The Small Animals of Maasai Settlements: Ethnoarchaeological Investigations of the Commensalism Model

This research was designed to test Tchernov\u27s model of commensalism and the idea that remains of commensal species that today coexist with humans in settlement environments could be used to detect early sedentism in the archaeological record. The validity of the model has been questioned due to the lack of empirical knowledge on commensalism in a wide range of settlement environments including sedentary and more mobile ones. This study examined the commensalism model by focusing on seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews: micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements. The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of increasing duration of human occupation, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations

The urban ecology of Iron Age Tel Megiddo: using microvertebrate remains as ancient bio-indicators

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Ancient Urban Ecology Reconstructed from Archaeozoological Remains of Small Mammals in the Near East

Acknowledgments We especially thank the many archaeologists who collaborated closely with our project and invested pioneering efforts in intensive fine-scale retrieval of the archaeozoological samples that provided the basis for this study: Shai Bar, Amnon Ben-Tor, Amit Dagan, Yosef Garfinkel, Ayelet Gilboa, Zvi Greenhut, Amihai Mazar, Stefan Munger, Ronny Reich, Itzhaq Shai, Ilan Sharon, Joe Uziel, Sharon Zuckerman, and additional key excavation personnel who were instrumental in collection of the samples or in assisting the work including: Shimrit Bechar, Jacob Dunn, Norma Franklin, Egon Lass and Yiftah Shalev. Funding:The research was funded by a post-doctoral grant awarded to L.W. from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007e2013)/ERC grant agreement number 229418. The laboratory work was also supported by funding by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 52/10). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data.

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival-subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries

Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago

International audienceReductions in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistoceneinfluenced settlement ecologies, altered human relations withanimal communities, and played a pivotal role in domestication.The influence of variability in human mobility on selection dynamicsand ecological interactions in human settlements has not beenextensively explored, however. This study of mice in modern Africanvillages and changingmicemolar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequencefrom the Levant demonstrates competitive advantages for commensalmice in long-term settlements. Mice from African pastoralhouseholds provide a referential model for habitat partitioningamong mice taxa in settlements of varying durations. The datareveal the earliest known commensal niche for house mice in longtermforager settlements 15,000 y ago. Competitive dynamics andthe presence and abundance of mice continued to fluctuate withhuman mobility through the terminal Pleistocene. At the Natufiansite of Ain Mallaha, house mice displaced less commensal wild miceduring periods of heavy occupational pressure but were outcompetedwhen mobility increased. Changing food webs and ecologicaldynamics in long-term settlements allowed house mice to establishdurable commensal populations that expanded with human societies.This study demonstrates the changing magnitude of cultural nicheconstruction with varying human mobility and the extent of environmentalinfluence before the advent of farming

The earliest evidence for Upper Paleolithic occupation in the Armenian Highlands at Aghitu-3 Cave

With its well-preserved archaeological and environmental records, Aghitu-3 Cave permits us to examine the settlement patterns of the Upper Paleolithic (UP) people who inhabited the Armenian Highlands. We also test whether settlement of the region between ∼39–24,000 cal BP relates to environmental variability. The earliest evidence occurs in archaeological horizon (AH) VII from ∼39–36,000 cal BP during a mild, moist climatic phase. AH VI shows periodic occupation as warm, humid conditions prevailed from ∼36–32,000 cal BP. As the climate becomes cooler and drier at ∼32– 29,000 cal BP (AH V-IV), evidence for occupation is minimal. However, as cooling continues, the deposits of AH III demonstrate that people used the site more intensively from ∼29–24,000 cal BP, leaving behind numerous stone artifacts, faunal remains, and complex combustion features. Despite the climatic fluctuations seen across this 15,000-year sequence, lithic technology remains attuned to one pattern: unidirectional reduction of small cores geared towards the production of bladelets for tool manufacture. Subsistence patterns also remain stable, focused on medium-sized prey such as ovids and caprids, as well as equids. AH III demonstrates an expansion of social networks to the northwest and southwest, as the transport distance of obsidian used to make stone artifacts increases. We also observe the addition of bone tools, including an eyed needle, and shell beads brought from the east, suggesting that these people manufactured complex clothing and wore ornaments. Remains of micromammals, birds, charcoal, pollen, and tephra relate the story of environmental variability. We hypothesize that UP behavior was linked to shifts in demographic pressures and climatic changes. Thus, by combining archaeological and environmental data, we gain a clearer picture about the first UP inhabitants of the Armenian Highlands

The small animals of Maasai settlement: Ethnoarchaeological investigations of the commensalism model

Changes in mobility have long been considered a critical factor affecting social and economic change during transitions from hunting and gathering to food production. Archaeologists have relied on a wide range of indirect indicators of sedentism and the intensity of site occupation such as site size and structural complexity. One of the key problems has been how to ascertain more precisely how change in mobility combined with other factors of economic and social intensification. More than 40 years ago, Tchernov (Bar-Yosef and Tchernov 1966) first proposed the idea that remains of commensal species that today coexist with humans in settlement environments could be used to detect early sedentism in the archaeological record. Subsequent studies of the earliest occurrence of commensal house mice (Mus musculus domesticus ) in sites of complex Natufian hunter-gatherers of southwest Asia established a link between pronounced levels of commensalism and what is generally believed to have been one of the first sedentary cultures in the world. The commensalism model related increasing populations of commensal species and decreasing biological diversity to changes in the intensity of human site occupation. It was expressly developed to test assumptions about decreasing mobility among Natufian hunter-gatherers and their role in the subsequent domestication of plants and animals and emergence of agricultural villages. The validity of the model was later questioned, however, due to the lack of empirical knowledge on commensalism in a wide range of settlement environments including sedentary and more mobile ones. This research was designed to test Tchernov's commensalism hypothesis through a study of seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews (micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements. The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of decreasing settlement mobility, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations

A micromammalian fauna from a Byzantine columbarium Near Be'er Sheva, Israel (text in Hebrew)

This is a short report describing an assemblage of micromammalian remains retrieved from a Byzantine period structure in the Negev region of Israel. It includes a short preliminary text (in Hebrew), two figures and a table. A table of taxonomic composition with Latin scientific names of taxa is included. The same file is also available for download in English

Eynan spring/Aïn Mallaha: A common thread linking the past and the present: Exhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha archaeological site from June 2023

Exhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha site from June 2023. Written in 4 languages (English, French, Hebrew, Arabic); archive photos; drawings by artist Pascaline Gaussein. Funding: French Institute in IsraelExhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha archaeological site from June 2023. Written in 4 languages (English, French, Hebrew, Arabic); archive photos; drawings by artist Pascaline Gaussei

From hunter-gatherers to farmer-herders. Exhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha archaeological site from June 2023

Exhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha site from June 2023. Written in 4 languages (English, French, Hebrew, Arabic); archive photos and drawings by artist Pascaline Gaussein. Funding: French Institute in IsraelExhibition panel displayed at Eynan-Mallaha archaeological site from June 2023. Written in 4 languages (English, French, Hebrew, Arabic); archive photos and drawings by artist Pascaline Gaussei