Prehistoric Western Asia

This chapter deals with prehistoric Western Asia, ca. 9500–4000 BC, when this region was the focus of a series of far-reaching socioeconomic developments that were to change the world. Early in this period a gradual shift occurred from a mobile hunter-gatherer way of life to sustained settlement in villages that were increasingly dependent upon farming. Later on, social ranking, economic intensification, and craft specialization emerged at sites throughout the Middle East (Anatolia, Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Levant), laying the foundations for the earliest urban societies in the region. The chapter argues that these changes, far from being unilateral or monolithic, reflect significant multicultural developments and long-lasting trajectories of regional differentiation, requiring the agency of innumerable individuals and generations over millennia.