Jason Walton

Email: jason.walton@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Thesis Title

The Exploitation of Resources and their Link to the Mundane and Ritual – A Study of the Anthracological, Floral and Faunal Remains from the Late Neolithic Site of Domuztepe, SE Turkey.

Institution

University of Manchester

Supervisors

Professor Stuart Campbell
Doctor William Fletcher

Research Summary

Human responses to environmental change are inextricably linked to the shifts observed in value systems and forms of socio-political, economic, symbolic organisation. During prehistoric times, resource fluctuations typically associated with climatic events often exerted a strong influence on societal structures and acted as catalysts for social transformation. The key aim of my project is to explore if a dichotomy between the mundane and ritualistic existed throughout the Late Neolithic in northern Mesopotamia and how, if at all, changes in the local and supra-local environmental affected the use of resources in both mundane and ritualistic contexts.

Research Interests

Ritual,
anthracology,
neolithic,
prehistoric landscapes
and human-aboreal relations.

Publications

Memory and Permanence: An Insight into Anthro-Arboreal relations during the Late Neolithic of Northern Mesopotamia (Presented at the 68th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, University of Leiden).