Cover -- Editors' Preface -- List of Contributors -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 The development of pre-state communities in the ancient Near East -- PART 1: SOCIAL ORGANISATION AND COMPLEXITY IN PRE-STATE COMMUNITIES -- 2 Social complexity and archaeology: A contextual approach -- 3 Late Neolithic architectural renewal: The emergence of round houses in the northern Levant,c. 6500-6000 BC -- 4 Abandonment processes and closure ceremonies in prehistoric Cyprus: In search of ritual 29Demetra Papaconstantinou -- 5 A different Chalcolithic: A central Cypriot scene -- 6 Thoughts on the function of 'public buildings' in the Early Bronze Age southern Levant -- PART 2: EARLY URBAN COMMUNITIES AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE STATE -- 7 The Tell: Social archaeology and territorial space -- 8 Rethinking Kalopsidha: From specialisation to state marginalisation -- 9 From kin to class - and back again! Changing paradigms of the early polity -- 10 Different models of power structuring at the rise of hierarchical societies in the Near East:Primary economy versus luxury and defence management -- 11 States of hegemony: Early forms of political control in Syria during the 3rd millennium BC -- PART 3: TECHNOLOGY, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY -- 12 A household affair? Pottery production in the Burnt Village at Late Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad -- 13 Late Cypriot ceramic production: Heterarchy or hierarchy? -- 14 The domestication of stone: Early lime plaster technology in the Levant -- 15 Domestication of plants and animals, domestication of symbols? -- 16 Herds lost in time: Animal remains from the 1969-1970 excavation seasons at the Ceramic Neolithicsettlement of Philia-Drakos Site A, Cyprus -- PART 4: AGENCY, IDENTITY AND GENDER -- 17 Agency in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A -- 18 Understanding symbols: Putting meaning into the painted pottery of prehistoric northern Mesopotamia.

19 Gender and social complexity in prehistoric and protohistoric Cyprus -- 20 The painting process of White Painted and White Slip wares: Communities of practice -- 21 The ceramic industry of Deneia: Crafting community and place in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus -- PART 5: INSULARITY, ETHNICITY AND CULTURAL INTERACTION -- 22 Outside the corridor? The Neolithisation of Cyprus -- 23 Contextualising Neolithic Cyprus: Preliminary investigations into connections between Cyprusand the Near East in the later Neolithic -- 24 Was Çatalhöyük a centre? The implications of a late Aceramic Neolithic assemblage from the 207neighbourhood of Çatalhöyük -- 25 The birth of ethnicity in Iran: Mesopotamian-Elamite cross-cultural relations in late prehistory.