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

About this book

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 Contributions combine hitherto unpublished zooarchaeological data from regions straddling a wide geographic expanse between Greece in the West and India in the East and spanning a time range from the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. Bones and Identity constitutes the proceedings of the 11th meeting of the ICAZ Working Group – Archaeozoology of Southwestern Asia and Adjacent Areas (ASWA).

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 Oymaagaç 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

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