The Agricultural Revolution - including the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East - that occurred 10,500 years ago ended millions of years of human existence in small, mobile, egalitarian communities of hunters-gatherers. This Neolithic transformation led to the formation of sedentary communities that produced crops such as wheat, barley, peas, lentils, chickpeas and flax and domesticated range of livestock, including goats, sheep, cattle and pigs. All of these plants and animals still play a major role in the contemporary global economy and nutrition. This agricultural revolution also stimulated the later development of the first urban centres. This volume examines the origins and development of plant domestication in the Ancient Near East, along with various aspects of the new Man-Nature relationship that characterizes food-producing societies. It demonstrates how the rapid, geographically localized, knowledge-based domestication of plants was a human initiative that eventually gave rise to Western civilizations and the modern human condition.

Plant and animal domestication was important in revolutionising the Greater Mesopotamian region. Archaeological evidence has been used to assess and trace the transformation from mobile foragers to the emergence of urban centres. However, the significance of changing stone tool technologies has received little attention in this regard. Koslowski uses lithic evidence to identify and describe various cultures within this region and to trace their development. He studies the raw materials, methods of knapping, types of blanks, retouched pieces and the function of various artefacts. 'His pioneering volume will be appreciated by many who devot their research to achieving a better understanding of the evolutionary threshold that inevitably heralded the emergence of urban civilizations'.

The "Neolithic Revolution" in Southwestern Asia involved major transformations of economy and society that began during the Natufian period in the southern Levant and continued through Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and into Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). The authors describe that process at Netiv Hagdud, with additional material from the Natufian site of Salibiya IX. Includes reports on the archaeology, lithics, bone tools, lithic use-wear, marine shells, burials, and plant remains.

Jacob Kaplan was a dynamic field archaeologist and an original researcher of the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in the Levant. This volume contains a selection of Kaplan's unpublished fieldwork as well as a broad survey of the thoughts, theories, and considerations that have placed his work at the forefront of Israeli archaeology. Kaplan played an important role in shaping the archaeological sequence of the late prehistory of Israel, especially due to his discovery and description in the early 1950s of the Wadi Rabah culture—a major entity in the late Pottery Neolithic period. On a broader scale, Kaplan incorporated the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Israel into the sequences of the late prehistory of the Levant and touched on the question of the end of the Neolithic period—one of the most intensive, creative, and transformative eras in human history. His views on some of the basic chronological and cultural issues of these periods endure to this very day. This two-volume collection accords Kaplan the full recognition he deserves as an original, leading investigator of the late prehistory of Israel.

Israel's current policy-making capacity is not sufficient to meet the challenges the country faces. This volume presents a framework for understanding the fractured decision-making process in a politically divided Israel. In a nation that lacks consensus on the very nature of the state, and where policy making is heavily controlled by partisan politics, policy implementation capabilities are crucial for the very survival of Israeli society. Contributors discuss the role of public policy making on Israel's large public sector, electoral reform, the question of immigration absorption, and wartime planning, and they consider the extent to which the Israeli Supreme Court has become involved in the policy-making process in the wake of the collapse of political mechanisms for conflict regulation. This book provides essential information for students of political science and public policy seeking a clearer understanding of the political challenges facing the twenty-first century Israeli state and a blueprint for the radical reform of Israel's policy-making system.