The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene was a period of unprecedented economic change in portions of southwest Asia as semimobile hunters and gatherers became sedentary agriculturalists. Significant changes in social organization and ideology are predicted to be associated with the emergence of these novel community forms, and discussion has generally focused on new patterns of social interaction, increased social complexity, and the emergence of nascent elites (eg, Bender 1978, 1990; Hayden 1990, 1995a; Hodder 1990; Hole 1984; Price and Feinman 1995). Several factors, based on ethnographic observations, are considered to have played a role in fundamentally altering social interaction (Flannery 1972, 1993; Southall 1988; Upham 1990). Mobile foraging economies are by nature extensive, while economies of sedentary agriculturalists are characterized by intensive exploitation of local, often highly circumscribed resources. With highly circumscribed resources, there is greater potential for varied access between