Caprine husbandry and initial pig management east of the Jordan Valley: Animal exploitation at Neolithic Wadi Shu’eib, Jordan

Abstract

Husbandry of domesticated caprines emerged as a central component of southern Levantine subsistence systems by the end of the 10th millennium cal. BP and remained so through the mid-9th millennium cal. BP when pigs and cattle were first heavily exploited in the Northern Jordan Valley. New zooarchaeological analyses of a chronologically significant assemblage from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement of Wadi Shu’eib— located at a crucial geographical interface between the Jordan Valley and the Jordanian highlands— provide additional information on local PPN developments in goat and sheep husbandry strategies, as well as new insights into the timing and processes involved with nascent pig and cattle management. Goat husbandry served as the foundation of animal-based subsistence at Wadi Shu’eib. Sheep were relatively unimportant overall at the settlement, but intensification in the exploitation of larger-bodied animals during the PPNC suggests a shift in harvesting strategies that promoted the survivorship of adult rams or, more controversially, the exploitation of new sheep stock. The high abundance of pigs present at Wadi Shu’eib throughout the Neolithic, combined with the exploitation of large-bodied suids and a focus on adult kill-off during the Late PPNB, followed by the exploitation of small-bodied pigs and intensive slaughter of young pigs during the PPNC, suggests nascent management of pigs was underway by the 9th millennium cal. BP some five hundred years earlier than previously thought for the Southern Levant.