Trevor Watkins
After studying classics in an old-fashioned grammar school, I went on to Birmingham University and in 1960 took BA in Ancient History and Archaeology. My PhD at Birmingham was on the metalwork of the Early and Middle Cypriot periods, after which I worked for a couple of years in collaboration with a metallurgist, trialling the then new analytical method of mass spectrometry as a means of relating early copper tools and weapons to the copper sources from which they came ( that research showed that it was impossible using trace element analysis). In 1966 I took up a new lectureship in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, where I taught for the rest of my career. My first field project was the excavation of the site of Philia Drakos A, a pottery Neolithic settlement site in Cyprus, after which I worked for a while on seeking the origins of the Cypriot Neolithic, including a study of the aceramic Neolithic site of Kataliontas. In the mid-1970s I worked with Tom Davidson on the Halaf site of Tell Aqab, and then, in the 1980s, I played a role in the British salvage excavations in the Tigris valley ahead of the Eski Mosul Dam. That led to the opportunity to undertake salvage excavations on the early aceramic Neolithic site of Qermez Dere, on the outskirts of Tel Afar. In 1993 I worked with Douglas Baird in the initiation of the archaeological survey of the Konya plain around Çatalhöyük, and promptly moved on to begin the salvage excavation of the cluster of sites at Pınarbaşı.
Following the experience of excavating the houses at Qermez Dere, I became interested in the cultural symbolism of domestic architecture. Then I had the opportunity to work closely with Jacques Cauvin, as the translator of English version of his great book Naissance des divinités, naissance de l'agriculture: la révolution des symboles au Néolithique (published 2000). Since then, I have worked at seeking to apply theories from the work of Robin Dunbar (the social brain hypothesis), Merlin Donald (the emergence of systems of external symbolic storage and 'mythic' culture), and, more recently, cultural niche construction theory to the archaeology of the Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic of southwest Asia. I am currently interested in the symbolism, ritual and religious practice that were evolved to support the networks of large, permanently settled Neolithic communities.
Following the experience of excavating the houses at Qermez Dere, I became interested in the cultural symbolism of domestic architecture. Then I had the opportunity to work closely with Jacques Cauvin, as the translator of English version of his great book Naissance des divinités, naissance de l'agriculture: la révolution des symboles au Néolithique (published 2000). Since then, I have worked at seeking to apply theories from the work of Robin Dunbar (the social brain hypothesis), Merlin Donald (the emergence of systems of external symbolic storage and 'mythic' culture), and, more recently, cultural niche construction theory to the archaeology of the Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic of southwest Asia. I am currently interested in the symbolism, ritual and religious practice that were evolved to support the networks of large, permanently settled Neolithic communities.
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After more than 200 years of enquiry, gathering information and analysis, we should be able to synthesize our knowledge and tell the human story from the emergence of the genus Homo to our own times. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of several deep academic divisions that have fragmented the scope of that human story into a series of almost watertight segments. These divisions arose from the beginning of archaeology, and have been compounded by the rapid expansion and increasing compartmentalization of academic archaeology since the second half of the 20th century.
. . .
and organisation of the social group and the tempo of socio-cultural evolution were transformed. The scale and diversity of cultural innovation and social organisation can be seen to be linked in co-evolutionary
feedback loops that have been characterised as ‘cumulative culture’, ‘ratcheting’ effects, or ‘runaway’ cultural evolution. The up-scaling of communities and the intensification of their interaction and networking enabled the emergence of super-communities that became the first large-scale societies, an inflection point on an accelerating curve of complex cultural, social and economic development, en route to emergent socio-political hierarchies, urbanism, kingdoms and empires.
and much evidence of elaborate ritual behaviours: and we also have a great deal of new research in the fi elds of cognitive and evolutionary psychology.
