Besides mammals, ranging from aurochs to hares, or fish, foragers also pursued an impressively large spectrum of bird species in Southeast Anatolia 11,000 years ago. They were hunted mainly, but not exclusively, in autumn and winter \u2013 at the time of year, when many bird species form larger flocks and migratory birds cross the area. The species lists are therefore very extensive: At the Early Neolithic settlement of G\u00f6bekli Tepe, for example, c. 18 km northeast of present-day \u015eanl\u0131urfa (SE Anatolia, Turkey), the researchers identified the remains of at least 84 bird species. Dr. Nadja P\u00f6llath, curator at the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeoanatomy (Staatssammlung f\u00fcr Pal\u00e4oanatomie M\u00fcnchen SNSB-SPM) and Prof. Dr. Joris Peters, chair of the Institute for Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and History of Veterinary Medicine at LMU M\u00fcnchen and director of the state collection, identified the Neolithic bird bones with the aid of the reference skeletons of the state collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers were surprised by the large number of small passerine birds identified at G\u00f6bekli Tepe, comprising mainly starlings and buntings. In principle, the Early Neolithic inhabitants of G\u00f6bekli Tepe hunted birds in all habitats \u2013 mainly in the open grassland and wooded steppe in their direct surroundings, but also in the wetlands and gallery forest somewhat further away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We do not know exactly, why they hunted so many small passerine birds at G\u00f6bekli Tepe. Due to their low live weight, the effort exceeds the meat yield by far. Perhaps they were simply a delicacy that enriched the menu in autumn, or they had a significance that we cannot deduce yet from the bone remains,\u2019 Nadja P\u00f6llath comments on her findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inhabitants of Gusir H\u00f6y\u00fck, another Early Neolithic settlement on the shores of Lake Gusir, about 40 km south of the present-day provincial capital of Siirt, even further southeast in present-day Turkey, had a different approach: When fowling they pursued almost exclusively two species populating open hilly grasslands: the Chukar partridge (Alectoris chukar<\/em>) and the grey partridge (Perdix perdix<\/em>). They apparently ignored the avifauna of the nearby floodplains and the lake. Among several hundred fragments from Gusir H\u00f6y\u00fck, the archaeozoologists from Munich could not identify a single bone pertaining to waterfowl. \u2018Gusir H\u00f6y\u00fck is the only Neolithic community in Upper Mesopotamia known to us that deliberately avoided wetlands and riverine landscapes when fowling, although they were present. Our results suggest that this was a cultural peculiarity of the Neolithic people inhabiting Gusir H\u00f6y\u00fck,\u2019 said Prof. Dr. Joris Peters. \u2018Our comparison of a number of Early Neolithic sites in the region revealed that the sites in the Euphrates Basin share many similarities regarding their meat procurement, while each community in the Tigris Basin seemingly developed its own subsistence strategy,\u2019 adds Nadja P\u00f6llath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neolithic settlers of Upper Mesopotamia hunted birds not only for their meat. Some species, such as cranes or raptors, certainly had a more symbolic meaning and served ritual purposes, the researchers suspect. In a future study, they will focus on these socio-cultural aspects of the human-avian relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Publication:<\/strong> Contact:<\/strong> Staatssammlung f\u00fcr Pal\u00e4oanatomie M\u00fcnchen Birds were an important source of food for hunter-gatherer communities in Upper Mesopotamia at the beginning of the Neolithic period, around 9,000 years BCE. This is shown in a new study by SNSB and LMU archaeozoologists Dr. Nadja P\u00f6llath and Prof. Dr. Joris Peters. The two scientists analysed bird remains from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9000,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9011"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9025,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011\/revisions\/9025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
P\u00f6llath, N., Peters, J. Distinct modes and intensity of bird exploitation at the dawn of agriculture in the Upper Euphrates and Tigris River basins. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 15, 154 (2023).
https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s12520-023-01841-1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Nadja P\u00f6llath
SNSB – Staatssammlung f\u00fcr Pal\u00e4oanatomie M\u00fcnchen (SNSB-SPM)
Tel.: 08121 7089 33 oder 08241 911 95 09
E-Mail: poellath@snsb.de<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/snsb.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/38b10d3a-1024x680.jpg\")
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(Photo: N. P\u00f6llath, SNSB-SPM)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"