Introduction: adopting a sedentary lifeway

Description/Abstract

The adoption of sedentary lifeways is increasingly recognized as an independent development which has taken place in all regions and time periods across the globe. The papers in this volume argue that sedentism is not tied into a `Neolithic package' in which a set of elements such as pottery, agriculture, sedentism and social complexity emerge together, each facilitated by and necessary to the others. Instead, it is argued that sedentism must be investigated as a process in its own right. This paper reviews how far we have come in developing such a perspective. It examines how we identify sedentism in the archaeological record, and suggests sedentism can be usefully understood as a process in which adoption and abandonment are equal possibilities. Finally, it considers how our changing views of where and why sedentism was adopted are leading to new ways of thinking about processes of social change.