An array of Neolithic artifacts, including bracelets, axe heads, chisels, and polishing tools. Neolithic stone implements are by definition polished and except for specialty items not chipped.

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The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, νέος (nèos, "new") and λίθος (lithos, "stone"): or New Stone era, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 10,200 cal. BCE according to the ASPRO chronology in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world.^[1] It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic followed the terminal Holocene Epipaleolithic period, beginning with the rise of farming, which produced the "Neolithic Revolution", and ending when metal tools became widespread in the Copper Age (chalcolithic) or Bronze Age or developing directly into the Iron Age, depending on the geographical region. The Neolithic is a measured progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops and the use of domesticated animals.^[2]

New findings put the beginning of a culture tentatively called Neolithic back to around 10,700 to 9400 BC in Tell Qaramel in northern Syria, 25 km north of Aleppo.^[3] Until those findings are adopted within the archaeological community, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant (Jericho, modern-day West Bank) about 10200-8800 cal. BCE. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12000-10200 cal. BCE and the so called "proto-neolithic" is now included in the PPNA between 10200-8800 cal. BCE. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas are thought to have forced people to develop farming. By 10200-8800 cal. BCE, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep and goats. By about 6900-6400 cal. BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, and the use of pottery.^[4]

Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery, and, in Britain, it remains unclear to what extent plants were domesticated in the earliest Neolithic, or even whether permanently settled communities existed. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally-distinctive Neolithic cultures that arose completely independent of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies used pottery before developing agriculture.^[5][6][7]

Unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species (Homo sapiens sapiens) reached the Neolithic. Homo floresiensis may have survived right up to the very dawn of the Neolithic, about 12,200 years ago.

The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νεολιθικός, neolithikos, from νέος neos, "new" + λίθος lithos, "stone", literally meaning "New Stone Age." The term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.

Periods by pottery phase[link]

In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing by in the 10th millennium BC.^[1] Early development occurred in the Levant (e.g., Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by c. 8000 BC.

The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 5000–6000 BC, neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square meters and the collection of neolithic findings at the site consists of two phases.^[8]

Neolithic 1 – Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)[link]

Recent findings made by a Syrian-Polish joint excavation team run by Prof. R.F. Mazurowski, in Tell Qaramel, 25 km to the north of Aleppo put the beginning of the Neolithic 1 (PPNA) around 10,700 to 9400 BC or 10200-8800 cal. BCE according to the ASPRO chronology.^[3] Previous excavations at that site brought the discovery of four circular towers dating back to between the eleventh millennium and about 9,650 BC^{[citation needed]}. The dates of Tell Qaramel have been brought into question for appearing systematically old and for not correlating with the stratigraphic sequence.^[9]

Until the findings in Tell Qaramel are adopted within the archaeological community, sites in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine & Jbeil (Byblos), Lebanon) that go back to around 9500 to 9000 BC. are still considered the beginning of the Neolithic 1 (PPNA). The actual date is not established with certainty due to different results in carbon dating by scientists in the British Museum and Philadelphia laboratories^{[citation needed]}. The Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic have caused further problems with the timeline.

An early temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated to 10,000 BCE may be regarded as the beginning of the Neolithic 1. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. This temple site may be the oldest known man-made place of worship.^[10] At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres (100,000 m²), contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which may have supported roofs.

The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated (animal husbandry and selective breeding).

In the 21st century, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains.^[11]

Settlements became more permanent with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of mudbrick. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jericho). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. There are also some enclosures that suggest grain and meat storage.

Neolithic 2 – Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)[link]

The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8800 cal. BCE according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine).^[1] As with the PPNA dates there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. But this terminological structure is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. This era was before the Mesolithic era.

Settlements have rectangular mudbrick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse may have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.

Neolithic 3 – Pottery Neolithic (PN)[link]

The Neolithic 3 (PN) began around 6400 cal. BCE in the Fertile Crescent.^[1] By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the Halafian (Turkey, Syria, Northern Mesopotamia) and Ubaid (Southern Mesopotamia).

The Chalcolithic period began about 4500 BC, then the Bronze Age began about 3500 BC, replacing the Neolithic cultures.

