Born Free ? New Evidence for the Status of Sus scrofa at Neolithic Çayönü Tepesi (Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey)

137

Aş ıklı Höyük is the earliest known preceramic Neolithic mound site in Central Anatolia. The oldest Levels, 4 and 5, spanning 8,200 to approximately 9,000 cal B.C., associate with round-house architecture and arguably represent the birth of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the region. Results from upper Level 4, reported here, indicate a broad meat diet that consisted of diverse wild ungulate and small animal species. The meat diet shifted gradually over just a few centuries to an exceptional emphasis on caprines (mainly sheep). Age-sex distributions of the caprines in upper Level 4 indicate selective manipulation by humans by or before 8,200 cal B.C. Primary dung accumulations between the structures demonstrate that ruminants were held captive inside the settlement at this time. Taken together, the zooarchaeological and geoarchaeological evidence demonstrate an emergent process of caprine management that was highly experimental in nature and oriented to quick returns. Stabling was one of the early mechanisms of caprine population isolation, a precondition to domestication.caprine domestication | zooarchaeology | stabling deposits T he Neolithic brought fundamental transformations to human society and humans' place in natural systems. Early villages reorganized rapidly around new ways of extracting food from the environment, and animal and plant management seem to lie at the heart of many of these changes. The initial conditions of village community evolution are elusive, however, because late forager and forager-producer transition sites are few, in contrast to the abundant records of the later Neolithic. Known exceptions in central Turkey are the early occupations at Aşıklı Höyük in Cappadocia, the ninth millennium occupations at Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu in the Konya Basin (1, 2), and the late Epipaleolithic occupations in Pınarbaşı Rockshelter in Konya and Direkli Cave in Kahramanmaraş (3,4).Few of the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) communities display precocious histories of animal management, although plant cultivation was widespread. Regional contrasts in the early PPN testify to the volatile and locally variable nature of "neolithization" across the Middle East (1, 5-21). Only later in the PPN were certain staple animal foods truly domesticated, some in energetically powerful combinations with plants that would fuel the expansion of Neolithic systems into other world regions.Like the opposing faces of Janus, there are two temporal aspects from which one may view Neolithic origins. Comparisons to the more recent have received the bulk of archaeologists' attention thanks to an abundance of data on the later PPN and historic stock-keeping practices. Looking to the early Neolithic from a deeper past, the Epipaleolithic, is the view less often taken. Comparison data are less easy to come by, but the advantage of this forward-looking view is its consistency with the direction of evolution itself. As revolutionary as neolithization and the emergence of village communities may have been, the Epipaleolithic and PPN ...

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

A forager–herder trade-off, from broad-spectrum hunting to sheep management at Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey

Stiner

Buitenhuis²,

Duru

et al. 2014

137

“…This clearly demonstrates a long period of management in the wild (6) before morphological change attributable to domestication, as observed at Nevalı Ç ori (2). Such an intermediate wild-domestic status in both the Upper Tigris valley (3)(4)(5) and Cyprus indicates that pre-Neolithic wild boar management could have been practiced from Eastern Anatolia to the Mediterranean coast. Even if these suids were still wild, this practice appears to be an early step in the domestication process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…9,000 cal. B.P (3). This suggests the existence of an intermediate stage between ''hunting'' and ''breeding.''…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Pre-Neolithic wild boar management and introduction to Cyprus more than 11,400 years ago

Vigne

Zazzo

Saliège

et al. 2009

100

The beginnings of pig domestication in Southwest Asia are controversial. In some areas, it seems to have occurred abruptly ca. 10,500 years ago, whereas in nearby locations, it appears to have resulted from a long period of management of wild boar starting at the end of the Late Pleistocene. Here, we present analyses of suid bones from Akrotiri Aetokremnos , Cyprus. This site has provided the earliest evidence for human occupation of the Mediterranean islands. Morphological analysis and direct radiocarbon dating of both degraded collagen and apatite of these bones reveal that small-sized suids were living on Cyprus 11,400–11,700 years ago. We demonstrate that these suids were introduced by humans and that, at this early date, their small size must result from island isolation. This sheds light on the early Holocene colonization of Cyprus and on pre-Neolithic Mediterranean seafaring. We further argue that wild boar were managed on the mainland before their introduction to Cyprus (i.e., before the beginning of the Neolithic and at least 1 millennium before the earliest known morphological modifications attributable to domestication). This adds weight to the theory that pig domestication involved a long period of wild boar management that started about the time of the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.

“…and that the timing of their geographical expansion as domesticates was similar, although perhaps slower, to that of sheep ( Fig. 1) (10,14). Morphologically altered domestic pigs are not found in the southern Levant or lowland Iran until ca.…”

Section: Initial Animal Domestication In the Fertile Crescentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact

Zeder

2008

877

612

The past decade has witnessed a quantum leap in our understanding of the origins, diffusion, and impact of early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. In large measure these advances are attributable to new methods for documenting domestication in plants and animals. The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P. Evidence for herd management and crop cultivation appears at least 1,000 years earlier than the morphological changes traditionally used to document domestication. Different species seem to have been domesticated in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with genetic analyses detecting multiple domestic lineages for each species. Recent evidence suggests that the expansion of domesticates and agricultural economies across the Mediterranean was accomplished by several waves of seafaring colonists who established coastal farming enclaves around the Mediterranean Basin. This process also involved the adoption of domesticates and domestic technologies by indigenous populations and the local domestication of some endemic species. Human environmental impacts are seen in the complete replacement of endemic island faunas by imported mainland fauna and in today's anthropogenic, but threatened, Mediterranean landscapes where sustainable agricultural practices have helped maintain high biodiversity since the Neolithic.archaeology ͉ livestock