One can define the archaeological signature of a village as one left by multiple, clustered domestic structures of between approximately 80 and 1500 inhabitants. Larger settlements are more conveniently referred to as towns, smaller ones as hamlets. Early dispersed settlements would be difficult to distinguish from hamlets without very widespread excavation.
The end of the last glacial period saw the first agglutinated villages in the archaeological record in the Eastern Hemisphere. Farming villages emerged at Xinglongwa sites such as Jiahu in inland China, by 9000 years ago. These sites are characterized by having large domestic structures and ceramics. In the Middle East, Pre-Pottery inland Neolithic sites, such as Biedla in Jordan, were also occupied by 9000 BP. Jomon fishing ceramic-using villages in Japan date to 10 000BP.
In the Western Hemisphere, the Peruvian preceramic site of Paloma, Pertu, was a small settlement at 7800 BP, growing to a peak of several hundred before abandonment after 5000 BP, when monumental aceramic Late Preceramic sites began to be constructed to the north. Valdivian sites from Ecuador, such as
Real Alto, began to appear at about that time with pottery and a variety of cultigens. James Zeidler and Deborah Pearsall have shown that Valdivian peoples moved up the middle valleys from the earliest settlements in coastal Ecuador, suggesting initial and perhaps continuing association with fishing.
Andean villages today are derived from long established patterns. They are divided into at least two allyus, between or among which marriages are typically arranged, so villages tend toward endogamy. A single village may also exist in two physically different locations, often separated by altitude, so that resources from different ecological zones are available to a single group. Households vary in success with those having the richest nexus of kin from which reciprocal aid is available doing better than less successful neighbors. Today in the Andes, a complete nuclear family with reciprocal relations among kin and nonkin is vital to sustain life. Modern villages may have elaborate social interactions with other groups such as herders. Multiple ethnic groups may have settlements close to one another in the same valley.
Persistence of any village requires successful reproduction. Since half of the children born in preceramic times would die before the age of four years, and the last-born children would have to be cared for by someone other than the mother - whose life would usually end during her reproductive period - considerable community investment would have been necessary in child rearing. Unlike modern customs, preceramic village burial was often in or adjacent to domestic structures in early villages, presumably by family. Thus, early villages, before monumental architecture, display the domestic architecture of families.
Conditions for Sedentism in Early Villages
Early Jomon fishermen lived year-round in their villages; shells show daily and seasonal growth increments. Early settled village life can appear variously with or without intensive cultivation of plants, domestication of animals, or the pottery needed to store and process produce. The preceramic Paloma fishing village was occupied throughout the year, at least in some years.
Environmental Factors of Early Sedentism
In the Early Holocene, improvements in food production would have been stimulated by increasing carbon dioxide from the carbon released by melting glaciers. The establishment of modern patterns of ocean currents sometime after 5000 BP produced stable beaches. Flood plains and hills above the beaches would also be fruitful for collecting and hunting, and for cultivation of plants. By 5000 BP, the long period of warm, humid environment, the Holocene
Global Climatic Optimum (GCO), was ending. The result was an increased unpredictability of a new cooler and dryer climate. People had to adjust no longer sustainable systems of subsistence to these more variable conditions. These cultural changes were important and can be compared with adjustments to later climatic shifts as discussed by DeMonocal. They may have led to the abandonment of fog oasis sites like Paloma for river valley settings. Villages arise from hamlets during the beginning of the GCO.
World History
