Abstract/Summary

Shells have been collected and used as body adornments by Homo sapiens for at least 140,000 years. Major increases in their use occurred during the Late Pleistocene and, with the gradual transition to the Neolithic, likely reflected new forms of social interaction associated with larger communities and less mobile lifestyles. We explore this development by considering the shell bead assemblage from WF16, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) site in southern Jordan. This assemblage is one of the largest known from the early Neolithic and can be divided between two PPNA phases. We identify a changing preference for shell types between these phases, one that parallels a change in the wider region which may be associated with evolving social networks during the early Neolithic.