Dancing at the Dawn of Agriculture

by Yosef Garfinkel

As the nomadic hunters and gatherers of the ancient Near East turned to agriculture for their livelihood and settled into villages, religious ceremonies involving dancing became their primary means for bonding individuals into communities and households into villages. So important was dance that scenes of dancing are among the oldest and most persistent themes in Near Eastern prehistoric art, and these depictions of dance accompanied the spread of agriculture into surrounding regions of Europe and Africa. In this pathfinding book, Yosef Garfinkel analyzes depictions of dancing found on archaeological objects from the Near East, southeastern Europe, and Egypt to offer the first comprehensive look at the role of dance in these Neolithic (7000-4000 BC) societies. In the first part of the book, Garfinkel examines the structure of dance, its functional roles in the community (with comparisons to dance in modern pre-state societies), and its cognitive, or symbolic, aspects. This analysis leads him to assert that scenes of dancing depict real community rituals linked to the agricultural cycle and that dance was essential for maintaining these calendrical rituals and passing them on to succeeding generations. In the concluding section of the book, Garfinkel presents and discusses the extensive archaeological data—some 400 depictions of dance—on which his study is based.

346 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Yosef Garfinkel is Yigael Yadin Professor for the Archaeology of the Land of Israel, Biblical Archaeology Department of the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and head of the Berman Center for Biblical Archaeology.

Reviews

[Ashkan Ansari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best available book about the history of dance before civilization. This book covers East Europe, Mesopotamia, Near, and the Middle East and south of Asia. It gave me a clear vision of how dances formed. I recommend this book to all who are interested in history and dance.