Contemporary and future trends
Despite over one hundred years of investigation, there are still many things not known about the Neolithic, although these are constantly being refined to ever more precise problems.
For example, pinpointing geographic origins of specific domesticates, understanding how they came to form Neolithic ‘packages', and tracing their diffusion to other areas are topics of current investigation. Much recent research has also addressed the complex issue of social structure and organization, but gaps remain. In particular, there is a lack of understanding of hierarchy, leadership roles, and, especially, ‘invisible' personalities, particularly with regard to gender and childhood. Neolithic ideology and ritual have been at the forefront of much recent research, but interpreting these in a realistic fashion remains a challenge. More precision is required in establishing criteria for fully evaluating degrees of sedentism. Despite enormous leaps in dating methods, there are still pressing issues relating to the Neolithic. One is simply in arriving at a consistent use of either calibrated or radiocarbon years. This is complicated by the fact that portions of the Neolithic fall within the calibration ‘wiggles' and ‘flat spots' that make interpretation particularly difficult. Recent research has also helped redefine the ever-expanding Neolithic world. It is now clear that there were multiple Neolithic ‘cores' throughout the Near East, and future research must focus on placing new discoveries into a broader pan-Near Eastern framework. Furthermore, data from Cyprus indicate a considerable expansion of Neolithic communication and seafaring skills. Continued investigations there will clarify early colonization strategies, and stimulate the search for similar developments on other islands.[464]Other refinements will be directed at better definition of the nature of Neolithic interactions.
This will involve the difficult issue of assessing core/ periphery relationships and specific tribal or even ‘ethnic' entities and their spread. In this context, detailed analyses of burial data and attempts to conduct DNA studies will be of immense importance. Thus, there remain many tasks at hand. These include broad-scale synthetic regional analyses, as well as more mundane tasks of establishing further ‘base-line' data to characterize individual sites and artefact assemblages in both well-documented areas and less-documented regions of the Near East. Additionally, future trends need to focus on shedding ‘new light' on the big-picture perspective,82 and to include the types of research envisioned by Asouti and Fuller,83 using multiple lines of evidence to investigate all aspects of the Neolithic. This will include incorporation of contextual data on numerous elements and a realization that the Neolithic is more than an economic transition. Rather, food production and consumption was an integral component of community interaction and ritual ‘performance'.Finally, there is an important issue not yet addressed: protecting the fragile heritage that Neolithic peoples left to the modern world. The antiquities services of most Near Eastern countries have limited budgets, and preservation funds tend to be devoted to large, impressive sites belonging to periods later than the Neolithic. At the time many sites were excavated, preservation and conservation were not major issues. Even today, with limited research funds, these issues tend to be short-changed, and funding for preservation was always limited. There is no ready answer to this dilemma. Certainly one obvious solution is simply not to excavate any more until sufficient funding for preservation can be obtained. While not conducting any new excavations and instead focusing on previously excavated materials is an attractive option, there is much to be learned from new excavations. Certainly this is a major challenge for future research.