The altitudinal mobility of wild sheep at the Epigravettian site of Kalavan 1 (Lesser Caucasus, Armenia): Evidence from a sequential isotopic analysis in tooth enamel

Abstract

Kalavan 1 is an Epigravettian hunting campsite in the Aregunyats mountain chain in northeastern Armenia (Lesser Caucasus). The site lies at an elevation of 1640 m in a bottleneck that controls the descent into the Barepat Valley from the alpine meadows above. The lithic and faunal assemblages show evidence of the production of hunting weapons, the hunting and targeting of wild sheep (Ovis orientalis), and the constitution of animal product reserves. A seasonal occupation of the site was proposed within a model of occupation by Epigravettian hunter-gatherers that involved a search for obsidian resources in high altitude sources from the spring to the summer and settling at Kalavan 1 at the end of summer or during autumn to coincide with the migration of wild herds from the alpine meadows to the valley. A key parameter of this model is wild sheep ethology, with a specifically seasonal vertical mobility, based on observations from contemporary mouflon populations from the surrounding areas. In this study, the vertical mobility of Paleolithic wild sheep was directly investigated through sequential isotope analysis (δ(18)O, δ(13)C) in teeth. A marked seasonality of birth is suggested that reflects a physiological adaptation to the strong environmental constraints of this mountainous region. Most importantly, a recurrent altitudinal mobility was demonstrated on a seasonal basis, which confirms that wild sheep migrated from lowland areas that they occupied in the winter and then moved to higher altitude meadows during the summer. Last, low inter-individual variability in the stable isotope sequences favors a hypothesis of accumulation for these faunal remains over a short time period. Overall, this new dataset strengthens the previous interpretations for Kalavan 1 and contributes to an understanding of the pattern of occupation of mountain territories by Epigravettian communities.

Early evidence of sheep lambing de-seasoning in the Western Mediterranean in the sixth millennium BCE

“…Consolidated data on birth seasonality in the early Holocene mouflon-the ancestor of domestic sheep -is currently lacking. Following the same analytical procedure as the one applied in the present study, stable isotope analyses of Ovis orientalis teeth at the Epigravettian hunting campsite of Kalavan (north-eastern Armenia) demonstrated a reduced birth period for mouflons around 12,000 BCE 61 . However, both the environmental framework (Late Glacial) and wild sheep ethology (vertical mobility) may have engendered specific pressure on their reproductive behavior.…”

Reconstruction of human subsistence and husbandry strategies from the Iberian Early Neolithic: A stable isotope approach

“…This common feeding/environment would imply the absence of sheep flocks or transhumance activities amongst the Early Neolithic community living in the cave (Martín et al, ). However, since bulk bone collagen reflects an average of the last years of life, it is difficult to find differences in isotopic values resulting from the seasonal movements between environments; sequential δ 13 C and δ 18 O isotopic analysis of teeth would be necessary to prove the absence of these types of husbandry practices (Tornero et al, , 2018). Even so, non‐transhumance activities would be in agreement with the characteristics of a big settlement such as Cueva de Chaves, and would confirm that it was not a site for short residence periods as is typical for mountain sites linked to sheep‐herding activities (Rojo‐Guerra et al, ).…”

Oxygen isotopes in bioarchaeology: Principles and applications, challenges and opportunities

“…Some studies have also made use of concurrent δ 13 C time-series data, exploiting the small seasonal changes in plant δ 13 C caused by varying degrees of water stress throughout the year (O'Leary, 1995) to identify relocation to cooler high altitude environments during the summer (Tornero et al, 2017). This approach is particularly relevant for targeting vertical movement patterns and has been used to identify vertical movements of mouflon during the Late Glacial Maximum in the Caucasus region (Tornero et al, 2016) and for caprine herds from the Chalcolithic period in central Anatolia . It should be noted that over-winter foddering may obscure this relationship through the creation of a negative association between δ 13 C and δ 18 O (Chase et al, 2014;Dufour et al, 2014;Makarewicz and Pederzani, 2017), although the co-analysis of wild fauna may go some way to discerning foddering and vertical transhumance in domesticates in certain regions (Makarewicz, 2017 (Britton, 2017).…”