My concern has been to bring some of these new cognitive and co- evolutionary ideas into contact with the new archaeological material (Watkins 2004a , 2004b , 2006 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010a , 2010b , 2012 , 2015 ; Sterelny & Watkins 2015 ). In particular, I want to explore how the impressive displays of symbolism and ritual performance that emerged as part of this great social transformation functioned in the context of the
new, large, permanent communities that created them. I shall argue that the extraordinary levels of symbolism in architecture, artefacts and ritual functioned in the service of the construction and sustenance of a new
and extraordinary kind of community and identity. (In Ritual, Play and Belief in Early Human Societies, eds. C. Renfrew, I. Morley & M. Boyd Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many
crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Origins of Inequality, 1754
“[The monogamous family] develops out of the pairing family, as previously shown, in the transitional period between the upper and middle stages of barbarism; its decisive victory is one of the signs that civilization is beginning. It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs.” Friedrich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884
"One for all, all for one.”
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, 1844
Abstract: Competition for resources (arable land, pasturage) within settled farming populations became increasingly intensive as those populations grew. One strong measure to reduce the tensions that might lead to conflicts over such commodified aspects of the environment was the development of corporate kinship groups that established exclusive access to certain land parcels (among other resources) to their members; abiotic resources were also claimed exclusively, such as names, symbols, and myths. A correlated development was the expression of corporate identities, signs that distinguished one corporate group from all others. While many of those signs may have been lost to prehistorians, others have survived. The site of ‘Ain Ghazal provides good evidence of such corporate identities as reflected in architectural clustering and ritual practices, particularly during the Middle PPNB (MPPNB) and Late PPNB (LPPNB) periods.
Keywords: MPPNB, LPPNB, ritual, myth, Neolithic identities
(known regionally as the Epi-palaeolithic) and the early
(aceramic) Neolithic saw the emergence of a completely
new kind of human social organisation in the form of large,
permanently co-resident communities of hundreds, and in
some cases of thousands, of people. Monumental architecture,
vividly dramatic sculptures, and other sorts of symbolic
representation and ritualised performance accompanied that
great transformation of society. Having sketched the outline
of the social and economic transformation, I will discuss the
role of symbolic culture in the formation and maintenance of
these earliest sedentary communities. And that will allow us
to consider how ritual performance developed in the service
of collective memory, collective identity, and the making of
ideas about the nature of the world, its superhuman agencies,
and the community’s place in that world.
niche construction were qualitatively upgraded in order to support the formation of large, permanently
co-resident communities and regional interaction networks with new and sophisticated forms of sym-
bolic action and representation. The transition from small, mobile forager bands to networks of large
permanent communities that occurred between 22,000 and 8500 years ago was enabled by the signif-
icant development of what Merlin Donald has called‘theoretic culture’, communicated and stored in
systems of‘external symbolic storage’. The over-arching role of symbolic culture became the highly
developed core of what we may call the cognitive-cultural niche, within which and by means of which
children learned and adults understood and expressed their identity and their place in the world. The
extraordinary plasticity of the modern human brain and its developmental responsiveness to context
meant that individuals formed their identity through a long process of enculturation within a cognitively
powerful cultural niche. While we are accustomed to literacy and dependence on written sources, they
were more adept with other media, particularly ceremonies and rituals, and the making of memory in
monuments, artistic representations, signs and systems of
After more than 200 years of enquiry, gathering information and analysis, we should be able to synthesize our knowledge and tell the human story from the emergence of the genus Homo to our own times. Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of several deep academic divisions that have fragmented the scope of that human story into a series of almost watertight segments. These divisions arose from the beginning of archaeology, and have been compounded by the rapid expansion and increasing compartmentalization of academic archaeology since the second half of the 20th century.
. . .
and organisation of the social group and the tempo of socio-cultural evolution were transformed. The scale and diversity of cultural innovation and social organisation can be seen to be linked in co-evolutionary
feedback loops that have been characterised as ‘cumulative culture’, ‘ratcheting’ effects, or ‘runaway’ cultural evolution. The up-scaling of communities and the intensification of their interaction and networking enabled the emergence of super-communities that became the first large-scale societies, an inflection point on an accelerating curve of complex cultural, social and economic development, en route to emergent socio-political hierarchies, urbanism, kingdoms and empires.
and much evidence of elaborate ritual behaviours: and we also have a great deal of new research in the fi elds of cognitive and evolutionary psychology.
