Hallan Çemi, pig husbandry, and post-Pleistocene adaptations along the Taurus-Zagros Arc (Turkey)

Abstract

Recent work at Hallan Çemi and other round house horizon sites in eastern Anatolia indicates that the Taurus-Zagros flanks were a second autochthonous center of neolithization in southwestern Asia. Fully settled complex hunter-gatherer societies are in existence in this area by the late Younger Dryas. These settled village societies were based on adaptations that did not involve cereal exploitation, presumably because cereals were absent in this area during the late Younger Dryas. Instead, these adaptations revolved around the exploitation of nuts and pulses, plus the hunting of ovicaprids and deer supplemented by early experiments with animal husbandry involving pigs. They are thus distinct from those that served as the foundation for the earliest sedentary societies in the Levant. Most current attempts to explain the beginnings of settled village life in southwestern Asia are based solely on Levantine data, which until recently were virtually all that were available. The Anatolian data do not conform to the Levantine pattern and thus raise serious questions about the general validity of these models.