The Beginning of the Neolithic : searching for meaning in material culture change.

The elaborate concern for houses at the proto-neolithic site of Qermez Dere in N Iraq and the relatively rapid changes in material culture suggest that an important change was in progress in the community's way of life, and in particular in its attitude to the concept of 'home' as signified by the symbolic activities focused on the houses. These cultural changes seem to be associated with social stress which reached to the point of inter-communal conflict and warfare. The main purpose of the essay is to attempt to relate these culturally indicated changes occurring at the very beginning of the neolithic period to the economic evidence and to recent anthropological work on sedentary or complex hunter-gatherer societies and their handling of 'resource-stress'.