Cattle Cults of the Arabian Neolithic and Early Territorial Societies

Abstract

At the cusp of food production, Near Eastern societies adopted new territorial practices, including archaeologically visible sedentism and nonsedentary social defenses more challenging to identify archaeologically. New archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence for Arabia's earliest‐known sacrifices points to territorial maintenance in arid highland southern Yemen. Here sedentism was not an option prior to agriculture. Seasonally mobile pastoralists developed alternate practices to reify cohesive identities, maintain alliances, and defend territories. Archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence implies cattle sacrifices were commemorated with a ring of more than 42 cattle skulls and a stone platform buried by 6,400‐year‐old floodplain sediments. Associated with numerous hearths, these cattle rites suggest feasting by a large gathering, with important sociopolitical ramifications for territories. A GIS analysis of the early Holocene landscape indicates constrained pasturage supporting small resident human populations. Cattle sacrifice in southern Arabia suggests a model of mid‐Holocene Neolithic territorial pastoralism under environmental and cultural conditions that made sedentism unsustainable. [prehistory, Arabia, sacrifice, territoriality, Neolithic]

Hailat Araka and the South Arabian Neolithic

“…HA may represent, then, a group of people subsisting predominantly on natural resources emending their diet for the first time with a small number of domesticates. Such a lifestyle may be defined as ‘Early Dedicated Pastoralism’ (McCorriston ). In Dhofar, while no direct evidence of domestication has been found, the stratified sites of HA, Ayun, Dhahabun, Harun and Matafah promise a resolution in the near future.…”

“…at Shib Kheshiya (McCorriston ; McCorriston et al . ) and Buhais 18 (Uerpmann & Uerpmann ; Uerpmann, Uerpmann & Kutterer ) and FAY‐NE15 (Uerpmann M. et al . ).…”

The context of early megalithic architecture in eastern Africa: the Turkana Basinc.5000-4000 BP

“…McCorriston et al (2012) pose an ecological explanation for rituals such as feasting and cattle sacrifice by early mobile populations in Neolithic Arabia, arguing that such behaviour serves to reify group identities among pastoralists and reflects an emerging form of territoriality in situations where patchy, unpredictable resources preclude sedentism. Access to resources such as water and pasture is contingent upon access to social groups who possess knowledge about those resources (and about other groups); membership is affirmed by periodically convening at ritually important sites on the landscape where information can be exchanged.…”

The Neolithic in Arabia: a view from the south

“…A remarkable platform and cattle skull ring at the site of Shi'b Kheshiya (4400 BC) in Wadi Sana commemorated a territorial behaviour among pastoral groups, who depended on large social collectives to protect rights to livestock and share information about unstable pasture and water resources that could vary in space and time (McCorriston et al . ). The evidence at Shi'b Kheshiya represents a large gathering not permanently sustainable in Wadi Sana.…”