Mammalian community assembly in ancient villages and towns in the Jordan Valley of Israel

In this chapter, we apply indices of diversity from community ecology to long-term faunal data found within a confined geographical region - the northern Jordan Valley of Israel - in order to consider these data from a multispecies perspective. A substantial temporal gradient is seen here to represent the sequence through which sets of zooarchaeologically important species formed and were modified through time. Groups of taxa including wild game, domestic herd animals, and commensal animals coalesced into the communities of mammalian species of which humans were major players and that maintained a complex web of interactions among their members and with local ecologies.