Notre Dame study describes evidence of world’s oldest known granaries | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Notre Dame study describes evidence of world’s oldest known granaries Notre Dame study describes evidence of world’s oldest known granaries Published: June 23, 2009 Author: William G. Gilroy A new study coauthored by Ian Kuijt, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, describes recent excavations in Jordan that reveal evidence of the world’s oldest known granaries. The appearance of the granaries represents a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods. Anthropologists consider food storage to be a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic period, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles and new social organizations. It has traditionally been assumed that people only started to store significant amounts of food when plants were domesticated. However, in a paper appearing in the June 23 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Kuijt and Bill Finlayson, director, Council for British Research in the Levant, describe recent excavations at Dhra’ near the Dead Sea in Jordan that provide evidence of granaries that precede the emergence of fully domesticated plants and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years. “These granaries reflect new forms of risk reduction, intensification and low-level food production,” Kuijt said. “People in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Age (11,500 to 10,550 B.C.) were not using new food sources, but rather, by developing new storage methods, they altered their relationship with traditionally utilized food resources and created the technological context for later development of domesticated plants and an agro-pastoralist economy. “Building granaries may, at the same time, have been the single most important feature in increasingly sedentism that required active community participation in new life-ways.” Designed with suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents, the granaries are located between residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. The new studies are a continuation of earlier research by Kuijt. As a graduate student from 1987-1995, he worked on and directed several field projects in Jordan that focused on the world’s first villages during the Neolithic Period. As part of this research, he did several days of excavation at Dhra’ with a Jordanian researcher. This was followed by several other field projects and by research from 2000 to 2005 with Finlayson. “These granaries are a critical fist step, if not the very evolutionary and technological foundation, for the development of large agricultural villages that appear by 9,500 to 9,000 years ago across the Near East,” Kuijt said. “In many ways food storage is the missing link that helps us understand how so many people were able to live together. And much to our surprise, it appears that they developed this technology at least a thousand years before anyone thought they did.” The Dhra’ research was funded by grants from Notre Dame, the National Science Foundation and the British Academy. Kuijt, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2001, has worked extensively on Old and New World research projects. His research interests include the emergence of social inequality, prehistoric mortuary practices, the origins of agriculture, paleoenvironmental change and human adaptations, and lithic technology. He is the co-editor of “Complex Hunter Gathers: Evolution and Organization of Prehistoric Communities on the Plateau of Northwestern North America” and “Life in Neolithic Farming Communities: Social Organization, Identity, and Differentiation.” Contact: Ian Kuijt, associate professor of anthropology, 011-353-87-2406334, kuijt.1@nd.edu. Posted In: Research Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 05, 2022 Astrophysicists find evidence for the presence of the first stars October 04, 2022 NIH awards $4 million grant to psychologists researching suicide prevention September 29, 2022 Notre Dame, Ukrainian Catholic University launch three new research grants September 27, 2022 Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin engineers join to advance novel treatment for cystic fibrosis September 22, 2022 Climate-prepared countries are losing ground, latest ND-GAIN index shows For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn