The basis for this book is Maxime Brami's doctoral research at the University of Liverpool, but this monograph is no mere transfer of thesis to print. Brami writes clearly, concisely, and simply, and he makes a good case in support of his hypothesis. We have been slowly learning about how the Neolithic way of life evolved in the early Holocene around the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent and in central Anatolia, but there has been a chronological hiatus and a geographical gap between those early Neolithic manifestations and the spread of Neolithic communities across Europe. Brami sets out to show how the Neolithic can be seen to have spread from central Anatolia to the Aegean and beyond. He is well qualified to undertake a close examination of material from a number of Anatolian sites, given that he has been a member of excavation teams at Çatalhöyük, Aşıklı Höyük, and Boncuklu in central Anatolia; at Ulucak on the Aegean coast; and Barcin in the Marmara region of the northwest. At the same time, he has worked closely with the leading prehistoric archaeologists in the field of Neolithic studies.

Brami sets out to answer the question “How did Neolithic farming spread to Europe?” He supports his hypothesis of a spread from central to western and northwestern Anatolia with his original approach to cultural practices. He analyzes archaeological evidence not in terms of conventional typological classifications of the material remains but in terms of “practices”—that is, patterns of social behavior. However, despite framing his question in terms of the spread of farming, his focus is exclusively on the central institution of the house and, to a lesser extent, the formation and history of the settlement.

He investigates six practices that characterize houses in settlements from central Anatolia westward: house “closure,” house replacement, residential burials, spatial organization in the rectangular house, and agglutination. He deals first with house closure, on the grounds that the evidence for the end of the house's history is encountered first by its excavators. At the end of their use lives, houses across Anatolia can be shown to have been treated much in the same way that people were after death. The repeated rebuilding of the house on the exact outline of its predecessor was a practice that complements the careful closure rituals in emphasizing the importance of the house as personifying a social institution.

High numbers of burials within Neolithic settlements are common in central Anatolia and around the arc of the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent, especially for the early Neolithic period. The practice of intrasettlement—and sometimes intramural—burial is visible at settlements in western Anatolia. Similarly, the ways in which houses were built and designed to be used reflect practices at Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia and, to a lesser extent, in the northern Levant.

“Backbone” graphs of radiocarbon dates illustrate the chronology of the westward spread of practices around the Neolithic house. After more than two millennia of Neolithic life in central Anatolia (and three millennia farther east), the dates for Neolithic sites on the Aegean coast of Anatolia begin at 7000 BC, and they become gradually more recent farther west. Brami finds this two-millennia “lag” to be problematic, but by 7000 BC, clearly, around the Fertile Crescent as in central Anatolia, a rapidly expanding population of farmers needed land.

The weaknesses of Brami's case relate first to the thin archaeological evidence from old, small-scale excavations at sites in southwest Anatolia. These sites look good on the distribution map but offer little evidence to support their essential role as intermediate between the well-documented sites of Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük and the recently excavated and well-dated Aegean coastal sites. Second, the early signs of dispersal from Çatalhöyük date several centuries later than the first appearance of Neolithic farming settlers on the Aegean coast. Third, the alternative hypothesis of a maritime expansion from the northern Levant along the southern coast of Anatolia is not seriously considered, although it is proposed by the excavators of the two key sites on the Aegean coast. Credit is due to Brami for his brave hypothesis. We need such trials that make us think, try the evidence, and ask the questions that frame further research.