Periods by region[link]

Fertile Crescent[link]

Around 10200 BC, the first fully developed Neolithic cultures belonging to the phase Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) appeared in the fertile crescent.^[1] Around 10,700 to 9400 BC, a settlement was established in Tell Qaramel, 25 kilometers north of Aleppo. The settlement included 2 temples dating back to 9650.^[3] Around 9000 BC during the PPNA, the world's first town, Jericho, appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone and marble wall and contained a population of 2000–3000 people and a massive stone tower.^[12] Around 6400 BC the Halaf culture appeared in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, and Northern Mesopotamia and subsisted on dryland agriculture.

In 1981 a team of researchers from the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche divided Near East neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics.^[13] In 2002 Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods. Natufian (1) between 12000 and 10200 cal. BCE, Khiamian (2) between 10200-8800 cal. BCE, PPNA: Sultanian (Jericho), Mureybetian, early PPNB (PPNB ancien) (3) between 8800-7600 cal. BCE, middle PPNB (PPNB moyen) 7600-6900 cal. BCE, late PPNB (PPNB récent) (4) between 7500 and 7000 BC and a PPNB (sometimes called PPNC) transitional stage (PPNB final) (5) where Halaf and dark faced burnished ware begin to emerge between 6900-6400 cal. BCE.^[14] They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BC at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Aswad.^[9]

Southern Mesopotamia[link]

Alluvial plains (Sumer/Elam). Little rainfall makes irrigation systems necessary. Ubaid culture from 6900 BC.

North Africa[link]

Algerian cave paintings depicting hunting scenes

Domestication of sheep and goats reached Egypt from the Near East possibly as early as 6000 BC^{[citation needed]}. Graeme Barker states "The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium bc in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants" and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange.^[15] Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Egypt was from the Middle East.^[16][17][18]

Europe[link]

Female figure from Tumba Madžari, Republic of Macedonia

Map showing distribution of some of the main culture complexes in Neolithic Europe, ca. 3500 BC

Skara Brae, Scotland. Evidence of home furnishings (shelves)

In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BC, attested by one of the earliest farming site of Europe, discovered in Vashtëmi, southeastern Albania and dating back to 6,500 BC.^[19][20] Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkans from 6000 BC.^[21] and in Central Europe by ca. 5500 BC. Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are included the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving Starčevo-Körös (Cris), Linearbandkeramik, and Vinča. Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs, though it is almost universally accepted amongst archeologists^[who?] that the Sumerian cuneiform script was the earliest true form of writing and the Vinča signs most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing.^{[citation needed]} The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija on the Mediterranean island of Gozo (in the Maltese archipelago) and of Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to c. 3600 BC. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, Paola, Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated c. 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and showing a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands.

South and East Asia[link]

The earliest Neolithic site in South Asia is Mehrgarh, dated to 7500 BC, in the Kachi plain of Baluchistan, Pakistan; the site has evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats).^[22]

In South India, the Neolithic began by 3000 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ashmounds since 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu.

In East Asia, the earliest sites include Pengtoushan culture around 7500 BC to 6100 BC, Peiligang culture around 7000 BC to 5000 BC.

The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains a living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of West Papua (Indonesian New Guinea). Polished stone adze and axes are used in the present day (As of 2008^[update] CE) in areas where the availability of metal implements is limited. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail.

America[link]

In Mesoamerica, a similar set of events (i.e., crop domestication and sedentary lifestyles) occurred by around 4500 BC, but possibly as early as 11,000–10,000 BC, although here the term Formative stage is used instead of mid-late Neolithic, the term Archaic Era for the Early Neolithic, and Paleo-Indian for the preceding period, though these cultures are usually not referred to as belonging to the Neolithic.^{[citation needed]}

Social organization[link]

Anthropomorphic Neolithic figurine

Anthropomorphic Female Neolithic ceramic figurine

During most of the Neolithic age, people lived in small tribes composed of multiple bands or lineages.^[23] There is little scientific evidence of developed social stratification in most Neolithic societies; social stratification is more associated with the later Bronze Age.^[24] Although some late Neolithic societies formed complex stratified chiefdoms similar to Polynesian societies such as the Ancient Hawaiians, most Neolithic societies were relatively simple and egalitarian.^[23] However, Neolithic societies were noticeably more hierarchical than the Paleolithic cultures that preceded them and hunter-gatherer cultures in general^[25][26] The domestication of animals (c. 8000 BC) resulted in a dramatic increase in social inequality. Possession of livestock allowed competition between households and resulted in inherited inequalities of wealth. Neolithic pastoralists who controlled large herds gradually acquired more livestock, and this made economic inequalities more pronounced.^[27] However, evidence of social inequality is still disputed, as settlements such as Catal Huyuk reveal a striking lack of difference in the size of homes and burial sites, suggesting a more egalitarian society with no evidence of the concept of capital, although some homes do appear slightly larger or more elaborately decorated than others.

Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life.^{[citation needed]} However, excavations in Central Europe have revealed that early Neolithic Linear Ceramic cultures ("Linearbandkeramik") were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 BC and 4600 BC. These structures (and their later counterparts such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds, and henge) required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organise and direct human labour — though non-hierarchical and voluntary work remain strong possibilities.

There is a large body of evidence for fortified settlements at Linearbandkeramik sites along the Rhine, as at least some villages were fortified for some time with a palisade and an outer ditch.^[28][29] Settlements with palisades and weapon-traumatized bones have been discovered, such as at Herxheim,^[30] which, whether the site of a massacre or of a martial ritual, demonstrates "...systematic violence between groups." and warfare was probably much more common during the Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period.^[26] This supplanted an earlier view of the Linear Pottery Culture as living a "peaceful, unfortified lifestyle."^[31]

Control of labour and inter-group conflict is characteristic of corporate-level or 'tribal' groups, headed by a charismatic individual; whether a 'big man' or a proto-chief, functioning as a lineage-group head. Whether a non-hierarchical system of organization existed is debatable and there is no evidence that explicitly suggests that Neolithic societies functioned under any dominating class or individual, as was the case in the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age.^[32] Theories to explain the apparent implied egalitarianism of Neolithic (and Paleolithic) societies have arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive communism.

Shelter[link]

Reconstruction of Neolithic house in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The shelter of the early people changed dramatically from the paleolithic to the neolithic era. In the paleolithic, people did not normally live in permanent constructions. In the neolithic, mud brick houses started appearing that were coated with plaster.^[33] The growth of agriculture made permanent houses possible. Doorways were made on the roof, with ladders positioned both on the inside and outside of the houses.^[33] The roof was supported by beams from the inside. The rough ground was covered by platforms, mats, and skins on which residents slept.^{[citation needed]}

Farming[link]

A Cucuteni-Trypillian culture deer antler plough

Food and cooking items retrieved at a European Neolithic site: millstones, charred bread, grains and small apples, a clay cooking pot, and containers made of antlers and wood

A significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle was to be brought about in areas where crop farming and cultivation were first developed: the previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transhumance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands. These developments are also believed to have greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more localized dwellings. This trend would continue into the Bronze Age, eventually giving rise to towns, and later cities and state whose larger populations could be sustained by the increased productivity from cultivated lands.

The profound differences in human interactions and subsistence methods associated with the onset of early agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called the Neolithic Revolution, a term coined in the 1920s by the Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe.

One potential benefit of the development and increasing sophistication of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crop yields, in other words, food supplies in excess of the immediate needs of the community. Surpluses could be stored for later use, or possibly traded for other necessities or luxuries. Agricultural life afforded securities that pastoral life could not, and sedentary farming populations grew faster than nomadic.

However, early farmers were also adversely affected in times of famine, such as may be caused by drought or pests. In instances where agriculture had become the predominant way of life, the sensitivity to these shortages could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to an extent that otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by prior hunter-gatherer communities.^[27] Nevertheless, agrarian communities generally proved successful, and their growth and the expansion of territory under cultivation continued.

Another significant change undergone by many of these newly-agrarian communities was one of diet. Pre-agrarian diets varied by region, season, available local plant and animal resources and degree of pastoralism and hunting. Post-agrarian diet was restricted to a limited package of successfully cultivated cereal grains, plants and to a variable extent domesticated animals and animal products. Supplementation of diet by hunting and gathering was to variable degrees precluded by the increase in population above the carrying capacity of the land and a high sedentary local population concentration. In some cultures, there would have been a significant shift toward increased starch and plant protein. The relative nutritional benefits and drawbacks of these dietary changes and their overall impact on early societal development is still debated.

