The 9th millennium MPPNB period in the Levant represented a major transformation in prehistoric lifeways from small bands of mobile hunter–gatherers to large settled farming and herding villages in the Mediterranean zone, the process having been initiated some 2–3 millennia earlier.

It was set on terraced ground in a valley-side, and was built with rectangular mud-brick houses that accommodated a square main room and a smaller anteroom.

Evidence recovered from the excavations suggests that much of the surrounding countryside was forested and offered the inhabitants a wide variety of economic resources.

Yet despite its apparent richness, the area of Ayn Ghazal is climatically and environmentally sensitive because of its proximity throughout the Holocene to the fluctuating steppe-forest border.

[1] As an early farming community, the Ayn Ghazal people cultivated cereals (barley and ancient species of wheat), legumes (peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas) in fields above the village, and herded domesticated goats.

[2] In addition, they hunted wild animals – deer, gazelle, equids, pigs and smaller mammals such as fox or hare.

Domesticated plants included wheat and barley species, but legumes (primarily lentils and peas) appear to have been preferred cultigens.

The people from those small villages abandoned their unproductive fields and migrated, with their domestic animals, to places with better ecological conditions, like Ayn Ghazal that could support larger populations.

As opposed to other sites as new people migrated to Ayn Ghazal, probably with few possessions and possibly starving, class distinctions began to develop.

There are evidences of mining activities as part of a production sequence conducted by craftsmen at the site of Ayn Ghazal, these potential part-time specialists in some way controlled access to such raw materials.

In addition to the monumental statues, small clay and stone tokens, some incised with geometric or naturalistic shapes, were found at Ayn Ghazal.

It was seemingly of importance for individual households to have members who participated both the hunting of cattle – likely a group activity – and the subsequent feasting on the remains.

Ayn Ghazal is renowned for a set of anthropomorphic statues found buried in pits in the vicinity of some special buildings that may have had ritual functions.

Post-mortem skull removal, commonly restricted to the cranium, but on occasion including the mandible, and apparently following preliminary primary interments of the complete corpse.

However, some people were thrown on trash heaps and their bodies remain intact, indicating that not every deceased was ceremoniously put to rest.

While examining a cross section of earth in a path carved out by a bulldozer, archaeologists came across the edge of a large pit 2.5 meters (8 ft) under the surface containing plaster statues.