This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward expansion of Neolithic subsistence technologies combined multiple routes and pulses but did not involve a set ‘package’ comprising all four livestock species including sheep, goat, cattle and pig. Instead, Neolithic animal economies in the study regions are shown to be more diverse than deduced previously using quantitatively more limited datasets. Moreover, during the transition to agro-pastoral economies interactions between domestic stock and local wild fauna continued. Through publication of datasets with Open Context (opencontext.org), this project emphasizes the benefits of data sharing and web-based dissemination of large primary data sets for exploring major questions in archaeology (Alternative Language Abstract S1).

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 ...

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Analysis of spatio-temporal variation in patterns of animal exploitation helps our understanding of the transition from hunting to husbandry of Ovis, Capra, Sus, and Bos in Pre-Pottery Neolithic Anatolia (c.9500–7000 bce). Despite interaction with humans since the final Pleistocene, domestication of Sus in southeastern Anatolia is only evidenced after 8500 bce. This timing coincides with efforts to exert cultural control over Ovis, Capra, and Bos. Applying a broad methodological spectrum, it is shown that in southeastern Anatolia, the Neolithic ‘package’ was in place at the end of the ninth millennium bce, whereas in contemporaneous central Anatolia, livestock husbandry only included sheep and goat. Initially, animal management practices may have focused on a single species, but after 8000 bce, herding strategies comprised at least two species, likely a risk-reducing strategy. Conceivably, large-scale social gatherings, e.g. at Göbekli Tepe, promoted the spread of practices associated with ungulate management and domestication.