In addition, increased population density, decreased population mobility, increased continuous proximity to domesticated animals, and continuous occupation of comparatively population-dense sites would have altered sanitation needs and patterns of disease.

Technology[link]

Neolithic peoples were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones) and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a large scale was the polished stone axe above all other tools. Together with the adze, fashioning wood for shelter, structures and canoes for example, this enabled them to exploit their newly-won farmland.

Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were also accomplished builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and villages. At Çatal höyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives.

The peoples of the Americas and the Pacific mostly retained the Neolithic level of tool technology until the time of European contact. Exceptions include few copper hatchets and spearheads in the Great Lakes region.

Clothing[link]

Most clothing appears to have been made of animal skins, as indicated by finds of large numbers of bone and antler pins which are ideal for fastening leather, but not cloth. However, wool cloth and linen might have become available during the British Neolithic, as suggested by finds of perforated stones which (depending on size) may have served as spindle whorls or loom weights. The clothing worn in the Neolithic Age might be similar to that worn by Ötzi the Iceman, although he was not British and not Neolithic (since he belonged to the later Copper age).

Early settlements[link]

Reconstruction of a Cucuteni-Trypillian hut, in the Tripillian Museum, Ukraine.

Neolithic human settlements include:

• Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, c. 11,000–9000 BC
• Tell Qaramel in Syria, 10,700–9400 BC
• Franchthi Cave in Greece, epipalaeolithic (c. 10,000 BC) settlement, reoccupied between 7500–6000 BC
• Lahuradewa in India, 7000 BC^[34]
• Jericho in West bank, Neolithic from around 8350 BC, arising from the earlier Epipaleolithic Natufian culture
• Nevali Cori in Turkey, c. 8000 BC
• Ganj Dareh in Iran, c. 7000 BC

The Archaeological Site of Çatal Hüyük in the Konya Plain in Turkey

• Çatalhöyük in Turkey, 7500 BC
• Pengtoushan culture in China, 7500 – 6100 BC
• 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan, 7250–5000 BC
• Chogha Bonut in Iran, 7200 BC
• Jhusi in India, 7100 BC
• Karanovo in Bulgaria, 6200 BC
• Petnica in Serbia, 6000 BC
• Sesklo in Greece, 6850 BC (with a ±660 year margin of error)
• Dispilio in Greece, c. 5500 BC
• Padah-Lin Caves in Burma, c. 6000 BC
• Jiahu in China, 7000 to 5800 BC
• Mehrgarh in Pakistan, 7000 BC
• Knossus on Crete, c. 7000 BC
• Porodin in Republic of Macedonia, 6500 BC^[35]
• Vrshnik (Anzabegovo) in Republic of Macedonia, 6500 BC^[35]
• Pizzo di Bodi (Varese), Lombardy in Italy, c. 6320 ±80 BC
• Sammardenchia in Friuli, Italy, c. 6050 ±90 BC,
• Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, 5500–2750 BC, in Ukraine, Moldova and Romania first salt works
• Tabon Cave Complex in Quezon, Palawan, Philippines 5000 – 2000 BC^{[citation needed]}
• Hemudu culture in China, 5000 – 4500 BC, large scale rice plantation
• around 2000 settlements of Trypillian culture, 5400 – 2800 BC
• Tell Zeidan in northern Syria, from about 5500 to 4000 BC.
• The Megalithic Temples of Malta, 3600 BC
• Knap of Howar and Skara Brae, Orkney, Scotland, from 3500 BC and 3100 BC respectively
• Brú na Bóinne in Ireland, c. 3500 BC
• Lough Gur in Ireland from around 3000 BC
• Lajia in China, 2000 BC

The world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Sweet Track in England, dates from 3800 BC and the world's oldest free-standing structure is the neolithic temple of Ggantija in Gozo, Malta.

List of cultures and sites[link]

Excavated dwellings at Skara Brae (Orkney, Scotland), Europe's most complete Neolithic village

Note: Dates are very approximate, and are only given for a rough estimate; consult each culture for specific pie time periods.

Early Neolithic
Periodization: The Levant: 10,000 to 8500 BC; Europe: 5000 to 4000 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.

