Early Human Control over Ungulate Taxa in the southern Levant

Summary

An expanding catalog of faunal assemblages spanning the Late Epipaleolithic through Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) periods in the southern Levant points to growing human control over taxa that eventually become domesticated (wild goat, wild pig and wild cattle). This change in human-animal relationships occurs several centuries if not millennia before evidence for full-fledged management and domestication are visible in the archaeo-zoological record. We explore this shift by referencing data from 10 faunal assemblages spanning the agricultural transition and by the Early PPNB (10,5000-10,2000 cal. BP) that document the beginning of a trade-off between intensive human hunting evidenced by a broad array of animal taxa and resource depression, and ungulate taxa that are ultimately domesticated. We focus on local conditions that led to a reconfiguration of human-wild animal relationships and the nature of this interaction. Finally, we situate the southern Levant into its larger setting in Southwest Asia by emphasizing an increasingly protracted and multiregional picture of animal domestication and the importance of local ecology and regional social networks in facilitating the exchange of knowledge and possibly animals. Early evidence for new human-animal relationships prior to full-fledged animal management encourages re-evaluation of what should be considered wild within the wild-domestic continuum.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Where the Wild Things Are Not: Human-Animal Interaction in the Space between Wild and Domestic   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15082