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Abstract
Understanding Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyles and changes in their subsistence patterns is pivotal in investigating one of the milestones in the human evolution, namely, the transformation from the exploitation of wild plant and animal resources to the production of domestic variants of these resources.
At the most fundamental level, this dissertation sheds new light on the nature of forager adaptations and changes in their exploitation of wild animal resources during a part of the Epipaleolithic period that extends from 20,000 to 13,500 calibrated years BP in the western Taurus Mountains of Mediterranean Turkey. Archaeofaunal assemblages excavated from Karain B and Öküzini caves were analyzed and interpreted within a regional framework to illuminate the nature of human behavioral strategies before the onset of Neolithic economies across the Near East.
This research sought answers to the following anthropological question: Did Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers of the Western Taurus adopt new strategies like those observed for Levantine hunter-gatherers or did they follow a completely different and/or independent developmental trajectory?
In order to answer this question, the investigation integrates the following aspects of zooarchaeological research: (1) assemblage composition and characterization, (2) changes in animal exploitation patterns and hunting strategies through time, (3) mobility patterns, site use and function, inter-site variation, and seasonality in animal exploitation.
The results of a comprehensive zooarchaeological analysis combined with the extensive archaeological research have yielded ample evidence for the following forager adaptations during the final part of the Pleistocene in the Western Taurus Mountains: (1) specialization on the intensive exploitation of wild sheep and goat, (2) intensive procurement of caprine carcasses including labor-expensive marrow and bone grease, (3) increased dietary breadth during the Bölling/Allerød climatic optimum and favoring environmental conditions, (4) nonselective and stable hunting strategy targeting prime-age caprines throughout the Epipaleolithic, and (5) a shift from seasonally restricted mobility and hunting pattern to unrestricted multiseasonal mobility and hunting pattern.
Given the geographically restricted and thus somewhat biased nature of archaeological research in the Near East, new data from the poorly-known Turkish Epipaleolithic provide researchers with new opportunities to study human adaptations through the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene.