• Beixin culture
• Cishan culture
• Dudeşti culture
• Franchthi Cave people
  • Earliest European Neolithic site: 20th to 3rd millennium BC
• Sesclo village culture
• Starcevo-Criş culture
  • (also known as the Starčevo-Körös-Criş culture)

Middle Neolithic
Periodization: The Levant: 8500 to 6500 BC; Europe: 4000 to 3500 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.

• Baodun culture
  • Jinsha settlement and Sanxingdui mound.
• Cardium Pottery culture
• Comb Ceramic culture
• Corded Ware culture
• Cortaillod culture
• Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
• Dadiwan culture
• Dawenkou culture
• Daxi culture
  • Chengtoushan settlement
• Grooved ware people
  • Skara Brae, et al.
• Erlitou culture
  • Xia Dynasty
• Ertebølle culture
• Hembury culture
• Hemudu culture
• Hongshan culture
• Houli culture
• Horgen culture
• Liangzhu culture
• Linear Pottery culture
  • Goseck circle, et al.
• Longshan culture
• Majiabang culture
• Majiayao culture
• Peiligang culture
• Pengtoushan culture
• Pfyn culture
• Precucuteni culture
• Qujialing culture
• Shijiahe culture
• Trypillian culture
• Vinča culture
• Windmill Hill culture
  • Stonehenge
• Xinglongwa culture
  • Beifudi site
• Xinle culture
• Yangshao culture
  • Banpo and Xishuipo settlements.
• Zhaobaogou culture

Later Neolithic
Periodization: 6500 to 4500 BC; Europe: 3500 to 3000 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.

Eneolithic
Periodization: Middle East: 4500 to 3300 BC; Europe: 3000 to 1700 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region. In the Americas, the Eneolithic ended as late as the 1800s for some people.

• Beaker culture
• Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
• Funnelbeaker culture
• Gaudo Culture
• Lengyel culture
• Varna culture

See also[link]

Footnotes[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Neolithic

• McNamara, John (2005). "Neolithic Period". World Museum of Man. http://worldmuseumofman.org/neolithic1.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-14. 
• Rincon, Paul (11 May 2006). "Brutal lives of Stone Age Britons". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4757861.stm. Retrieved 2008-04-14. 
• Current Directions in West African Prehistory – McIntosh & McIntosh (1983)
• Vincha Neolithic Script
• UB Préhistoire — Enseignements sur le Néolithique

Gerald Finzi

Gerald Raphael Finzi (14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata Dies natalis for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.

Life[link]

Born in London, son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi (of Italian Jewish descent) and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson (daughter of Montague Leverson,^[1] of German Jewish descent), Finzi nevertheless became one of the most characteristically "English" composers of his generation. Despite being an agnostic, he wrote some inspired and imposing Christian choral music.

Finzi's father, a successful shipbroker, died just a fortnight short of his son's eighth birthday.^[2] Finzi was educated privately. During World War I the family settled in Harrogate, and Finzi began to study music at Christ Church, High Harrogate under Ernest Farrar from 1915.^[3] Farrar was then aged thirty, a former pupil of Stanford who described him as "very shy, but full of poetry".^[3] Finzi found him a sympathetic teacher,^[3], and Farrar's death at the Western Front affected him deeply. During these formative years he also suffered the loss of three of his brothers. These adversities contributed to Finzi's bleak outlook on life, but he found solace in the poetry of Thomas Traherne and his favourite, Thomas Hardy, whose poems, as well as those by Christina Rossetti, he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and later William Wordsworth, Finzi was attracted by the recurrent motif of the innocence of childhood corrupted by adult experience. From the very beginning, most of his music was elegiac in tone.

1918–1933: Studies and early compositions[link]

After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately at York Minster with the organist and choirmaster Edward Bairstow, a strict teacher compared to Farrar. In 1922, following five years of study with Bairstow, Finzi moved to Painswick in Gloucestershire, where he began composing in earnest. His first Hardy settings and the orchestral piece A Severn Rhapsody were soon performed in London to favourable reviews.

In 1925, at the suggestion of Adrian Boult, Finzi took a course in counterpoint with R. O. Morris and then moved to London, where he became friendly with Howard Ferguson and Edmund Rubbra. He was also introduced to Gustav Holst, Arthur Bliss and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Vaughan Williams obtained for him a teaching post (1930–1933) at the Royal Academy of Music.

