Gazelles, Liminality, and Chalcolithic Ritual: A Case Study from Marj Rabba, Israel

Abstract

Endangered today, gazelles were both economically and symbolically important to the peoples of the ancient Near East. In various contexts, the gazelle has represented liminality, death, and rebirth. Gazelles held special significance in the southern Levant, where archaeologists have documented cases, spanning 20,000 years, of ritual behavior involving gazelle body parts. What roles did gazelles play during the Chalcolithic (ca. 4500-3600 b.c.), a period of both decreased hunting and ritual intensification? In this article, we discuss a unique find of burned gazelle feet at the site of Marj Rabba (northern Israel). The feet were found within a well-constructed building that was used for rituals and included two articulated human feet. The gazelle foot bones, the majority of which derive from adult male mountain gazelles (Gazella gazella), appear to reflect the remains of intentionally destroyed skins or severed limbs. This unique find highlights the evolving symbolic importance of gazelles, perhaps as forces of liminality, in Chalcolithic rituals.

Cult, herding, and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia: Excavations at a mustatil east of AlUla

“…Furthermore, research also indicates that hunting activity, particularly of gazelles was endowed with symbolic or socially prestigious values [cf. [86][87][88][89][90][91][92]. As such, this species may have been deliberately interred for ritual purposes.…”

“…Ritualised hunting and feasting, of both wild and domestic taxa also played an important role in this tradition [101], as it did elsewhere across the Neolithic [cf. [86][87][88][89][90][91][92]. Although these practices have generally been ascribed to southern Arabia and a later time period [103], on the basis of the radiocarbon evidence from mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 it is possible that such beliefs have their origins earlier than previously supposed.…”

“…monuments, which, in conjunction with the size and scale of their construction points to a complex ritual practice. The inclusion of both wild and domestic taxa as votive offerings and the deliberate and specific ritual selection of upper cranial elements, particularly horns, have comparative precedent in other Neolithic ritual behaviours across the Near East [86][87][88][89][90][91][92]. Whilst the predominance of male animals (based on the identifiable corpus) and the slaughtering hypothesis may suggest an emphasis on fertility, pasturage and perhaps rain (or water), with the latter also suggested by the placement of the mustatils, often in close association with bodies of water.…”