The silent coast: Zooarchaeological evidence to the development trajectory of a second millennium palace at Tel Kabri

The second millennium BC palaces along the coast of the southern Levant served as political and ideological centers of small, seaside polities. The seeming lack of literate administration and the evidence for non-intensive subsistence practices suggest, however, that a different political economic infrastructure lay at the foundation of these south Levantine peers to the palaces in Knossos and Mari. An analysis of the faunal remains from the Middle Bronze Age palace at Tel Kabri shows persistence of low-intensity traditional economy as the palace underwent a phase of territorial and cultural growth. Changes in butchery practices and culinary habits at that time resonate elite emulation of their peers across the sea, in resemblance to other fields of material culture. Our conclusion is that a palatial culture, complete with eastern Mediterranean elite trappings, could be grafted in the southern Levant to a stock of traditional and non-specialized economy with no literate administration.