Eleven thousand years ago in the Near East, human societies were transformed by the appearance of the world’s first sedentary villages, agriculture and pastoralism. It has been suggested the effects were revolutionary for human health, demographics, social arrangements, religious beliefs and practices, mortuary practices, gender relations, identities, institutions and economic activity laying the foundations of the modern world. Initial lectures will introduce theories and methodologies of investigating the transition from foraging to farming and the appearance of sedentary communities. Later lectures will provide a chronologically framed survey of principal evidence, returning to major questions of the appearance of sedentism, farming and herding along with a thematic investigation of major areas of past human behaviour that may have changed at this time. The themes we will return to are the Neolithic household and family, ritual practice, engagements with the landscape, craft, specialisation and exchange, social structure, institutions and hierarchy. The archaeology is dramatic and exciting with the first monumental structures, a key role for ancestors, new treatments fo the dead, the first houses and transformed landscapes.