The Prey Pathway: A Regional History of Cattle (Bos taurus) and Pig (Sus scrofa) Domestication in the Northern Jordan Valley, Israel

Abstract

The faunal assemblage from the 9th-8th millennium BP site at Sha'ar Hagolan, Israel, is used to study human interaction with wild suids and cattle in a time period just before the appearance of domesticated animals of these species in the Jordan Valley. Our results, based on demographic and osteometric data, indicate that full domestication of both cattle and suids occurred at the site during the 8th millennium. Importantly, domestication was preceded in both taxa by demographic and metric population parameters indicating severe overhunting. The possible role of overhunting in shaping the characteristics of domesticated animals and the social infrastructure to ownership of herds is then explored.

Provisioning the Ritual Neolithic Site of Kfar HaHoresh, Israel at the Dawn of Animal Management

“…This is less than the survivorship to one year of age in modern wild Sus populations in Spain in mountainous (58.6%) and riverine habitats (75%) [90]. Survivorship of Sus to one year of age (44%) is also lower at LPPNB KHH than at MPPNB Abu Gosh (98%) [85] and Yiftah'el (60%) [24], and at PPNC (80%) Sha'ar HaGolan [91]. …”

“…Although geographic variation likely influenced Bos body-size, there is a significant decline from the EPPNB to the PN in sites from the Mediterranean Hills and Jordan Valley. Cattle from KHH are significantly smaller than those from E–MPPNB Motza [94] (Mann-Whitney Pairwise test for similarity of means, p < .005), but significantly larger than those from the PN phase from Sha'ar HaGolan [91] (p < .001) (Fig 10). The decline in Bos body-size is most pronounced between the FPPNB and the PN at Sha'ar HaGolan [91].…”

The Paleo-Anthropocene and the Genesis of the Current Landscape of Israel

“…This region has seen intensive human activity for ~1.5 million years which attests to the earliest hominin sites; but in particular, during the past ca. 10,000 years, since the "Neolithic Revolution" (Horwitz et al, 1999;Weiss et al, 2004;Zohary et al, 2012;Marom & Bar-Oz, 2013). The latter brought about far reaching changes to the landscape such as deforestation, intentional burning, establishment of cultivated fields and terraces, grazing regimes etc.…”

Documenting the initial appearance of domestic cattle in the Eastern Fertile Crescent (northern Iraq and western Iran)

“…Moreover, although cattle management is evident at Tell Aswad in the eighth millennium BC (Helmer and Gourichon, 2008), domestic cattle are not widespread in the Jordan Valley and the coastal plain of the southern Levant nor in the mountainous Caucasus region until the sixth millennium BC providing parallel examples of the slow spread of cattle management in those regions (Hansen et al, 2006;Lyonnet et al, 2015). In contrast to the situation in the EFC, some regions of the southern Levant were characterized by traditions of intensive aurochs hunting (Horwitz and Ducos, 2005) and Marom and Bar-Oz (2013) have argued intensive overhunting by Neolithic agropastoralists preceded the appearance of domesticates, presumably acquired from northern Levantine neighbors. No such tradition of aurochs hunting is identifiable in the EFC (although for Çay€ onü see Hongo et al, 2009) where there is no evidence that the depression of aurochsen populations led to the uptake of domesticates.…”

“…Cattle management was practiced in the Damascus basin at Tell Aswad in the eighth millennium BC (Helmer and Gourichon, 2008), but domestic cattle appear quite late in the rest of the southern Levant. Although the remains of aurochs are abundant in some early Neolithic sites, especially along the Mediterranean coastal plain and in the Jordan Valley, small sized domestic cattle are not evident in the southern Levant until the late seventh and early sixth millennium cal BC (Becker, 2002;Haber and Dayan, 2004;Horwitz and Ducos, 2005;Marom and Bar-Oz, 2013).…”