1933–1939: Musical development[link]

Finzi never felt at home in the city and, having married the artist Joyce Black, settled with her in Aldbourne, Wiltshire, where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing, saving a number of rare English apple varieties from extinction. He also amassed a valuable library of some 3000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, now in the library of the University of Reading, and a fine collection (some 700 volumes including books, manuscripts and printed scores) of 18th-century English music, now at the University of St Andrews.

During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in these works, notably the cantata Dies natalis (1939) to texts by Traherne, that his fully mature style developed. He also worked on behalf of the poet-composer Ivor Gurney, who had been committed to an institution. Finzi and his wife catalogued and edited Gurney's works for publication. They also studied and published English folk music and music by older English composers such as William Boyce, Richard Capel Bond, John Garth, Richard Mudge, John Stanley and Charles Wesley.

In 1939 the Finzis moved to Ashmansworth, near Newbury, where he founded the Newbury String Players, an amateur chamber orchestra which he conducted until his death, reviving eighteenth century string music as well as giving premieres of works by his contemporaries, and offering chances of performance for talented young musicians such as Julian Bream and Kenneth Leighton.

1939–1956: Growth of reputation[link]

The outbreak of World War II delayed the first performance of Dies natalis at the Three Choirs Festival, an event that could have established Finzi as a major composer. He worked for the Ministry of War Transport and lodged German and Czech refugees in his home. After the war, he became somewhat more productive than before, writing several choral works as well as the Clarinet Concerto (1949), perhaps his most popular work.

By now, Finzi's works were being performed frequently at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere. But this happiness was not to last. In 1951, Finzi learned that he was suffering from the then incurable Hodgkin's disease and had at most ten years to live. Something of his feelings after this revelation is probably reflected in the agonized first movement of the deeply moving Cello Concerto (1955), his last major work, although its second movement, originally intended as a musical portrait of his wife, is of greatest serenity.

In 1956, following an excursion near Gloucester with Vaughan Williams, probably as a result of immune suppression caused by Hodgkin's disease, Finzi developed shingles. Biographies refer to him subsequently developing chickenpox, which developed into a "severe brain inflammation". What this probably means, in modern medical language, is that the shingles developed into disseminated shingles, which resembled chickenpox, and was complicated by encephalitis. He died not much later in an Oxford hospital, the first performance of his Cello Concerto on the radio having been given the night before.

Works[link]

Finzi’s output includes nine song cycles, six of them on the poems of Thomas Hardy. The first of these, By Footpath and Stile (1922), is for voice and string quartet, the others, including A Young Man’s Exhortation and Earth and Air and Rain, for voice and piano. Among his other songs, the charming Shakespeare settings in the cycle Let Us Garlands Bring (1942) are the best known. He also wrote incidental music to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1946). For voice and orchestra he composed the above-mentioned Dies natalis, a work profoundly mystic, and the pacifist Farewell to Arms (1944).

Finzi’s choral music includes the popular anthems Lo, the full, final sacrifice and God is gone up as well as unaccompanied partsongs, but he also wrote larger-scale choral works such as For St. Cecilia (text by Edmund Blunden), Intimations of Immortality (William Wordsworth) and the Christmas scene In terra pax (Robert Bridges and the Gospel of Luke), all from the last ten years of his life.

The number of Finzi’s purely instrumental works is small even though he took great pains over them in the early part of his career. He began what is believed to have been intended as a piano concerto. This was never finished or given a title, but after his death his publisher gave two of the individual movements names and published them as the separate works Eclogue and Grand Fantasia and Toccata. The latter demonstrates Finzi’s admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach as well as the Swiss American Jewish composer Ernest Bloch. He also completed a violin concerto which was performed in London under the baton of Vaughan Williams, but was not satisfied with it and withdrew the two outer movements; the surviving middle movement is called Introit. This concerto thus received only its second performance in 1999 and its first recording is now on Chandos. The clarinet concerto is possibly his most famous instrumental work, with its infectious lyricism and charm coupled with a strong emotional core, but the cello concerto is even more dramatic and is perhaps his greatest work – in it Finzi manages to resolve all his compositional issues to produce a work of astounding drama, beauty, nobility and a sense of melancholic nostalgia which is so characteristic of his work.

Of Finzi's few chamber works, only the Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano have survived in the regular repertoire.

