Changing use of birds across the agricultural transition at Pınarbaşı, Turkey

Abstract

Central Anatolia is one of the earliest areas to practice agriculture outside of the Fertile Crescent. This makes it an important case study in how the shift to agriculture affected the use of wild resources, in this case birds. The Pınarbaşı site, located next to a major wetlands area on the Konya Plain in central Anatolia, has components from the 14th-12th millennia, 10th-9th millennia, and 7th millennium cal BC – spanning the Epipaleolithic to the Ceramic Neolithic. While agriculture is present in the region during the middle (10th-9th millennia) occupation, the Pınarbaşı people remained foragers. The 7th millennium occupation is contemporary with the later levels at agricultural Çatalhöyük and very likely derives from seasonal use by task groups from that site.Not surprisingly given its location, waterbirds dominate throughout all these periods. Although the Epipaleolithic (14th-12th millennia) use of the site consists of a palimpsest of brief visits while the 10th-9th millennia occupation was permanent, the bird assemblages are very similar. However, the proportion of waterbirds reduces considerably in the 7th millennium. In contrast to the bird assemblage at nearby Çatalhöyük, which is weighted toward wings probably reflecting the extensive use of feathers, the Pınarbaşı bird bones are spread fairly evenly through the body at all periods, suggesting that birds were taken primarily for food. This is true even in the 7th millennium assemblage, linked to Çatalhöyük; these Çatalhöyük people made quite different use of birds away from the site. Pınarbaşı also differs from Çatalhöyük in the selection of waterbirds: whereas geese outnumber ducks in the contemporary levels at Çatalhöyük, geese are quite scarce at Pınarbaşı in all periods, although proportionately slightly more common in the 7th millennium. More strikingly, ducks, which dominate the earlier assemblages, decrease sharply. With 7th millennium occupation during spring and fall migrations when geese and ducks should have been abundant, this does not appear to be a seasonal effect. Birds seem to have been less important to the shepherds and hunters visiting Pınarbaşı than they were to the earlier foragers: farming reoriented relations to the landscape.