Revisiting Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size change in the southern Levant: A case for anthropogenic impact

Abstract

The average body size of human prey animals in archaeological sites is influenced by myriad environmental, physiological and anthropogenic variables. When combined with supporting evidence, body size has the potential to provide a proxy for several variables of fundamental interest to archaeologists including climatic change, food availability and hunting impacts, among other things. In the southern Levant changes in mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size in the Late Pleistocene were initially interpreted as evidence for a climatic downturn, but the picture has become increasingly murky as data has grown. Here we reconsider trends in gazelle body size using an updated dataset from the Mediterranean zone that spans the Early Epipaleolithic to the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (ca. 24,000–9,500 cal BP). Our results reveal that gazelle were smallest in the Early and Middle Epipaleolithic (Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran), reached their largest size in the early Late Epipaleolithic (Early Natufian) and then shrunk slightly before stabilizing in size through the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic. We see no evidence that sex ratio, or climatic factors influenced this trend. Instead, we explore the role of human impacts on gazelle populations and their habitats as they grew in earnest at the beginning of the Late Epipaleolithic when people first began to settle into more permanent communities. Initially, in the Early and Late Natufian, anthropogenic impacts related to more intensive hunting and the increased footprint of more permanent settlements on the landscape. This may have pushed gazelle numbers below what could be supported by the environment, thus increasing the amount of food available for each animal and hence average body size. Later, as humans began to cultivate plants, manage animals and establish permanent villages, avoidance of humans and livestock by gazelle, and greater stability in food and water availability provided by agriculture, may have similarly reduced gazelle population size and intraspecific competition, thus allowing individual animals to grow larger on average.

The human side of biodiversity: coevolution of the human niche, palaeo-synanthropy and ecosystem complexity in the deep human past

“…Yet, interestingly, predatory behaviour in the human deep past is still largely cast as a negative impact on biodiversity and ecological resilience [27,43,175], even though some research has already pointed out the possible curational effects of human predation [176], for example by relaxing browsing and grazing pressures or by reducing intraspecific competition [18,177]. Interestingly, suppression of intraspecific competition in prey species such as deer can help to support larger body sizes in the target animal population because individuals benefit from increased food availability; this therefore effectively curates profitable hunting yields [177], making it necessary to carefully contextualize such data [178]. Notable also are the implicit curational practices tied to integrated foraging strategies such as 'garden hunting' [179,180], which have a deep history in the Americas; here, animals are ecologically encouraged by human landscape agency, in turn facilitating their hunting or trapping.…”

Effects of season and sex on the concentrations of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites in captive and free-ranging endangered mountain gazelles (Gazella gazella)

“…The mountain gazelle ( Gazella gazella ) inhabits areas in Israel and Palestine, the Golan Heights ( 1 ), the Jordanian side of the Jordan Valley ( 2 ) and the Hatay Province of Türkiye ( 3 , 4 ). The population of mountain gazelles in Türkiye is isolated from other populations.…”

Table_1.XLSX

“…The mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) inhabits areas in Israel and Palestine, the Golan Heights (1), the Jordanian side of the Jordan Valley (2) and the Hatay Province of Türkiye (3,4). The population of mountain gazelles in Türkiye is isolated from other populations.…”