Building large communities: Multi isotope investigations of human mobility and diet in the earliest large villages

一万二千年前，在最后一个冰河时代末期，西南亚的流动狩猎采集者逐渐开始在很少超过几公顷的地点生活在10-100人的小型社区中。大约1万年前，许多这样的遗址消失了，同时出现了一些大型遗址。这些新的巨型遗址面积超过10公顷，人口数量达到数千人，需要新的社交形式。在这个时候，这些都是第一个这样的城市，被一些人描述为世界上第一个城镇。位于现代土耳其的联合国教科文组织世界遗产Çatalhöyük遗址就是这些早期的大型遗址之一。它被占领了大约1500年，比今天的许多社区持续的时间更长，只有英国伦敦等历史悠久的现代城市的持续时间可以与之媲美。早期的小社区流动性很强，食用的食物种类繁多，这些食物都是通过狩猎、采集和捕鱼获得的。1万年前，当像Çatalhöyük这样规模更大、流动性更低的群落出现时，食物来自的植物和动物种类越来越少。对鱼类和鸟类的依赖减少了，转而以牛羊等反刍动物为食。这些大型遗址也对伙伴交换系统（类似于亲属关系/婚姻/联盟）产生了深远的影响，这些社会实践与社区规模密切相关。为了防止近亲繁殖，小社区的男女通常会离开去加入其他社区，而那些小社区会接受外来者。对于能够支持社区内伙伴交换的大型社区来说，这个过程是不必要的，除非有政治原因不这样做。似乎是合作伙伴交换系统的转变促成了（并维持了）第一个大型站点的出现。这个项目的重点是通过稳定同位素分析重建伴侣交换和饮食，这项技术使我们能够检测人们是否在他们出生的同一地点死亡（从而告诉我们他们是否从其他地方搬到那里），以及他们一生中大部分时间都吃什么植物和动物。我们将对来自Çatalhöyük大型遗址的成年人类、动物和植物遗骸进行这些分析，并使用附近两个较小的早期社区Boncuklu Höyük和Pinarbasi进行比较。我们的项目侧重于使用稳定同位素分析来重建饮食和流动性，因为量化不同种类的植物和动物（特别是水生资源）在生活在这些社区的人们的饮食中的重要性是困难的，因为古代烧焦的植物和鱼骨不能很好地生存。同样，这些遗址的居民经常通过粉碎骨头来提取脂肪，这意味着这些遗址中有很高比例（80-95%）的动物骨头来自无法准确识别的动物，物种比例估计可能不正确。已经有一些初步证据表明，在Çatalhöyük上存在外星人。体质人类学家指出，牙齿形状的遗传差异表明，许多女性并非来自当地家庭。在我们的项目中，锶同位素分析可以在同一个人身上进行测试，这是由于保存不良而无法通过DNA分析进行测试的。通过重建在觅食和农耕社区中运作的伴侣交换系统，将有可能在伴侣交换系统中建立任何性别特定的模式，这种模式伴随着最早的巨型遗址的出现，以及使这些第一个大型社区能够存活数百年（如果不是数千年的话）的饮食。

Twelve thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the mobile hunter-gatherers of southwest Asia gradually began to live in small communities of 10-100s at sites that rarely measured more than a few hectares. Around 10,000 years ago a number of these sites disappeared and at the same time a few large sites emerged. These new mega-sites measured more than 10 hectares in size with populations numbering in the thousands that required new forms of socialising. At this date these were the first of their kind and have been described by some as the world's first towns and cities. The site of Çatalhöyük, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in modern Turkey, was one of these early mega-sites. It was occupied for around 1500 years, persisting longer than many communities today and comparable in duration only to long-established modern cities such as London, England.Early small communities were highly mobile and consumed a broad range of foods from species that were acquired through hunting, gathering and fishing. By the time the larger less mobile communities such as Çatalhöyük emerged 10,000 years ago, food came from an increasingly narrow range of species of plants and animals. Reliance on fish and birds declined in favour of a specialisation on ruminants such as sheep and cattle. These mega-sites would also have had a profound impact on partner exchange systems (akin to kinship/marriage/alliance), social practices that are closely influenced by community size. To prevent inbreeding, men and women from smaller communities would normally leave to join other communities and those smaller communities would accept outsiders. This process is unnecessary for larger communities who can support partner exchange within the community unless there are political reasons not to do so. It seems likely that transitions in partner exchange systems enabled the emergence of (and sustained) the first mega-sites. This project focuses on reconstructing partner exchange and diet through stable isotope analysis, a technique that allows us to detect whether people died in the same location in which they were born (thereby telling us if they have moved there from elsewhere) and what plants and animals they ate for most of their lives. We will perform these analyses on adult human, animal and plant remains from the mega-site of Çatalhöyük and use the two nearby small earlier communities Boncuklu Höyük and Pinarbasi for comparison. Our project focuses on the use of stable isotope analysis to reconstruct diet and mobility because quantifying the importance of different species of plants and animals (particularly aquatic resources), in the diet of people that lived in these communities is otherwise difficult because ancient charred plants and fish bone do not survive well. Similarly, the inhabitants of these sites routinely extracted fats from bone by smashing them, which has meant that a very high proportion of animal bone (80-95%) on these sites comes from animals that cannot be accurately identified and species proportion estimates that may be incorrect. There is already some tentative evidence that outsiders exist at Çatalhöyük. Physical anthropologists have shown that inherited differences in tooth shape suggest that many women were not from local families. Strontium isotope analysis in our project will enable this to be tested on the same individuals, something which cannot be tested by DNA analysis due to poor preservation.By reconstructing the partner exchange systems that operated in foraging versus farming communities it will be possible to establish any sex-specific patterning in partner exchange systems that accompanied the emergence of the earliest mega-sites and the diet that enabled these first large communities to survive for hundreds if not thousands of years.