A Biometric Meta-study on the Origins and Spread of Caprine Management in the Northern and Southern Levant

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recently, explanatory models for plant and animal domestication have shifted from single-origin explanations to multiregional frameworks. Despite this, the timing and origins of caprine management across the Fertile Crescent remain the subject of debate, particularly for the southern Levantine region. Here, we compile an extensive database of published biometric data spanning the Epipaleolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) periods (24,000-8,400 cal BP). Using body size diminution as a proxy for management, we map the onset and spread of sheep and goat management in the northern and southern Levant. Our findings reveal that body size diminution for both sheep and goat occurred rapidly in the north between the EPPNB and MPPNB, and then stabilized. In the southern Levant, sheep were rare prior to the LPPNB, when small bodied sheep first become abundant. Importantly, these sheep were similar in size to managed sheep from the northern Levant. Together these data suggest the flow of managed flocks from the northern to the southern Levant starting in the MPPNB and culminating in the LPPNB. In the south, goat size declined more gradually with significant drops in both the MPPNB and LPPNB. This more gradual diminution trend favors a local management rather than a receiver scenario.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53091