The future Neolithic in the Aegean

Abstract

Scholars working in the Aegean are used to associating the term Neolithic always with plant cultivation and domesticated animals. On the other hand, the recent trends in redefining the Neolithic reveal that the Neolithic is marked not only by the onset of farming and animal husbandry, but also by sedentism, structural transformation, symbolic behavior and sensory perception of landscape etc. This essay reveals that the Aegean 9^th millennium BC communities show the same general trends as the Cypriot and Anatolian Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and it is necessary to consider a Neolithic period without pottery in the Aegean.