Journal Articles by Matthew V Kroot
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2025
The shift from foraging to farming economies was deeply intertwined with increasing sedentism and... more The shift from foraging to farming economies was deeply intertwined with increasing sedentism and the emergence of house-based corporate units in southwestern Asia, with a number of researchers arguing that in the early Neolithic, households become primary economic units within communities for the first time. In order to understand how this role for households articulated with new subsistence systems, this paper analyzes the knapped stone assemblage from the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B agricultural field house of al-Khayran in the west-central Jordanian Highlands. Results demonstrate that al-Khayran’s residential unit enacted household maintenance activities, intensive cereal production, bidirectional blade reduction, and caching of stone tools in anticipation of repeated temporary occupations at the site. These findings show that the corporate household which occupied al-Khayran enacted novel mobility practices in order to accommodate emergent risks in agricultural economies.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2024
Early agricultural practices are often viewed as such a radical transformation that they not only... more Early agricultural practices are often viewed as such a radical transformation that they not only structured and drove the long-term development of subsistence economies, but also required a dramatic reorganization of how community-wide economic relations were reckoned and enacted. This article examines how data derived from loci of economic production can inform us about the structure of economic relations in early agricultural communities, so as to better test such claims of political-economic disruption against the archaeological record. It does so by analyzing the site of al-Khayran in the west-central Jordan. Al-Khayran dates to the southern Levantine Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the time period when predominantly agricultural economies first emerge in the region. Results show that a typical village-based residential group temporarily and repeatedly inhabited a substantially-built in-field structure while practicing intensive agricultural production. These results indicate that the site's inhabitants carried out a form of dual residence mobility with heavy investment on-site in perimetrics via landesque capital. Such behavior suggests that at least some residential groups in this time period were indeed corporate groups that agentively intervened in economic systems to actively assert and enact the private holding of the means of production during the emergence of agricultural economies.
Neo-Lithics. The Newsletter of Southwest Asian Neolithic Research, 2023
Reconstructions of the emergence of primarily agricultural economies in Southwest Asia have large... more Reconstructions of the emergence of primarily agricultural economies in Southwest Asia have largely focused on data derived from village sites containing multiple households. This article presents the results of excavations at Pre-Pottery Neolithic B al-Khayran in the west-central Transjordanian Highlands. The site consists of a single substantially built square habitation structure, as well as associated refuse deposits. Results demonstrate that the site was occupied by a residential unit enacting a typical suit of household activities, including cereal production. This shows that there was greater variability in the occupational behaviors of agricultural producers during this time period than has previously been reported. Additionally, results from al-Khayran allow us to specify subsistence production behaviors that are not visible at village sites. The potential logistical and socio-cultural dynamics that drove the economic and residential practices of al-Khayran's inhabitants are discussed.
Community Literacy Journal, 2021
Colleges and universities across the United States are recognizing the public memory function of ... more Colleges and universities across the United States are recognizing the public memory function of their campus spaces and facing difficult decisions about how to represent the ugly sides of their histories within their landscapes of remembrance. Official administrative responses to demands for greater inclusiveness are often slow and conservative in nature. Using our own institution and our work with local Indigenous community members as a case study, we argue that students and faculty can employ community-engaged, public-facing, digital composing projects to effectively challenge entrenched institutional interests that may elide or even misrepresent difficult histories in public memory works. Such projects are a nimble and accessible means of creating counter-narratives to intervene in public memory discourses. Additionally, by engaging in public discourses, such work helps promote meaningful student rhetorical learning in courses across disciplines.
Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2020
A consistent challenge in community and collaborative archaeologies has been the appropriate iden... more A consistent challenge in community and collaborative archaeologies has been the appropriate identification and understanding of project constituencies. A key step in stakeholder analysis is understanding and harmonizing the goals of archaeological work to the social role of the institutions for which we work. To illustrate the value of such a stance, we examine on-campus archaeology programs at colleges and universities, arguing that treating students as vital stakeholders is an important ethical obligation for both researchers and administrators. Including students as stakeholders in campus archaeology provides pedagogical benefits and a meaningful way to instill an appreciation of archaeology in an important constituency of potential voters and future decision-makers. We present a case study from Santa Clara University (SCU), reporting results of an online survey of undergraduates that was intended to gauge community interests in campus archaeology and heritage. We also detail activities undertaken by SCU's Community Heritage Lab in response to survey findings in order to raise the profile of the archaeological and other heritage resources on our campus.
