{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03379416282642089, 'fraction_numerical': 0.027649769585253458, 'mean_word_length': 4.740088105726873, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East: Transforming the Human Landscape. Alan H. Simmons, 2007. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ. xvii + 360 pp. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN-13 978-0-816-52442-6.

Alan Simmons brings his field experience at a wide variety of prehistoric sites in the Levant and Cyprus to bear on this well-written and wide-ranging synthesis of late prehistory in Southwest Asia and Cyprus, with a focus on the Levant. Since the classic English-language introductions to the Near Eastern Neolithic, including James Mellaart's (1976) Neolithic of the Near East and Charles Redman's (1979) Rise of Civilization are very much out-of-date, a book like this is long overdue. Writing such a work has also become a daunting task, particularly because the high intensity of fieldwork over the last 20 years has almost completely revised our understanding of some of the most important developments of the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the region, while also creating a wealth of new finds for us to describe and interpret. Simmons recognizes that he is unable to give detailed treatment to all of this new information and accompanying attempts at explanation, and, instead, does an admirable job of introducing readers to a large sample of the relevant finds and their interpretation.