A roof over one's head: Developments in near eastern residential architecture across the epipalaeolithic-neolithic transition

Field research throughout the Near East has provided a large corpus of architectural remains from the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. These differ dramatically from the architectural remains of preceding cultures and, rather than simply reflecting the growth of technological know-how, indicate profound changes in the more general needs of human groups. The advent of sedentism had major impacts concerning the internal and external mindsets of the communities involved. Moreover, examination of the archaeological record of the Levant reveals that sedentism had an immediate impact as evidenced by increased community sizes and social networks. Concomitantly it brought about more subtle, incremental changes that terminated in the 'Neolithic Revolution,' as reflected in the architecture of the PPNB koine. The latter can be considered as the sum of the transformation processes that occurred vis-à-vis the role of architecture in the various domains of the transforming communities - as dwelling and storage structures, public buildings for communal activities and ritual institutions, amongst others.