Un reto constante con los estudios arqueológicos colaborativos y comunitarios ha sido la identificación y la comprensión apropiadas de las comunidades constitutivas del proyecto. La teoría de las partes interesadas ("stakeholders") ofrece una forma de especificar quién afecta y se ve afectado por el trabajo arqueológico. Para ilustrar el valor de aplicar la teoría de las partes interesadas, examinamos los programas de arqueología en los campus de colegios y universidades, argumentando que tratar a los estudiantes como partes interesadas vitales es una obligación ética importante tanto para los investigadores como para los administradores. La inclusión de los estudiantes como partes interesados en la arqueología del campus proporciona beneficios pedagógicos y una forma significativa de inculcar una apreciación de la arqueología en un grupo importante de votantes potenciales y futuros tomadores de decisiones. Presentamos un estudio de caso de la Universidad de Santa Clara (SCU), que informa los resultados de una encuesta en línea de estudiantes universitarios con la intención de evaluar los intereses de la comunidad en la arqueología y el patrimonio del campus. También detallamos las actividades realizadas por el Community Heritage Lab de SCU en respuesta a los resultados de la encuesta, con el fin de elevar el perfil de los recursos arqueológicos y otros recursos patrimoniales en nuestro campus. Palabras clave: arqueología del campus, arqueología comunitaria, arqueología pública, partes interesadas, estudiantes, administración.
African Archaeological Review, 2019
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 2018
The Bandafassi Regional Archaeological Project (BRAP) explores a multiethnic landscape in the upp... more The Bandafassi Regional Archaeological Project (BRAP) explores a multiethnic landscape in the upper Gambia River region heavily impacted by slavery. The project assesses discourses of different stakeholders to see what is silenced, acknowledged, centered, and decentered in historical narratives. This article compares if and how slavery is invoked by narrators discussing the Atlantic era history of our study area, a region that today includes the UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape of Bassari Country. Narratives presented by local guides specializing in tours of specific, ethnic communities emphasize intercommunity or interethnic politics and militarism. Narratives used in applications for and recognition of World Heritage status focused on interethnic ecological complementarities. Archaeological evidence for changes in settlement patterns and defensive architecture highlight the local effects of Atlantic entanglements and slaving on the landscape. BRAP’s work complements other regional narratives by analyzing the politics of the historiography of Atlantic era West Africa.
Nyame Akuma, 2015
Histoire culturelle de la Haute-Gambie Selon les récits historiques, le paysage actuel HAUTE-GA... more Histoire culturelle de la Haute-Gambie Selon les récits historiques, le paysage actuel HAUTE-GAMBIE
New excavations at the site of el-Hemmeh (Hemmeh) in the Wadi el-Hasa, Jordan have revealed a sub... more New excavations at the site of el-Hemmeh (Hemmeh) in the Wadi el-Hasa, Jordan have revealed a substantial Pre-Pottery Neolithic occupation containing architecture and cultural material from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), and Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (PPNC). The presence of multiple Pre-Pottery Neolithic periods at one site is rare in southern Jordan. Significantly, the recovery of Late PPNB and PPNC deposits at Hemmeh have provided a unique opportunity to investigate the role of anthropogenic landscape disturbance and/or large-scale climate change in the cultural shift between the Late PPNB and the PPNC. Although human degradation of the landscape is often proffered as the primary driving force responsible for the collapse of the PPNB phenomenon, work at el-Hemmeh aims to test this model through the collection and analysis of several different kinds of paleoenvironmental data.
