Life between houses: A multiscalar interdisciplinary investigation into the creation and use of settlement open spaces by the first sedentary communities

The emergence of sedentary life ca. 13,000-years ago marked the development of mudbrick architecture and the transition to new forms of human ecology based on plant and animal domestication.

In this context, settlement open areas played a vital socio-economic role as the loci of discard practices, outdoor activities, and human-animal-environment interactions. However, while built environments are a recurrent research theme for this period, open spaces remain less studied.

This oversight is partly due to the methodological and interpretative problems posed by open areas, often displaying complex stratigraphies consisting of superimposed microlayers and excavated in arbitrary units that do not represent units of deposition.

The aim of PATIOS is to explore the constitution of open spaces to investigate how the earliest sedentarising and sustained sedentary communities operated at supra-household levels.

The specific project goals are: 1) to develop a new multiscalar and interdisciplinary methodology for an improved identification of microscopic and molecular residues of organic nature in open sequences; 2) to characterise the variety of formation and taphonomic processes affecting open areas; and 3) to provide a wide diachronic and geographical understanding of the concepts and transformations of open spaces and the socio-cultural aspects related to their use.

PATIOS will focus on early Holocene semi-mobile and sedentary communities in the Near East, one of the core areas of the Neolithic Transition.

Through a multi-proxy methodological approach that combines spatial analyses, geoarchaeology, plant science, biochemistry and ethnoarchaeology, this project will explore the heterogeneity of the earliest settlement open areas, opening up a much-needed comparative path for the examination of local trajectories in their creation, transformation and use.

Thus, PATIOS will contribute new insights into the rise and evolution of anthropogenic landscapes and ecologies.