The Rise of Neolithic Social Complexity

The rise of Neolithic social complexity has displayed prominent and severe elements of social complexity and inequality through evidence of material culture. In particular, archaeological studies and findings regarding the first emergence of agriculture pioneered by the Natufian community has been an intensely contested issue amongst scholars. On one hand, there were archaeologists conforming to the idea of cultural evolution suggesting the effects of Younger Dryas as the principal factor that independently resulted the Natufian cultural change towards sedentism during the sudden cold climatic event by uniformly domesticating animals and intensifying plant production across the Levant area (Bar-Yosef et al. 1991: 17-19). On the other hand, there were evidences that suggested how by the Late Natufian period, there were immense mobility in hunting and storage practices which suggests that the Natufians were complex hunting and gatherers instead (Maher et al. 2012: 68-70).

In a sense, the latter statement asserted the notion that Natufian community portrayed a degree of social complexity because they were trying to adapt and survive due to social fluctuations by effectively renewing their hunting practices and materialistic innovation to further intensify their subsistence economy when needed. Therefore, this paper will discuss how the Natufian cultural shift does not necessarily conform to the structural-functionalist approach of Younger Dryas as an independent prime mover towards the emergence of agriculture, while elaborating on alternative socio-ecological models to formally assess whether gradual sedentism and intensified resource could have been the catalysts towards Natufian subsistence economy transition towards agriculture...

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