Tracking Morphological Changes in the Domestication of Sheep and Pigs: A Comparison

Summary

How do animal morphologies change during domestication? How do different parts of the skeleton adapt to human management? In this poster, I take a quantitative approach to domestication by comparing biometrical data from two species of mammals that were domesticated in the Middle East around the same time (ca. 8000 BC): pigs (Sus scrofa) and sheep (Ovis aries). Both pigs and sheep were domesticated by Pre-Pottery Neolithic B communities in northern Syria/southern Anatolia, but these species likely followed different pathways to domestication as a result of their divergent behavioral and physiological properties. Using modern comparative biometrical data to guide the comparison, this poster tracks changes in cranial and postcranial measurements over time, covering the periods before and after domestication. By quantifying biometrical change across the skeletons of these two different species, this poster ultimately looks at mammal domestication as a process of unique adaptation to human cultural control.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20217