Abstract

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One of the main questions that zooarchaeologists have attempted to answer in their studies of ancient agropastoral economies relates to animal diet. Starch granules and phytoliths, which derive from the plant foods consumed over the course of an animal's life, become imbedded in dental calculus and thus offer direct clues about diet. In this paper, we investigate pig diet with an eye toward understanding husbandry strategies in northern Mesopotamia, the region in which pigs were first domesticated, from the Epipaleolithic though the Early Bronze Age. Our data reveal that pigs consumed an assortment of plant foods, including grasses, wild tubers, acorns, and domestic cereals. Although poor preservation plagued the identification of plant microremains at Epipaleolithic (10 th millennium cal. BC) Hallan Çemi, the identification of a diet based on tubers and grasses matches models of wild boar diet. Pigs at 6 th millennium Domuztepe, 5 th millennium Ziyadeh, and 4 th millennium Hacinebi consumed cereals, particularly oats (Avena sp.) and barley (Hordeum sp.), as well as wild plant food resources. Several of the cereal starch granules showed evidence of cooking, indicating that pigs had access to household refuse beginning at least in the late Neolithic. Moreover, calculus from morphologically wild specimens also contained cooked cereal grains. This points to a close relationship between wild boar populations and human settlements in the Neolithic and beyond. Preservation was poor for 3 rd millennium sites in the study, including Atij, Raqa'i, Ziyadeh, and Leilan, but the available data suggest that pigs ate oats, barley and other Triticeae (the tribe that includes wheat, barley, and goatgrass), and other grasses. This may represent foddering practices in the Early Bronze Age.

Experimental archaeology can help to explain human patterns of production and discard from the Palaeolithic to historical periods, and can inform debates on topics as diverse as human migration and diet. When conducted unsystematically and used to support bold conclusions, however, experimental archaeology may quickly assume the trappings of bad science. Drawing on experimental and archaeological data, Holen et al. (2017) have argued for the presence of an approximately 130 000-year-old archaeological site in California. In our recent critique (Magnani et al. 2019), we evaluated the experimental data used by the authors to support their claims. In considering Holen and colleagues' rebuttal (2019), we first draw attention to their openness to quantitative analysis and further experimentation. While this approach is positive, we maintain that more rigorous experimentation should have been performed before publication of the original extraordinary claims. We agree with Eren and Bebber's (2019) succinct criticism: as with other scientific disciplines, experimental archaeology has matured. As Eren has stated elsewhere, This discussion might sound axiomatic or commonsensical, but we have encountered archaeologists who think that the mere act of 'busting rocks' or using a stone tool to butcher an animal constitutes publishable research. This may have been the case at one time in the same way that the act of dissecting a mollusk would have resulted in a published biology paper 150 years ago (Eren et al. 2016: 108).

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