Isotopic and DNA analyses reveal multi-scale PPNB mobility and migration across Southeastern Anatolia and the Southern Levant

Growing reliance on animal and plant domestication in the Near East and beyond during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (the 9th–8th millennium BC) has often been associated with a 'revolutionary' social transformation from mobility towards more sedentary lifestyles. We are able to yield nuanced insights into the process of the Neolithization in Near East, based on an integrative bioarchaeological approach integrating isotopic and archaeogenetic analyses on the bone remains recovered from Nevali Çori, a site occupied from early PPNB in Turkey where some of the earliest evidence of animal and plant domestication emerged, and from Ba`ja, a typical late PPNB site in Jordan. In addition, we present the archaeological sequence of Nevali Çori together with newly generated radiocarbon dates. Our results are based on strontium (87Sr/86Sr), carbon and oxygen (d18O and d13Ccarb) isotopic analyses conducted on 28 human and 31 animal individuals from the site of Nevali Çori. 87Sr/86Sr results indicate mobility and connection with contemporaneous surrounding sites during the earlier PPNB, prior to an apparent decline in this mobility at a time of growing reliance on domesticates. Genome-wide data from six human individuals from Nevali Çori and Ba`ja demonstrate a diverse gene pool at Nevali Çori that supports connectedness within Fertile Crescent during the earlier phases of Neolithization and evidence of consanguineous union in the PPNB Ba`ja and Iron Age Nevali Çori.