Investigations of a microfaunal assemblage: Emergence of pest-host relationships at Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey

Summary

Small vertebrate remains are often ubiquitous in archaeological contexts, with rodent and microvertebrate activity recognized as a common source of disturbance. On the other hand, small vertebrates can have great significance for archaeological interpretation because they provide key evidence, directly or indirectly, on human subsistence and settlement behaviors, such as food storage, sedentism, seasonality, and site abandonment. This poster presents the results of a preliminary analysis of the microfaunal assemblage at Aşıklı Höyük, an early Aceramic Neolithic settlement in the Aksaray province of Turkey. The primary focus of this analysis is on the earliest levels of the site (Layers 4 and 5 in trench 4GH), which contain semi-isolated roundhouse structures, diverse outdoor features, and middens. Considerations of the architectural features of the site are important for understanding the potential factors that attracted small vertebrates to these human-altered environments, such as concentrations of food resources and the presence of safe places for these animals to reproduce or hibernate.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage