The second half of the seventh millennium BC brings about the demise of the previously affluent and dynamic Neolithic way of life. The period marks significant social and economic transformations of local communities, as manifested in a new spatial organization, patterns of architecture, burial practices as well as in chipped stone and pottery manufacture. This volume has three foci. The first concerns the character of these changes in different parts of the Near East in order to put up the developments in major areas of the Neolithic occupation in a broader comparative perspective. While...