Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Munro, Natalie D.
• Grosman, Leore
• Wright, Henry T.

Titel

Early evidence (ca. 12,000 B.P.) for feasting at a burial cave in Israel

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2010-08, Vol.107 (35), p.15362-15366

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2010

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Feasting is one of humanity's most universal and unique social behaviors. Although evidence for feasting is common in the early agricultural societies of the Neolithic, evidence in pre-Neolithic contexts is more elusive. We found clear evidence for feasting on wild cattle and tortoises at Hilazon Tachtit cave, a Late Epipaleolithic (12,000 calibrated years B.P.), burial site in Israel. This includes unusually high densities of butchered tortoise and wild cattle remains in two structures, the unique location of the feasting activity in a burial cave, and the manufacture of two structures for burial and related feasting activities. The results indicate that community members coalesced at Hilazon to engage in special rituals to commemorate the burial of the dead and that feasts were central elements in these important events. Feasts likely served important roles in the negotiation and solidification of social relationships, the integration of communities, and the mitigation of scalar stress. These and other social changes in the Natufian period mark significant changes in human social complexity that continued into the Neolithic period. Together, social and economic change signal the very beginning of the agricultural transition.