Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation Intensity in the Natufian

@article{Munro2004ZooarchaeologicalMO,
  title={Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation Intensity in the Natufian},
  author={Natalie D. Munro},
  journal={Current Anthropology},
  year={2004},
  volume={45},
  pages={S5 - S34}
}
  • N. Munro
  • Published 1 August 2004
  • Environmental Science
  • Current Anthropology
Climatic change, population pressure, and environmental stress are frequently cited as major catalysts for the adoption of agriculture. The role of these factors immediately prior to the agricultural transition in the southern Levant is here explored by reconstructing human economic and demographic conditions in the Natufian period. Thorough processing of gazelle carcasses for edible products including meat, marrow, and bone grease and the capture of abundant juvenile animals reflect intensive… 
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251 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
19
Background Citations
92
Methods Citations
11
Results Citations
9

251 Citations

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A remarkable deposit of bones of Persian gazelle from fourth millennium BCE levels at Tell Kuran in northeastern Syria provides insight into the unsustainable hunting practices that disrupted gazella migratory patterns and helped set the course for the virtual extinction of this species and possibly other steppe species in the Levant.
The Emergence of Animal Management in the Southern Levant
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The data support an onset of ungulate management practices by the Early PPNB (10,500–10,000 cal. BP), more than 500 years earlier than previously thought for this region.
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The role of foxes in the Natufian economy
The Natufian culture of the Levant represents a sedentary, terminal Pleistocene hunter-gatherer society. Excavations of Natufian hamlets yield rich faunal assemblages in which a significant rise in…
Human Hunting and Nascent Animal Management at Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic Yiftah'el, Israel
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The results reveal a direct trade-off between the intensive hunting of wild ungulates that had been staples for millennia, and domestic progenitor taxa that reflects the very beginning of this critical transition in the Mediterranean zone of the southern Levant.
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Tracking the Carbon Footprint of Paleolithic Societies in Mediterranean Ecosystems
There can be no question that the rise of agricultural economies some 10,000 years ago redefined humans’ relationship with nature. Such economies greatly amplified the potential of human cultural…
Changes in the ‘Connectedness’ and Resilience of Paleolithic Societies in Mediterranean Ecosystems
TLDR
The zooarchaeological findings suggest that Middle and Lower Paleolithic reproductive units probably were not robust at the micropopulation scale, due to the rather narrow set of behavioral responses that characterized social groups at the time, and thus localized extinctions at themicropopulations level were likely to have been common.
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References

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