%0 Journal Article
%T Becoming Neolithic in words, thoughts and deeds
%A Steven Mithen
%J Journal of Social Archaeology
%@ 1741-2951
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1469605318793958
%X How did people come to ¡®think Neolithic¡¯? While there has been considerable progress in reconstructing the environmental, economic, technological and social changes associated with the transition from mobile hunter-gathering to sedentary farming and herding communities, we remain limited in our understanding of how Neolithic culture in its most profound sense arose. I suggest that the formation of new words required for that new lifestyle was as much a driver as a consequence of the Neolithic transition, illustrating this with a sample of Neolithic innovations from the southern Levant that appears likely to have required new words. Such words, I argue, helped to establish new concepts in the mind, shaped thought, influenced perception and ultimately the human deeds in the world that left an archaeological trace
%K Neolithic
%K words
%K thoughts
%K culture
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1469605318793958