witha more planned appear- Figure 9. Extended household with a more planned appear- ance from Level TV at Hassuna (redrawn from Lloyd and ance from Level V at Hassuna (redrawn from Lloyd and Safar 1945:Figue 3) Setar 195:Figure 32).Flannery] division in this household as the long, unbroken east- ‘west wall that bisects it. South of that wall lay a series of elongated rooms, the largest of which had ‘wo storage bins and was considered by the excava- tors to be a court. Village Density. The stratigraphic sequence at Hassuna suggests that pressure to create extended households preceded any formalization ofthe ground plan, The creation of such residences also has impli- cations for increasing village population density Assuming that Lloyd and Safar’s 500-m? exposure is representative of the entire site, we can estimate the density of the Level Ic village as somewhere between 90 and 200 persons per hectare. With the haphazard growth of extended households like those of Level I, estimates range from 200 persons (Naroll’s method) to 250 persons (Wright's method) per ha. With the planned extended households of Level V, our estimates reach 280 persons (Naroll) 0 400 persons (Wright) per ha. Whether or not one accepts the actual estimates—calculated with diffi- culty from fragmentary ground plans—itis clear that planned, extended family households can produce ‘uch higher densities. By S000 B.C. (uncalibrated), the village of Choga ‘Mami in eastern Iraq had even more standardized and symmetsical residences of up to 12 rooms, neatly arranged in four rows of three (Oates 1969). Extended Households in Mesoamerica Most houses in early Mesoamerican villages were cf wattle-and-daub, making them harder to find and. analyze than Near Eastern houses. After 850 B.C. (uncalibrated), however, elite families began increas- ingly to build adobe houses, often over a foundation Of field stones. From that point on the growth of extended households becomes easier to document, as we se inthe following examples from Puebla and. Oaxaca, Mexico. ‘Name: Llano Perdido Location: Neat Dominguilloin the southem Caiada ‘de Cuicatlin, Oaxaca, The elevation is about 700 m, and the seting is arid tropical thom forest Date: Perdido phase, 600-200 B.C. (uncalibrated) Excavators: Spencer and Redmond (1997:Chapter nD Description: Llano Perdido covers 2.25 ha and is considered a secondary center, part of a chiefdom whose primary center was Site Cs 19. The commu- ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED nity was organized into four large residential com- pounds, each measuring 30-40 m on aside and sep- arated from other compounds by about 25 m of open space, Within each compound there seems to have been a series of modular units, usually consisting of 45 small buildings surrounding @ common patio. ‘The excavators suspect that each patio group was ‘occupied by an extended household of 10-15 peo ple and that each compound consisted of 6-9 such households, united by shared descent. The largest res- idence in each compound is believed to have held a “tineage head” who was the highest-ranking mem- ber of the compound. Llano Perdido is a shallow site that was aban- doned after having been burned in a raid, leaving ‘wooden posts carbonized and the tone foundations ‘of adobe houses intact. The compound in Area A/B. was extensively excavated, revealing 18 structures arranged around three patios (Spencer and Redmond 1997:Fig, 7.2). The Southwest Patio group seems to have included the lineage head's residence (House Tyan his well-stocked tomb, It also produced a cer- emonial platform (Structure 6) and three units (Houses 8, 9,10) that could plausibly be interpreted as chiefly storehouses ‘The South Patio Group. Ihave chosen the South Patio Group to illustrate (Figure 10). Its occupants ‘were presumably less highly ranked than the lineage head’ family, but their residence illustrates the stan- dard module including a patio, three houses, and a likely ritual structure ona platform, The patio itself measured 48 m? and contained a number of post- ‘molds from probable ramadas or shaded work reas. Features 36 and 37 were large metates for outdoor srinding. House | measured 15.4 mand had been built of adobes over a stone foundation, A single step led from the patio to the house, and postmolds nearby stiggested thatthe entrance may have been shaded by an awning or thatched-roof extension. There was, ‘ahearth inthe southwest comer of the house, accom- panied by sherds of comales or tortilla griddles House 2 measured 13 mand its walls were also ‘of adobe over stone foundations. Itcontained domes- tic refuse and had been divided into two rooms of ‘unequal size, apparently separated by a wattleand- daub wall House 40, also of adobe over stone, had a step like that of House I and a similar patter of exterior Postmolds suggesting an awning or roof extension430 Figure 10. tone wal foundations ofthe South Pato Group, ‘art of the Area A/B residential compound at Llano Perdido ‘ear Dominguill, Oaxaca. During the Perdido phase (00-200 B.C.), such patio groups were the modules from ‘which larger residential compounds were assembled (redrawn from Spencer and Redmond 1997:Figure 72) ‘Atsome point watle-and-daub annex, called House 35, had been added to House 40; it contained ash from a cooking brazier (Feature 18) and a small “curb” of stone slabs framing some kind of work area, (Feature 20), ‘Structure 16, a raised platform made from 6-7 courses of stones, sat directly across the patio from ‘House 1, Some 80 cm high, it featured a stairway of perhaps 3-4 steps and had likely been topped with ritual structure of some kind. Economic Factors. Analyses of the flow of trade ‘goods at Llano Perdido suggest that lineage heads ‘were the conduits through which items like obsid- ian and marine shell reached the lower-ranked fam- ilies in their compound (Spencer 1982). Such families were not simply engaged in subsistence agri- culture, such as the growing of maize; botanical remains suggest that they were also engaged in the growing of tropical orchard crops for export to tem- perate regions like Tehuacén and the Valley of Oax- aca, Examples include the fruit ofthe black zapote (Diospyros digyna) and the nuts of the coyol palm (Acrocomia mexicana) (Spencer and Reémond 1997600). TWo labor-intensive activities at La Coy- ‘otera—irrigation of tree crops for export and the con- version of marine shell into prestige goods—may [AMERICAN ANTIQUITY (Wot. 67, Ho. 9, 2008 have provided additional incentives for the growth of large extended families. ‘Name: Tetimpa Location: 15 km west of Cholla, Puebla, on the lower slope of the Popocatépet! volcano at an ele- vation of ea, 2350 m. Probable date: Late Tetimpa phase, 50 B.C.-A.D. 100 (uncalibrated) Excavators: Plunket and Urufuela (1998) Description: During the Late Tetimpa phase, many square kilometers of the slopes below Popocatépet were occupied by maize fields and communities of ‘modular households. Te pater of both houses and fields is remarkably well preserved below the vol- ceani ash from an eruption dating tothe first century AD. In order to prevent erosion of fine sandy soil on the loping terrain during heavy summer ais, frm- ers at Tetimpa mounded earth around their plans, ‘reating “Sequences of linear ridges that look very similar to the furrows of modern plowed fields” (Plunket and Uruuela 1998:28), Households were spaced 6-861 apart and were often borderedby their furrowed fields (Figure 11). The standard occupa tional module consisted of alow platform on which a central patio was lanked by 2-3 houses setatright angles to one another. When families at Tetimpa needed more space, they added another entre mod- ular unit nearby. In addition to maintaining a consistent astro- nomical orientation, Tetimpa households had a bimodal room-size distribution. Larger central houses, facing the entrance to the module, ranged from 16-17.5 m?; houses to either side of them ranged from 7.59.5 m?. Individual houses were of watle-and-daub over low stone platforms, with a simple staircase ascending from the central patio. In ceases where there was no third house on a modular platform, its place was taken by a group of storage Jats ofa series of above-ground, mud-and-wicker storage bins, knowns cuexcomates inthe language ofthe later Aztec. The wattle ofboth walls and stor- age bins had been burned in stu by hot voleanic ash, providing exceptional architectural detail In the sector of Tetimpa known as Cruz Verde, the excavators found an extended household con posed of atleast two functionally complementary modules. Operation 12 ofthe household seemed to include the principal residential rooms, while Oper-Furrowed Agricultural Fields | ‘THE ORIGINS OF THE VILLAGE REVISITED at Unit 3 (Kitchen with Figure 11, Simplified plan of Operation 10 in the Cruz Verde section of Tetimps, Puebla. This modular group i part of an extended household which also included Operation 12 (redrawn from Plunket and Uruivela 1998:Figure 10) ation 10 (less than 10 m away) had the appearance of a kitchen and storage area. I have chosen to fea- ture