Changes in Human Subsistence Activities from the Middle Paleolithic to the Neolithic Period in the Middle East.

Abstract

The modern human skeletal form, more gracile than the preceding robust Ne and ertal form, appeared in the Upper Paleolithic period. The development of agriculture occurred in the Neolithic period. Both of these transformations are investigated by focussing on one aspect of human subsistence activities; the diet. Trace element analysis is used to measure strontium levels in bone. The amount of strontium in bone is determined by the amount of strontium in an animal's diet. Plants contain relatively high strontium levels, and herbivorous animals have relatively high bone strontium levels. Very little strontium is retained in the soft tissues of animals, and carnivorous animals have relatively low bone strontium levels. The relative amount of bone strontium is an indication of the proportion of meat to vegetable material in the diet. Samples of human and faunal bone from three Middle Paleolithic period sites (Tabun, Skhul, Qafzeh), three Epipaleolithic period deposits (Kebara C, Kebara B, el-Wad) and two Neolithic period sites (Ganj Dareh and Hajji Firuz) were analyzed in order to monitor the pattern of change in diet throughout these periods. Two techniques of analysis were used, atomic absorption spectrometry and neutron activation analysis. A rank order correlation coefficient of 0.85 (Spearman's Rho), calculated from the two sets of results, indicates that the results are internally reliable and reflect bone strontium levels ( and diet) rather than technique error. Internal st and ards of cleaned cow bone analyzed within each run produced a level of precision of +/-6% of the mean. The results of the analysis indicate that little or no change in diet occurred throughout the Middle Paleolithic period or between the Middle Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic periods. This suggests that changes in emphasis on hunting did not play a major role in the reduction in skeletal robusticity that produced the modern human form. Other changes in tool efficiency or in group organization in such activities may have been more important. A major change in diet occurred between the early phase and the late phase of the Epipaleolithic period. This shift toward an increased ingestion of plant material occurred at the same time as an amelioration of the climate and a spread of wild cereals across broad areas of the Middle East. No major dietary change occurred, however, at the inception of agriculture in the Neolithic. Sedentism, a concomitant increase in population size, a mosaic of habitat productivity, and a particular sequence of climatic change all seem to have acted in the shift to domestication. Agriculture appears to have been an economic means of continuing a dietary adaptation developed earlier in the late phase Epipaleolithic period.