Innovations at the Margins: The Transmission of Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB) Culture across the Levantine Interior

Abstract. The advent of the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB) in the southern Levant is reviewed here in the light of data from recent excavations. Data from the western flank of the southern Levant continue to indicate that the EPPNB cultural horizon arrived in the region around 9,300 BP/8,612–8,491 cal. BCE. This body of evidence includes a bloc of Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) sites in central western Jordan that terminate around the same time. On the eastern flank of the southern Levant, new excavations are returning progressively higher dates for the introduction of the EPPNB, with Harrat Juhayra 202 in the Jafr Basin being the earliest of them. The early dissemination of PPNB culture across the eastern flank of the Levant is explored in terms of the high mobility of hunter-gatherer communities living in marginal areas, and the porous boundaries of their home ranges. Since quite different adaptations appear to fall under the aegis of PPNB culture (both agrarian villages and mobile hunter-gatherers), this chapter revisits some basic notions and assumptions about the large, pan-Levantine PPNB cultural entity. It reassesses ideas about the construction of archaeological cultures, examines how culture elements disperse, and how inter-societal contacts may give rise to dynamic new cultural expressions.