Operation 10 (Figure 11) because it illustrates te placement of storage bins the density of pots in the itchen, and the proximity ofthe furrowed com- fields tothe residence. Operation 10 had an at cally high numberof potsand storage bins foritssize; it makes sense only as part of an extended house- hold, which included Operation 12 (Plunket and Uru 1998:298) “Tetimpa reinforces a numberof principles seen inotherextended-family communities: (1) itshouse- holds could grow by aceretion, like those of Hassuna IMI; yet(2) when the villagers id add more space, it was according to a modular plan like the Patio Groups of Llano Perdido; and (3) within each “Tetimpa module there were rooms of relatively sta- dard sizes, lke those of Hassuna IV-V. etimpa thus combines the flexibility of “growth on demand” with the formality ofa stereotypic module Conclusions and Future Developments ‘Over the last three decades it has become clear that sedentary life in many parts of the ancient world began with settlements of circular huts like those of the preceramic Near East. Although the timing was different from region to region, many of those early settlements were eventually replaced by villages of rectangular, nuclear family houses. Itmow appears, however, thatthe reasons for this replacement of one settlement type by another are too varied fora single model to explain. Included are (shifts in risk acceptance between the group and the muclear family, (2) increases or decreases in dependence on agriculture, (3) privatization of stor- age, and possibly even (4) shifts between polyga- ‘mous and monogamous marriage. It also appears that each of these shifts was reversible when condi tions changed. Perhaps most intriguing isthe possi- bility that two basic residential strategies may have provided enough flexibility oadjusttoamuch larger set of variables Inthis paper we have also looked ata subsequent stage in village development, the growth of houses designed to hold extended families. Again, the rea- sons for this settlement change may be varied. Included are (1) the need for larger households to take on the many tasks of a mixed farming/herding economy; (2) the greater labor needs of intensive iti- gation farmers; (3) a response tothe dispersed field systems that result from communal land clearance, followed by division of fields among the partici- pants; and (4 the increased sizeof elite households ‘Who seek to support and direct the work of eaft spe-aa cialists, Once again, a single, basic settlement type— the village of extended households—seems to have been flexible enough to respond to a diverse set of variables In many parts of the ancient world, there was to be yet another stage in community development: economic specialization, not just atthe level ofthe extended family, but atthe level ofthe residential ‘ward. Archaeological sites onthe coast of Perueven- tually came to have barrios of farmers, fishermen, ‘weavers, potters, and metalworkers, Class Mesoamerican cities like Teotihuacan had large apartment compounds where specialized potters, or figurine makers, or obsidian workers,ormask assem- bers lived and worked together. In Mesopotamia, specialists in fine pottery began to paint their prod- ‘ucts with identifying “potter's marks.” Early cities near the Euphrates are believed to have had wards of farmers, herders, and fishermen, Unfortunately, there is no space to investigate that later stage of res- idential strategy here. It deserves an essay all its ‘own—perhaps on the thirtieth anniversary of this article? Acknowledgments | thank etor Timothy Kober, without whose request this stile would never have been writen. The advice of Raymond Kelly and four anonymous reviewers really improved the manuscript. 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Tingham, and G. WW. Dimbleby pp. 193-206. Dckwor, London Yellen 1.E. 1977 Archaeological Approaches tothe Present: Models for ‘Reconsircing the Past. Acaderic Pres, Ne York. Notes 1. At Yarim ‘Tepe T in northern trag, Merpert and Munchaey (1993) found several shoo’ in levels of the assunan perio. In thei opinion these circular structures cannot be classed as dwellings eter by ther size, form, oF contents” (Merpert and Munchiev 1993:95) they consider ‘hem to be “connected with burial practices” (199395). Is possible tht northern Mesopotamia represents 2 second region where, asin the Southwest U.S., some round stuc tures became associated with ritual ae rectangular houses developed, [Received October 17,2001; Revised February 15,2003 ‘Accepted February 19,202.