Community Literacy Journal, 2021
Colleges and universities across the United States are recognizing the public memory function of ... more Colleges and universities across the United States are recognizing the public memory function of their campus spaces and facing difficult decisions about how to represent the ugly sides of their histories within their landscapes of remembrance. Official administrative responses to demands for greater inclusiveness are often slow and conservative in nature. Using our own institution and our work with local Indigenous community members as a case study, we argue that students and faculty can employ community-engaged, public-facing, digital composing projects to effectively challenge entrenched institutional interests that may elide or even misrepresent difficult histories in public memory works. Such projects are a nimble and accessible means of creating counter-narratives to intervene in public memory discourses. Additionally, by engaging in public discourses, such work helps promote meaningful student rhetorical learning in courses across disciplines.
Talks by Matthew V Kroot
Understanding Temporal Patterns of Occupation at Small Sites: The case of early Neolithic al-Khayran, west-central Jordan
Changing Economic Relations and Subsistence Systems in Neolithic Jordan: Excavations at al-Khayran
In this talk, I will introduce the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB: c. 8,400-7,570 cal. BCE... more In this talk, I will introduce the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB: c. 8,400-7,570 cal. BCE) site of al-Khayran and discuss its role within Neolithic subsistence systems of west-central Jordan. I will explore the implications of the site for understanding changes in property rights, land tenure, and economic relations in this time period. Al-Khayran is the first field house excavated from the early Neolithic of southwest Asia. The MPPNB is the period when fully developed farming and herding of domesticates first emerged anywhere in the world. While the site has important implications for understanding production systems during this major transition in subsistence strategies, it also is highly relevant to understanding shifting economic relations within the large-scale village-based communities which developed during the MPPNB. The social consequences of these transformations were perhaps as significant to Neolithic villagers as shifting food-production strategies. Evidence from this original research suggests that changing subsistence practices and economic relations were deeply intertwined. It also shows that alterations in the relations of production, which led to significant and systematically reproduced material and socio-political inequalities in later time periods, had their roots in changing subsistence organization during the MPPNB.
“The Fruits of the Earth Belong Equally to Us All”? Crossing from communal to household land tenure in the Neolithic of Jordan
In a classic article, Flannery (1972) argued that a shift in settlement form during the Neolithic... more In a classic article, Flannery (1972) argued that a shift in settlement form during the Neolithic of Southwest Asia from the circular hut compound to the square house village was a material manifestation of the change from communal economic relations to atomistic household-based economic relations. He identified the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB) site of Beidha in Jordan as one of the earliest settlements where this transition could be observed. Since this publication, several researchers have revisited this argument, largely supporting Flannery’s conclusions about MPPNB economic relations through analyses of village settlements and mortuary data. Using data derived from my recent excavations at the MPPNB field house of al-Khayran in west-central Jordan, the earliest structure of this type yet identified in the region, this paper will further develop our understandings of the economic transitions experienced by these Neolithic communities. New perspectives on the organization of production and consumption within household economic units and their relationships to emerging forms of land tenure are accessible through the analysis of excavated materials from the site. I will argue that al-Khayran was utilized by members of an individual household, in order to both increase subsistence production and claim ownership of high-value natural resources. As such, this site allows us to observe the beginnings of a major transition in human social organization where differential control over basic resources enters into intra-community economic relations for the first time. It also highlights an important new way of conceptualizing property rights to include first-occupancy justifications.
Al-Khayran and Pre-Pottery Neolithic Subsistence Systems In West-Central Jordan
This paper reconstructs the subsistence systems in which the inhabitants of the Early Neolithic s... more This paper reconstructs the subsistence systems in which the inhabitants of the Early Neolithic site of al-Khayran participated. The site, located in west-central Jordan, dates to the early portion of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B; the period in which agricultural villages and the mixed agricultural economy of the “Neolithic Package” emerged. Because the Neolithic of Southwest Asia is known as the time and place when agricultural economies first developed, this period has received extensive study within anthropology, largely focused on the development of domestic subsistence resources. However, field studies of early farming and herding systems beyond the spatial bounds of cores residential settlements have been rare, as the opportunities for such studies are limited by a lack of material remains. This has led to a situation where models of the subsistence systems practices by Neolithic communities, despite their central importance to much of the research on this time period, are highly idealized, being based largely on the known material constraints which subsistence products found in residential settlements and the landscapes surrounding Early Neolithic sites place on agricultural practices. Excavations at the field-house site of al-Khayran provide the first evidence of in-field agricultural practices in the Early Neolithic. An intensive study of the on-site architecture, artifacts, fauna, and macro-botanical, phytolith, and spherulite remains, as well as pollen remains indicative of the surrounding early Holocene paleo-environment, is shedding new light on the subsistence choices that Early Neolithic communities in the Southern Levant and their agents made and the farming systems these practices produced.
