Can you identify evidence for animal domestication in the faunal data and is there any circumstantial evidence for plant domestication?

The Archeological Research

Describe patterns of seasonal site distribution. There is no reason to suspect that any one group’s subsistence area incorporated the entire area, nor that all people living in the region followed the same subsistence pattern.

1. Can you identify evidence for animal domestication in the faunal data and is there any circumstantial evidence for plant domestication? If so,in what sites and during what periods do you find this evidence?

2. What factors do you think led to the domestication of animals (and perhaps plants) in this region? Do you think human population pressure played a role? And do the data support Ingold’s alternative interpretation of the trajectory of domestication?

3. What seems to be the impact of domestication on human lifeways in terms of mobility, group size, and political economy? Do you see evidence of major changes in the use of natural resources around these sites that are correlated with domestication?

4. Are there certain areas where domestication seems not to have occurred,or domesticates are lacking? What reasons might explain these absences – i.e., what factors may have led to the domestication of
animals and plants in some subregions, and not others?

5. Consider how your SAMPLE data relate to the POPULATION of animals from which they were drawn. You obviously have only a few sites’ worth of data to work with, and you’re relying on limited excavations even within those sites (i.e., 10% of their total area). Also, your survey data is from a relatively small geographical area. In what ways might the sampling procedure be influencing your interpretations? If you had only dealt with one site from among all those in the area, would you have been able to come to the same conclusions about settlement patterns and the timing and location of domestication?