Early Neolithic Innovation: Ventilation Systems and the Built Environment

Abstract

A wide range of rapid innovations are associated with the shift from mobile communities to sedentism in southwestern Asia. It was during this period that human societies generated many solutions designed to overcome the challenges of local environments, including the first long-lasting built environments, while adapting to life in year-round permanent settlements. The technological innovations that went hand in hand with these socio-economic changes improved the lives of the inhabitants of these communities, defining the period as a time of techno-cultural revolutions. Along with the domestication of plants and animals, houses became domestic spaces. Several characteristics of today's architectural technology originated during this period. The paper discusses one of the architectural innovations of the Neolithic period, "ventilation shafts," at one of the earliest settlements in central Anatolia, Asikli Hoyuk.