Finzi had a long friendship with the composer Howard Ferguson and, as well as offering advice on his works during his life, Ferguson helped with the editing of several of Finzi's works published posthumously.

Conclusion[link]

Through Farrar and Vaughan Williams, Finzi belongs to the firm tradition of Elgar, Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, which made his music seem unfashionable in his lifetime. One can’t really speak about experimentation, let alone modernity, in the case of Finzi, even though some of his lesser-known works completely contradict his popular image of a lyrical pastoralist. He did, however, have a distinctive voice of his own, most evident in the sensitive songs and choral works which show an unfailing response to and unity with each poet’s words, resulting from his thorough knowledge of English literature. In this respect, he resembles Gurney, Roger Quilter and other English song composers of the early twentieth century, though works such as the Cello Concerto and Intimations of Immortality show him more than a miniaturist.

Finzi’s son, Christopher, inherited his pacifist sympathies as well as his musical talent and became a noted conductor and an exponent of his father’s music. Thanks to him and other enthusiasts, as well as the work of the Finzi Trust and the Finzi Friends Finzi’s music enjoyed a great resurgence from the late twentieth century onwards.

Complete opus list[link]

• 1. Ten Children’s Songs
• 2. By Footpath and Stile
• 3. English Pastorals and Elegies

a) A Severn Rhapsody

b) Requiem da camera

• 4. Psalms for unaccompanied SATB
• 5. Three Short Elegies
• 6. Introit (Violin Concerto)
• 7. New Year Music, Nocturne for Orchestra in C-Sharp Minor
• 8. Dies natalis
• 9. Farewell to Arms
• 10. Eclogue for piano and strings
• 11. Romance for String Orchestra
• 12. Two Sonnets by John Milton
• 13a. To a Poet
• 13b. Oh Fair to See
• 14. A Young Man’s Exhortation
• 15. Earth and Air and Rain
• 16. Before and After Summer
• 17. Seven Partsongs – Poems by Robert Bridges

1. I praise the tender flower

2. I have loved flowers that fade

3. My spirit sang all day

4. Clear and gentle stream

5. Nightingales

6. Haste on, my joys!

7. Wherefore tonight so full of care

• 18. Let Us Garlands Bring
• 19a. Till Earth Outwears
• 19b. I Said to Love
• 20. The Fall of the Leaf
• 21. Interlude
• 22. Elegy
• 23. Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 23a. Orchestrated by Lawrence Ashmore
• 24. Prelude and Fugue
• 25. Prelude for strings
• 26. Lo, the full, final sacrifice
• 27. Three Anthems

1. ‘My lovely one’

2. ‘God is gone up’

3. ‘Welcome sweet and sacred feast’

• 28a. Love’s Labour’s Lost- songs
• 28b Love’s Labour’s Lost- suite
• 29. Intimations of Immortality
• 30. For St Cecilia
• 31. Clarinet Concerto
• 32. Thou didst delight my eyes
• 33. All this night
• 34. Muses and Graces
• 35. Let us now praise famous men
• 36. Magnificat
• 37. White-flowering days
• 38. Grand Fantasia and Toccata
• 39. In terra pax
• 40. Cello Concerto

See also[link]

• Category:Compositions by Gerald Finzi

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (June 2009)

• Banfield, Stephen. Gerald Finzi: An English Composer (Faber, 1997) ISBN 0-571-16269-X
• Dressler, John C. Gerald Finzi: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1997) ISBN 0-313-28693-0
• Jordan, Rolf. The Clock of the Years: A Gerald and Joy Finzi Anthology (Chosen Press, 2007) ISBN 978-0-9556373-0-8
• McVeagh, Diana. Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music (Boydell, 2006) ISBN 1-84383-170-8

External links[link]

• The official Gerald Finzi website, created for the composer's family and including latest news of concerts featuring Finzi's works.
• A Finzi page on the website of his publisher Boosey & Hawkes, including a complete list of works published by Boosey & Hawkes and a discography.
• A Finzi Page at MusicWeb International by John France.
• The Finzi Trust, the official Finzi Trust website: listen to Finzi's music and read about his life and works, the Trust's work and the Finzi Travel Scholarships.
• Finzi Friends
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/27/gerald-finzi-mark-padmore
• Free scores by Gerald Finzi at the International Music Score Library Project