A Journey Begins with a Single Step: How Early Holocene Humans and Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Embarked on the Pathway to Domestication in the Eastern Fertile Crescent

Analysis of a large assemblage of Sus scrofa remains from Hallan Çemi, an Early Holocene (c. 11,700 BP) site in southeastern Turkey, provides new insights into pre-domestication patterns of human harvesting and management of this important species. Harvest profiles resulting from a range of document...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of archaeological method and theory 2023-09, Vol.30 (3), p.895-963
Main Authors: Zeder, Melinda A., Lemoine, Ximena
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Archaeology
Demography
Domestication
Feasting
Holocene
Humans
Hunting
Profiles
Sedentary
Social Sciences
Time use
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Summary:Analysis of a large assemblage of Sus scrofa remains from Hallan Çemi, an Early Holocene (c. 11,700 BP) site in southeastern Turkey, provides new insights into pre-domestication patterns of human harvesting and management of this important species. Harvest profiles resulting from a range of documented hunting and herding strategies, when combined with new methods for demographic profiling, reveal emergent mutualisms between humans and wild boar that set the stage for active management. As local wild boar populations began taking advantage of increasingly anthropogenically altered environments around Hallan Çemi, humans developed procurement strategies that both increased harvest yields and helped sustain population levels of S. scrofa . The evolution of these strategies into more active management at later sites in the region is also traced. New methods for detecting morphological change in S. scrofa over the c. 300 year occupation of Hallan Çemi show that lower molars underwent size change. Metric data from 18 contemporary and later sites reveals the differential impacts of emergent domestication on different S. scrofa skeletal elements over a 4000-year period. Taxonomic and part distributional data highlight the increasing importance of S. scrofa in feasting activities at Hallan Çemi over time. We conclude that feasting and other community-enhancing activities at Hallan Çemi worked together with increasing engagement in niche modification to promote the level of cohesion and material support needed to sustain a sedentary community over the longue durée and to create the sustained interactions needed for domestication.
ISSN:1072-5369
1573-7764
DOI:10.1007/s10816-022-09576-4