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A Journey Begins with a Single Step: How Early Holocene Humans and Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Embarked on the Pathway to Domestication in the Eastern Fertile Crescent

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Abstract

Analysis of a large assemblage of Sus scrofa remains from Hallan Çemi, an Early Holocene (c. 11,700 BP) site in southeastern Turkey, provides new insights into pre-domestication patterns of human harvesting and management of this important species. Harvest profiles resulting from a range of documented hunting and herding strategies, when combined with new methods for demographic profiling, reveal emergent mutualisms between humans and wild boar that set the stage for active management. As local wild boar populations began taking advantage of increasingly anthropogenically altered environments around Hallan Çemi, humans developed procurement strategies that both increased harvest yields and helped sustain population levels of S. scrofa. The evolution of these strategies into more active management at later sites in the region is also traced. New methods for detecting morphological change in S. scrofa over the c. 300 year occupation of Hallan Çemi show that lower molars underwent size change. Metric data from 18 contemporary and later sites reveals the differential impacts of emergent domestication on different S. scrofa skeletal elements over a 4000-year period. Taxonomic and part distributional data highlight the increasing importance of S. scrofa in feasting activities at Hallan Çemi over time. We conclude that feasting and other community-enhancing activities at Hallan Çemi worked together with increasing engagement in niche modification to promote the level of cohesion and material support needed to sustain a sedentary community over the longue durée and to create the sustained interactions needed for domestication.

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Data Availability

The data sets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are included in this article and in the electronic supplemental information files.

Notes

  1. There are taxonomic and terminological challenges in discussing the transition from wild to domestic Sus scrofa. “Wild boar” is commonly used in English to refer to free-living S. scrofa, while “pig” is generally reserved for domesticated forms of this species, even though both wild boars and pigs are both taxonomically classified as Sus scrofa. The term “boar”, however, primarily refers to S. scrofa (wild or domestic) of the male sex, while “sow” is used for females (again, regardless of domestic status). Acknowledging the connotation that associates “wildness” with “maleness” inherent in the term, for clarity and consistency, it is best to use the complete term “wild boar” to refer to free-living S. scrofa individuals and populations, and to specify either male or female when indicating sex. The same applies to domesticated S. scrofa, reserving the term “pig” to denote animals of domestic status, adding either male or female to signify sex. Such binary terms, however, fail to capture the transitional status of this species as it moved from wild to domestic. Since this transition is the focus of our discussion and to avoid the assumptions carried by these terms, we will for the most part avoid using any of these common names, electing to use the Latin name Sus scrofa (or S. scrofa) throughout. While this terminology is more cumbersome than any of these shorter common names, it is not only more accurate, but its ambiguity also serves our purposes by not prejudging where these animals are along their pathway to domestication. We rely instead on the various lines of evidence we consider to provide us with signposts along this journey, without trying to determine when these animals crossed some hypothetical threshold from wild to domestic.

  2. This article makes extensive use of supplemental material both for length considerations and to help those interested in particular topics and data sets locate relevant material. ESM Appendix 1 contains discussions of methodological issues. ESM Appendix 2 contains tables with proportional data and the raw data on which proportions are based. ESM Appendix 3 contains the results of statistical tests, while ESM Appendix 4 contains descriptive statistics for metric data. ESM Appendix 5 contains the metric data itself. ESM Appendix 6 contains additional graphical representations of patterns discussed in the text.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Bruce Smith, Michael Rosenberg, and Richard Redding, for offering comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to three anonymous reviewers who provided detailed, comprehensive, and exceedingly helpful comments. Special thanks go to Adam Wilkins who offered valuable insights into the conundrum of variability in molar size changes.

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 8619), the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society (9113–13), and the Scholarly Studies Humanities Fund of the Smithsonian Institution to Zeder and by Wenner-Gren Grant (Gr. 9416) and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GR.DGE-1143954) to Lemoine.

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Zeder developed analytical protocols, oversaw and performed analysis, developed methods applied, and wrote the paper. Lemoine helped oversee and performed analysis, developed demographic profiling models and methods, and contributed to the development of other analytical methods applied.

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Correspondence to Melinda A. Zeder.

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Zeder, M.A., Lemoine, X. A Journey Begins with a Single Step: How Early Holocene Humans and Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Embarked on the Pathway to Domestication in the Eastern Fertile Crescent. J Archaeol Method Theory 30, 895–963 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-022-09576-4

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