Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jasrep Investigating Pottery Neolithic socio-economic “regression” in the Southern Levant: Characterising obsidian consumption at Sha'ar Hagolan (N. Israel) Tristan Carter a,⁎ , Zachary Batist b , Kathryn Campeau a,c , Yosef Garfinkel d , Katharina Streit e a McMaster Archaeological XRF Lab, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Chester New Hall, 524, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada b Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, 140 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3G6, Canada c Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Terrence Donnelly Health Sciences Complex, HSC300, 3359 Mississauga Road, ON L5L 1C6, Canada d Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91904, Israel e Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91904, Israel ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Obsidian Pottery Neolithic Southern Levant Yarmukian Socio-economic regression Social network analyses Göllü Dağ Nenezi Dağ Nemrut Dağ ABSTRACT This paper details the characterisation of 34 obsidian artefacts from Sha'ar Hagolan in the Jordan Valley, a major Pottery Neolithic Site of the southern Levantine Yarmukian culture (6400–6000 cal BCE). Employing an in- tegrated approach that melds sourcing data from EDXRF spectroscopy with the artefacts’ techno-typological characteristics, we contrast Sha'ar Hagolan's lithic traditions with those of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic southern Levantine sites in the context of alleged socio-economic disruptions in the Pottery Neolithic. The results indicate that community's obsidian consumption habits largely followed deep-time regional traditions (with only the slightest decrease in relative quantities), i.e. the use of Cappadocian raw materials (Göllü Dağ and Nenezi Dağ) to make pressure blades, and occasional projectiles, with only a small proportion of eastern Anatolian products (Nemrut Dağ). While the Sha'ar Hagolan material seems to embody continuity of southern Levantine cultural tradition, other broadly contemporary assemblages attest to the initiation of new procurement networks, and novel modes of consumption that reflect the increasing degree of cultural heterogeneity of the period. Finally, the distribution of obsidian across the site does not support the idea that social distinction at Sha'ar Hagolan was part-based on the preferential access to these exotic resources. 1. Introduction This paper details the elemental characterisation and sourcing of the obsidian used to make 34 obsidian artefacts from the 8th–6th millen- nium cal BC Neolithic site of Sha'ar Hagolan in the southern Levant (Fig. 1). Obsidian was an exceedingly rare resource for this community, comprising a mere 0.01% of its chipped stone assemblage. Given that a mere 38 obsidian artefacts were generated from the excavation of a site that housed several thousand inhabitants over a period of ~ 400 years, most people at Sha'ar Hagolan would never have handled this material (the original publication details 39 pieces but one was shown to be made of flint [see below]). Entire generations may have passed during which no new obsidian tools were imported, or made at the site. Ob- sidian's rarity at Sha'ar Hagolan can be part-explained by the fact that it was an exotic resource, the nearest sources located some 630 km linear distance to the north in central Anatolia (Fig. 1), its procurement almost certainly involving intermediary exchange rather than expeditions to the quarries. As such, the ownership, transformation and use of such media may have related more to issues of social capital, than utilitarian concerns (cf. Helms, 1988, 1993). Undertaking this sourcing project, four primary research aims were in mind. Firstly, we were interested in situating our analyses in a long- term view of obsidian consumption in the region as a means of enga- ging with prior claims that the Pottery Neolithic [PN] was a period of socio-economic disruption and “retrogression” (Kenyon, 1960: 67–78). In short, does the Sha'ar Hagolan data support the idea of a significant diminishment and/or reconfiguration of obsidian use by southern Le- vantine populations? By extent, we would be redressing a major re- search bias, where obsidian sourcing studies have tended to focus on Epi-Palaeolithic (hunter-gatherer) and earliest Neolithic (farming) as- semblages as a means of contributing to debates surrounding ‘neo- lithisation’ (e.g. Carter et al., 2013; Delerue, 2007, inter alia). Secondly, we wished to consider the claim that social distinction at Sha'ar Ha- golan was partly constituted through preferential access to non-local goods (Garfinkel et al., 2012: 119); i.e. did the obsidian come from the larger and more complex buildings in association with other exotica? http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.08.016 Received 13 May 2017; Received in revised form 20 August 2017; Accepted 22 August 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Chester New Hall, 524, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada. E-mail addresses: stringy@mcmaster.ca (T. Carter), batistz@mcmaster.ca (Z. Batist), campekm@mcmaster.ca (K. Campeau), garfinkel@mail.huji.ac.il (Y. Garfinkel), katharin.streit@mail.huji.ac.il (K. Streit). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 15 (2017) 305–317 2352-409X/ © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. MARK