Mesopotamian fallow deer and the chase in later Neolithic Cyprus

Insights from upper Mesopotamia, the Levant and badia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID13095279
AutoresAlexander Wasse (Yeditepe University, autor de correspondencia), Joanne Clarke (0000-0002-7954-6561, University of East Anglia)
Año2023
Volumen48
Páginas103909-103909
Fecha de publicación2023-03-08
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Archaeological Science Reports (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2352-409X • E-ISSN: 2352-4103
EditorialElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103909
OpenAlexW4323542953
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas33

The nature of Neolithic hunting in the Near East and on Cyprus was different. • Neolithic hunting in the Near East may have included the commodification of prey. • Neolithic hunting in the Near East may have been linked to risk-buffering. • Neolithic hunting on Cyprus was probably the result of low occupation intensity. • The steppe is likely to have been an important source of wild-animal products. This article compares and contrasts the role of hunting in Cypriot and mainland faunal economies of the 8th to 6th millennia cal. BC. It is well known that during this period Cyprus was characterised by the persistence of low-intensity adaptations based primarily on hunting of Mesopotamian fallow deer. Although this period witnessed a revitalisation of hunting in some mainland economies, especially in or on the margins of the greater Syrian desert, what might superficially appear to be an adaptive convergence between island and mainland was nothing of the sort. Strong arguments can be made that post-domestication revitalisations of hunting on the mainland stem either from intensification generally and the commodification of prey in particular, or from risk-buffering attempts to mitigate against perceptions of scarcity. On Cyprus, however, the paradigmatic predation of Mesopotamian fallow deer that endured into the mid Holocene appears to have been a relict of Pleistocene-style ‘controlled predation’, facilitated by low occupation intensity at island - if not always site - level and the likely survival of unhunted game reservoirs between catchments

Archaeology · Biology · Bronze Age · China · Domestication · Geography · Human settlement · Mainland · Mainland China · Mesopotamia · Period (music · Predation · Scarcity · Southern Levant · Animal Diversity and Health Studies · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation · Ecology

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