My concern has been to bring some of these new cognitive and co- evolutionary ideas into contact with the new archaeological material (Watkins 2004a , 2004b , 2006 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010a , 2010b , 2012 , 2015 ; Sterelny & Watkins 2015 ). In particular, I want to explore how the impressive displays of symbolism and ritual performance that emerged as part of this great social transformation functioned in the context of the
new, large, permanent communities that created them. I shall argue that the extraordinary levels of symbolism in architecture, artefacts and ritual functioned in the service of the construction and sustenance of a new
and extraordinary kind of community and identity. (In Ritual, Play and Belief in Early Human Societies, eds. C. Renfrew, I. Morley & M. Boyd Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many
crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Origins of Inequality, 1754
“[The monogamous family] develops out of the pairing family, as previously shown, in the transitional period between the upper and middle stages of barbarism; its decisive victory is one of the signs that civilization is beginning. It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as his natural heirs.” Friedrich Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884
"One for all, all for one.”
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, 1844
Abstract: Competition for resources (arable land, pasturage) within settled farming populations became increasingly intensive as those populations grew. One strong measure to reduce the tensions that might lead to conflicts over such commodified aspects of the environment was the development of corporate kinship groups that established exclusive access to certain land parcels (among other resources) to their members; abiotic resources were also claimed exclusively, such as names, symbols, and myths. A correlated development was the expression of corporate identities, signs that distinguished one corporate group from all others. While many of those signs may have been lost to prehistorians, others have survived. The site of ‘Ain Ghazal provides good evidence of such corporate identities as reflected in architectural clustering and ritual practices, particularly during the Middle PPNB (MPPNB) and Late PPNB (LPPNB) periods.
Keywords: MPPNB, LPPNB, ritual, myth, Neolithic identities
(known regionally as the Epi-palaeolithic) and the early
(aceramic) Neolithic saw the emergence of a completely
new kind of human social organisation in the form of large,
permanently co-resident communities of hundreds, and in
some cases of thousands, of people. Monumental architecture,
vividly dramatic sculptures, and other sorts of symbolic
representation and ritualised performance accompanied that
great transformation of society. Having sketched the outline
of the social and economic transformation, I will discuss the
role of symbolic culture in the formation and maintenance of
these earliest sedentary communities. And that will allow us
to consider how ritual performance developed in the service
of collective memory, collective identity, and the making of
ideas about the nature of the world, its superhuman agencies,
and the community’s place in that world.
niche construction were qualitatively upgraded in order to support the formation of large, permanently
co-resident communities and regional interaction networks with new and sophisticated forms of sym-
bolic action and representation. The transition from small, mobile forager bands to networks of large
permanent communities that occurred between 22,000 and 8500 years ago was enabled by the signif-
icant development of what Merlin Donald has called‘theoretic culture’, communicated and stored in
systems of‘external symbolic storage’. The over-arching role of symbolic culture became the highly
developed core of what we may call the cognitive-cultural niche, within which and by means of which
children learned and adults understood and expressed their identity and their place in the world. The
extraordinary plasticity of the modern human brain and its developmental responsiveness to context
meant that individuals formed their identity through a long process of enculturation within a cognitively
powerful cultural niche. While we are accustomed to literacy and dependence on written sources, they
were more adept with other media, particularly ceremonies and rituals, and the making of memory in
monuments, artistic representations, signs and systems of
The question that Robert Braidwood first posed half a century ago - “Why then? Why not earlier?” – continues to challenge us, whether we are thinking of the adoption of farming practices, the formation of permanent village communities, or the extraordinarily rich symbolic expressions. Recent advances in the application of evolutionary theory to cognitive psychology and cultural theory can be related to the material worlds that these communities created for themselves. We can see how people at that time began to live in a new way, because only then did the nature of their human cognitive and cultural faculties make it possible. We can explore the conceptual complexities of the formation and maintenance of these new communities and the intense and extensive networks in which they engaged; and we can set these innovations at a critical point in human cognitive and cultural evolution. The unique skill evolved by our species, Homo sapiens, lies in the use of fully symbolic culture, whether as modern language, or in art, or architecture, or science. What we see in this remarkable process is the emergence from deep prehistory of communities of people who were essentially modern and like ourselves.