Dissertation Research: Small Game Use and Human Economic and Demographic Change at the Transition to Agriculture in the Levant

在Mary Stiner博士的指导下，Natalie Munro女士将为她的博士论文收集数据。她项目的目标是了解导致近东动植物驯化的过程，为此，她将分析在挖掘三个考古遗址期间发现的小型动物遗骸。所有这些都归因于纳图菲亚文化(大约在13,000到10,000年前)。这是该地区农牧业出现之前的一段时间。纳图菲亚人是最后一个靠狩猎和采集食物为生的人，许多考古学家认为，详细了解他们的生存方式将有助于揭示随后发生的重大革命。Stiner和Munro之前对来自Hayonim洞穴遗址的Natufian材料的分析表明，对小型动物，特别是鸟类和野兔的严重依赖令人惊讶，这些物种很难狩猎，它们繁殖迅速，因此可以承受沉重的捕食压力。这一发现是不寻常的，因为纳图菲亚人通常被视为生存专家，他们严重依赖瞪羚作为食物。门罗假设，纳图菲亚人转向更小、更不受欢迎的小动物可能反映了食物资源的压力和枯竭，很可能是人类人口增加的结果。如果是这样的话，它将支持“推动”论点，即人类社会推动利用广泛的资源和开发有效的技术来获得排名较低的食物。这样的策略在逻辑上会导致驯化的方向。门罗女士将分析哈约尼姆洞穴和其他两个纳图菲亚遗址剩余的纳图菲亚动物群，以确定初步模式是否实际上是正确的。她将检查骨骼，以确定哪些是人类活动的结果，以及样本受到自然沉积后破坏的偏差程度。她将重建屠宰模式和特定物种的死亡情况。随着已发表的生物学数据的纳入，她将能够确定人类如何利用和依赖这些物种，以及这些种群反过来是如何受到影响的。这一项目不仅有助于理解“新石器时代革命”，而且有助于培养一位有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Mary Stiner, MS Natalie Munro will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. The goal of her project is to understand the processes which led to the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East and to this end she will analyze small faunal remains recovered during the excavation of three archaeological sites. All are attributable to the Natufian culture (ca. 13,000 to 10,000 years ago). This is the time period which immediately preceded the appearance of agriculture and pastoralism in the region. The Natufians were the last people to subsist on hunted and gathered foods and many archaeologists believe that a detailed understanding of their subsistence practices will shed light on the major revolution which followed. Previous analyses by Stiner and Munro on Natufian material from the site of Hayonim cave has indicated a surprisingly heavy reliance on small animals, especially birds and hares, species which are difficult to hunt, which reproduce rapidly and therefore can withstand heavy predation pressure. This finding is unusual because Natufian peoples are generally viewed as subsistence specialists who depended heavily on gazelle for food. Munro postulates that the Natufian shift to small and less desirable small animals likely reflects pressure on and depletion of food resources, likely the result of human population increase. Were such the case, it would bolster "push" arguments which postulate that human societies where pushed to utilize a broad range of resources and develop effective techniques to obtain low ranked foods. Such a strategy would logically lead in the direction of domestication.MS Munro will analyze the remaining Natufian fauna from Hayonim Cave as well as from two other Natufian sites to determine whether the preliminary pattern is in fact correct. She will examine bones to ascertain which result from human activity and the extent to which the sample is biased by natural post depositional destruction. She will reconstruct butchering patterns and species specific mortality profiles. With the incorporation of published biological data she will be able to determine how humans utilized and relied on these species and how in turn these populations were affected. This project will not only contribute to understanding the "Neolithic Revolution" but also assist in training a promising young scientist.