Middle Palaeolithic subsistence in the Near East

This paper presents an overview of major trends and contributions of faunal studies to our understanding of Neanderthal and anatomically modern human lifeways and adaptations in the Near East. Prior to the 1980s, Near Eastern Middle Palaeolithic zooarchaeology served primarily as an adjunct discipline, a largely palaeontological means of reconstructing palaeoenvironments and as a tool for determining the relative age of sites. Faunal reports were often exceedingly brief, not uncommonly amounting to little more than species lists, and often relegated to an appendix. This technical and largely supportive role, though important and one that continues to make valuable contributions today, began to broaden in scope in the 1980s and 1990s, largely in response to Lewis Binford's provocative ideas about scavenging by early hominins at Olduvai Gorge, together with the infusion of taphonomic approaches and methodologies, also pioneered in sub-Saharan Africa, by CK Brain, Kay Behrensmeyer, Richard Klein, Henry Bunn,...