Crop Domestication and Gender

“Crop Domestication and Gender” traces the rise of permanent settlements and incipient agriculture from the Pre-pottery Neolithic to the Pottery Neolithic in the Levant, together with the iconographic changes that show a shift from the predominance of zoomorphic forms to female forms concurrent with the increasing importance of agriculture. It discusses relevant geographic features, climactic periods and changes in temperature, rainfall and glaciation while exploring the important transitional cultures and the artifacts that reveal the progress of agricultural development and plant domestication. Domestication of the founder crops of the Fertile Crescent are described, together with markers in the archaeological record that distinguish wild plants from domesticated plants. The abundance of female figurines at the Neolithic village of Sha’ar Hagolan and the presence of cryptic agricultural symbols at Hacilar and Çatalhüyük, support a close association of women, cats, and agriculture, most famously exemplified by the so-called “grain bin goddess“ of Çatalhüyük.