Nightmares of solitude: collectivism and the body politic in the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic

Known for its large settlements, monumental buildings, and elaborate funerary practices, the early Neolithic of the Near East is often seen as a case‐study of emergent inequalities. Yet, none of those markers correlate with pronounced distinctions of wealth or status. Plastered human skulls exemplify this issue: although they have been assumed to portray remarkable individuals, they were in fact deliberately deposited in collective sets that enhanced their incomplete and generic features. The immediate intelligibility of a face gives way to uncanny resemblances. In this respect, the interpretation of early Neolithic remains is not unlike that of dreams. This essay uses dreamwork as an analogy for interpreting archaeological evidence as evocative distortion of the past, rather than its mirror representation. In the seemingly egalitarian early Neolithic of the Near East, hierarchy existed without translating, as we would expect, into a single discrete scale of social differentiation. Instead, it operated in a fractal dimension that lay latent in interpersonal relations and intermittently appears as visions of composite identities in artistic or mortuary practices. Conversely, the individuation of bodies in the archaeological assemblage is not the relatable sign of a political order, but rather its manifest perversion: a nightmare of solitude.