Early Village Life Along the Dead Sea: Structures and processes of neolithisation
This paper examines the phenomenon of neolithisation in the southern Levant (the transition from ... more This paper examines the phenomenon of neolithisation in the southern Levant (the transition from foraging to farming economies). Using the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA: 10,000/9,700 cal BCE) of west-central Jordan as a case study, we employ spatial analysis on multiple scales to build models for the socio-cultural structures and processes involved in the development of Neolithic communities through time. Data from archaeological excavations and surveys, as well as geological, paleo-ecological, and paleo-climatological research are utilized to understand (1) how site-specific socio-cultural practices were structured and (2) how these practices, in turn, produced and reproduced through time the large-scale socio-cultural phenomenon of village-based agricultural communities. We discuss evidence for the production, reproduction, and modification of PPNA communities; focusing on the relationship between intra-site subsistence strategies, settlement location, and landscape use, as well as inter-community relations and the ways they are mediated by the regional socio-cultural, geological, and ecological landscapes.
Uploads
Journal Articles by Matthew V Kroot
Un reto constante con los estudios arqueológicos colaborativos y comunitarios ha sido la identificación y la comprensión apropiadas de las comunidades constitutivas del proyecto. La teoría de las partes interesadas ("stakeholders") ofrece una forma de especificar quién afecta y se ve afectado por el trabajo arqueológico. Para ilustrar el valor de aplicar la teoría de las partes interesadas, examinamos los programas de arqueología en los campus de colegios y universidades, argumentando que tratar a los estudiantes como partes interesadas vitales es una obligación ética importante tanto para los investigadores como para los administradores. La inclusión de los estudiantes como partes interesados en la arqueología del campus proporciona beneficios pedagógicos y una forma significativa de inculcar una apreciación de la arqueología en un grupo importante de votantes potenciales y futuros tomadores de decisiones. Presentamos un estudio de caso de la Universidad de Santa Clara (SCU), que informa los resultados de una encuesta en línea de estudiantes universitarios con la intención de evaluar los intereses de la comunidad en la arqueología y el patrimonio del campus. También detallamos las actividades realizadas por el Community Heritage Lab de SCU en respuesta a los resultados de la encuesta, con el fin de elevar el perfil de los recursos arqueológicos y otros recursos patrimoniales en nuestro campus. Palabras clave: arqueología del campus, arqueología comunitaria, arqueología pública, partes interesadas, estudiantes, administración.
Talks by Matthew V Kroot
Un reto constante con los estudios arqueológicos colaborativos y comunitarios ha sido la identificación y la comprensión apropiadas de las comunidades constitutivas del proyecto. La teoría de las partes interesadas ("stakeholders") ofrece una forma de especificar quién afecta y se ve afectado por el trabajo arqueológico. Para ilustrar el valor de aplicar la teoría de las partes interesadas, examinamos los programas de arqueología en los campus de colegios y universidades, argumentando que tratar a los estudiantes como partes interesadas vitales es una obligación ética importante tanto para los investigadores como para los administradores. La inclusión de los estudiantes como partes interesados en la arqueología del campus proporciona beneficios pedagógicos y una forma significativa de inculcar una apreciación de la arqueología en un grupo importante de votantes potenciales y futuros tomadores de decisiones. Presentamos un estudio de caso de la Universidad de Santa Clara (SCU), que informa los resultados de una encuesta en línea de estudiantes universitarios con la intención de evaluar los intereses de la comunidad en la arqueología y el patrimonio del campus. También detallamos las actividades realizadas por el Community Heritage Lab de SCU en respuesta a los resultados de la encuesta, con el fin de elevar el perfil de los recursos arqueológicos y otros recursos patrimoniales en nuestro campus. Palabras clave: arqueología del campus, arqueología comunitaria, arqueología pública, partes interesadas, estudiantes, administración.