Domestication Revisited: Its Implications for Faunal Analysis

Faunal analysts are frequently asked to ascertain whether or not a prehistoric population practiced animal domestication. With this objective in mind, I applied standard faunal analysis techniques to a collection of over 15,000 bones from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Beidha in southern Jordan (7,000 to 6,500 B.C.). The results of my analysis were equivocal, with evidence both for and against domestication depending on the criteria selected and the definition used. In the course of trying to deal with such ambiguity, it became increasingly clear that the problem lay not with the data itself, but rather with the conceptualization of the problem. Hence a reformulation was necessary that would call attention to the cultural and processual aspects of this human-animal relationship without being restricted to the conceptually awkward term "domestication". In this light I suggest a new term, "cultural control", which allows us the freedom to consider a whole array of different types of human-animal relationships without being restricted by arbitrary, preconceived categories.