The debate of how bidirectional blade technology diffused (knowledge transfer or demographic ‘colonization’) is far from closed. It is, thus, crucial to rethink whether bidirectional technology could be considered, and under what circumstances, a specialized production. Its wide diffusion in varied socioeconomic contexts using different raw materials and the growing regional and spatial variability observed throughout the Levant suggests that the bidirectional blade technology did not require the a priori existence of an economic infrastructure that supported craft specialization. BC in the middle Euphrates valley constituted a marked change in local lithic traditions and a shift in projectile technology. The paper provides an assessment of the current state of the art of the origins diffusion and variations of bidirectional blade technology during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the western wing of the Fertile Crescent. The trend is reversed again during the Chalcolithic, when the demand for fire wood, lumber, and cleared land seems to have increased during a time of emerging socioeconomic complexity. Adzes replace axes as heavy woodworking tools during the pottery Neolithic A (PNA) period, but by the PNB period, once again there are more carpentry tools than tree-felling bifaces. Sustainable forest management continued until the cumulative effects of tree-felling may have led to landscape degradation at the end of the PPNC. By the MPPNB and LPPNB, heavier polished flint axes were used to clear forests for fields, grazing lands, wood fuel, and lumber. This pattern continued during the following early pre-pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB) period, but a new sharpening method, polishing, was used on a unique flint tranchet ax to strengthen its edge. Nonfunctional groundstone pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) bifaces seem to have served as social and status symbols, while flaked flint PPNA tranchet axes and chisels were used for carpentry rather than tree-felling. Examination of 206 Neolithic and Chalcolithic bifaces from the southern Levant revealed that changes in form during the emergence of agropastoralism correlated with evolving land use practices, but new biface types also expressed altered social identities and perceptions of the environment.
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