Bones and Identity: Zooarchaeological Approaches to Reconstructing Social and Cultural Landscapes in Southwest Asia

Seventeen papers demonstrate how zooarchaeologists engage with questions of identity through culinary references, livestock husbandry practices and land use. Contributions combine hitherto unpublished zooarchaeological data from regions straddling a wide geographic expanse between Greece in the West and India in the East and spanning a time range from the latest part of the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages. The vitality of a hands-on approach to data presentation and interpretation carried out primarily at the level of the individual site – the arena of research providing the bread and butter of zooarchaeological work conducted in southwest Asia – is demonstrated. Among the themes explored are shifting identities of late hunter-gatherers through interactions with settled agrarian societies; the management of camp sites by early complex hunter-gatherers; processes of assimilation of Roman culinary practices among Egyptian elites; and the propagation of medieval pilgrim identity through the use of seashell insignia. A wealth of new data is discussed and a wide variety of applications of analytical approaches are applied to particular case studies within the framework of social and contextual zooarchaeology. The volume constitutes the proceedings of the 11th meeting of the ICAZ Working Group - Archaeozoology of Southwestern Asia and Adjacent Areas (ASWA).

Table of Contents

Editors’ Introduction



1. Palaeolithic animal remains in the Mount Carmel Caves: a review of the historical and modern research, by Reuven Yeshurun


2. A new look at "on Mice and Men": Should commensal species be used as a universal indicator of early sedentism?, by Miriam Belmaker and Ashley B. Brown


3. Subsistence strategies in the aceramic Neolithic at Chogha Golan, Iran, by Britt M. Starkovich, Simone
Riehl, Mohsen Zeidi, and Nicholas J. Conard


4. Adoption, intensification and manipulation of sheep husbandry at Tell Halula, Syria during the Middle to Late PPNB, by C. Tornero, M. Molist and M. Saña


5. A Taphonomic and technological analysis of the butchered animal bone remains from Atlit Yam, a submerged PPNC site off the coast of Israel, by Haskel J. Greenfield, Trent Cheney and Ehud Galili


6. Changes in ‘demand and supply’ for mass killings of gazelles during the Holocene, by O. Bar-Yosef


7. Halaf Period animal remains from Tell Aqab, northeastern Syria, László Bartosiewicz


8. Prehistoric molluscan remains from Tell Aqab, northeastern Syria, by Catriona Pickard


9. Preliminary analysis of the fauna from the Early Bronze Age III neighbourhood at Tell es-Safi/Gath,
Israel, by Haskel J. Greenfield, Annie Brown, Itzhaq Shai and Aren M. Maeir


10. Bronze Age walls and Iron Age pits – contextual archaeozoology at Oymaağaç Höyük, Turkey, by Günther Karl Kunst, Herbert Böhm and Rainer Maria Czichon


11. Every dog has its day: cynophagy, identity and emerging complexity in Early Bronze Age Attica, Greece, by Angelos Hadjikoumis


12. Human-animal interactions during the Harappan Period in the Ghaggar Region of northern India: insights from Bhirrana, by Arati Deshpande-Mukherjee, Amrita Sen, and L. S. Rao


13. Bringing to light the animal bone assemblages from the ancient burials of Armenia, by Nina Manaseryan


14. Making the cut’: changes in butchering technology and efficiency patterns from the Chalcolithic to modern Arab occupations at Tell Halif, Israel, by Haskel Greenfield and Annie Brown


15. Class and “Romanization” in Late Roman Egypt: issues of identity and the faunal remains from the site of Amheida in the Dakleh Oasis, Western Egypt, by Pam J. Crabtree and Douglas V. Campana


16. Meat consumption patterns as an ethnic marker in the late Second Temple Period: comparing the Jerusalem City Dump and Qumran assemblages, by Ram Bouchnik


17. There and back again: a tale of a pilgrim badge during the Crusader Period, by Inbar Ktalav

Nimrod Marom is a research fellow at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa and lecturer of archaeology at Tel-Hai College. He studies faunal assemblages from Neolithic to early modern archaeological sites, currently focusing on the Bronze and the Iron Ages of Tel Hazor, Tel Kabri, Tel Akhziv, Tel Abel Beth-Maacha, and Zincirli Höyük.

Reuven Yeshurun is lecturer of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. his main research interests are in the Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic periods, focusing on the first settled societies of the Near East and especially on the Natufian Culture.

Lior Weissbrod is a research fellow at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. He is interested in the evolutionary relationship between human culture and biodiversity and in reconstructing the environments and palaeoecology of ancient human settlements.

Guy Bar-Oz is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. His research experience in zooarchaeology includes excavation and analysis of numerous prehistoric and historic bone assemblages from Israel and the Caucasus. His research focuses on the evolution of human hunting and subsistence behaviour in prehistory, the development of complex economic-subsistence systems in the historic periods of the Near East, and human impact on the environment.