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chapter 1 Introduction In this book I deal with a subject that has never been investigated before: dance at the beginning of agriculture. At first glimpse it seems that nothing can be said on such an elusive subject and that it lies beyond the boundaries of knowledgability. However, as we shall see below, the earliest art scenes in the ancient Near East and southeast Europe depict dancing. In the eighth to the fourth millennia bc this subject appears in many variations, covering a vast geographical expanse: the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, the Balkans, Greece, the Danube basin, and Egypt. There is plenty of evidence for this activity, almost four hundred depictions of dance are relevant to our study. Thus, dancing is the oldest and one of the most persistent themes in Near Eastern prehistoric art, and this theme spreads with agriculture into surrounding regions of Europe and Africa. Dance, beside being a subject of enquiry in its own right, is used here also as a medium that sheds light on other interesting topics: the beginning of artistic scenes in the ancient Near East and southeast Europe, public calendrical rituals of early farmers, and various cognitive aspects concerning the dancing motif. The principal strategies used to promote the bonding of individuals into communities, and of individual households into villages, were public assemblies for the purpose of religious ceremonies. The archaeological examples discussed in this work are pictorial displays of this activity and shed light on it. The importance of these ceremonies is also borne out by ethnographic observations of modern pre-state communities, in which dance is indeed the most important component in religious ceremonies. In periods before schools and writing, community rituals, symbolized by dance, were the basic mechanisms for conveying education and knowledge to the adult members of the community and from one generation to the next. The lengthy duration of dance depiction as a dominant artistic motif, together with its dispersion across broad geographical expanses (from west Pakistan to the Danube basin), testifies to the efficiency of the dancing motif as one of the most powerful symbols in the evolution of human societies. Dance has been defined as a complex form of communication that combines the visual, kinesthetic, and aesthetic aspects of human movement with (usually) the aural 4 The Dance Analysis dimension of musical sounds and sometimes poetry. Dance is created out of culturally understood symbols within social and religious contexts, and it conveys information and meaning as ritual, ceremony, and entertainment . For dance to communicate, its audience must understand the cultural conventions that deal with human movement in time and space (Kaeppler 1992:196). Dancing is an activity that is not limited to human behavior. As a means of communication, it has been observed in insects (the bee dance), birds, and various mammals’ courtship interactions (von Frisch 1967; Wilson 1975:176–241, 314–335). However, as observed by McNeill (1995:13): Community dancing occurs only among humans, if by that phrase we mean a form of group behavior whereby an indefinite number of individuals start to move their muscles rhythmically, establish a regular beat, and continue doing so for long enough to arouse euphoric excitement shared by all participants, and (more faintly) by onlookers as well. . . . Indeed, community dancing, together with marching and singing or shouting rhythmically is, like language, a capability that marks human off from all other forms of life. . . . Learning to move and give voice in this fashion, and the strengthened emotional bonds associated with that sort of behavior, were critical prerequisites for the emergence of humanity. In human society, dance is a cross-cultural phenomenon that has been observed all over the world (Sachs 1952; Kraus 1969; Lange 1976; Bland 1976; Blacking and Kealinohomoku 1979; Clarke and Clement 1981; Cass 1993; S. J. Cohen 1998). It has been suggested that dance, as a medium of nonverbal communication, was already practiced during the Paleolithic era (Louis 1955; Blacking 1976; McNeill 1995:13–35). Pictorial sources such as rock art and portable items display dancing in past nonliterate societies. The earliest examples of these have been reported from Paleolithic European art, such the cave at Cala dei Genovesi on the island of Levanzo near Sicily and in Addaura Cave, near Palermo in Sicily (LeroiGourhan 1967:381–382, Fig. 710; Holloway 1991:2–4, Figs. 4–5). Archaic rock-art depictions of dance, whose dating is not always clear, have been reported from various parts of the world, such as Italy...

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