‘Man made oases’: Neolithic patterns of wild ungulate exploitation & their consequences for the domestication of pigs & cattle

This paper studies the changes observed in wild ungulate game procurement strategies between the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic periods in the southern Levant. It is proposed that the advent of agricultural societies in the Neolithic caused an increase in the frequency of encounters between human hunters and wild ungulate taxa drawn to agriculturally-modified habitats. This higher frequency of encounters is responsible for the observed shift from gazelle- and fallow deer-dominated assemblages in the Epipalaeolithic to the wild boar- and aurochs-dominated assemblages in the Neolithic. The intensification of hunting wild boar and aurochs during the Neolithic is argued to have given rise to a trajectory towards the cultural control of these taxa.