Significance
Goats were among the first domestic animals and today are an important livestock species; archaeozoological evidence from the Zagros Mountains of western Iran indicates that goats were ...managed by the late ninth/early eighth millennium. We assess goat assemblages from Ganj Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein, two Aceramic Neolithic Zagros sites, using complementary archaeozoological and archaeogenomic approaches. Nuclear and mitochondrial genomes indicate that these goats were genetically diverse and ancestral to later domestic goats and already distinct from wild goats. Demographic profiles from bone remains, differential diversity patterns of uniparental markers, and presence of long runs of homozygosity reveal the practicing and consequences of management, thus expanding our understanding of the beginnings of animal husbandry.
The Aceramic Neolithic (∼9600 to 7000 cal BC) period in the Zagros Mountains, western Iran, provides some of the earliest archaeological evidence of goat (
Capra hircus
) management and husbandry by circa 8200 cal BC, with detectable morphological change appearing ∼1,000 y later. To examine the genomic imprint of initial management and its implications for the goat domestication process, we analyzed 14 novel nuclear genomes (mean coverage 1.13X) and 32 mitochondrial (mtDNA) genomes (mean coverage 143X) from two such sites, Ganj Dareh and Tepe Abdul Hosein. These genomes show two distinct clusters: those with domestic affinity and a minority group with stronger wild affinity, indicating that managed goats were genetically distinct from wild goats at this early horizon. This genetic duality, the presence of long runs of homozygosity, shared ancestry with later Neolithic populations, a sex bias in archaeozoological remains, and demographic profiles from across all layers of Ganj Dareh support management of genetically domestic goat by circa 8200 cal BC, and represent the oldest to-this-date reported livestock genomes. In these sites a combination of high autosomal and mtDNA diversity, contrasting limited Y chromosomal lineage diversity, an absence of reported selection signatures for pigmentation, and the wild morphology of bone remains illustrates domestication as an extended process lacking a strong initial bottleneck, beginning with spatial control, demographic manipulation via biased male culling, captive breeding, and subsequently phenotypic and genomic selection.
In the 1960–70s, fieldwork in the central Zagros Mountains produced evidence of early Holocene Neolithic settlements in this mountainous zone along the ‘Eastern wing’ of the Fertile Cre-scent. ...Following a long hiatus in fieldwork, new investigations have highlighted once more the po-tential of the transitional Neolithic (c. 9600–8000 BC) and early Neolithic (c. 8000–7000 BC) se-quence in this region. However, some of the pivotal sites that had originally been excavated in the 1960–70s were not published in adequate detail, leaving many questions unanswered. Recent field-work at Asiab and Ganj Dareh directed by the authors has sought to address the issues raised by these previously unpublished excavations. Here we summarise the results of our recent work at these two sites and discuss their implications for our understanding of neolithisation in the central Zagros.
In the 1960–70s, fieldwork in the central Zagros Mountains produced evidence of early Holocene Neolithic settlements in this mountainous zone along the ‘Eastern wing’ of the Fertile Cre-scent. ...Following a long hiatus in fieldwork, new investigations have highlighted once more the po-tential of the transitional Neolithic (c. 9600–8000 BC) and early Neolithic (c. 8000–7000 BC) se-quence in this region. However, some of the pivotal sites that had originally been excavated in the 1960–70s were not published in adequate detail, leaving many questions unanswered. Recent field-work at Asiab and Ganj Dareh directed by the authors has sought to address the issues raised by these previously unpublished excavations. Here we summarise the results of our recent work at these two sites and discuss their implications for our understanding of neolithisation in the central Zagros.
Summary
Communal buildings have been reported from a number of early Neolithic sites from the Levant and Anatolia, but none were known from the central Zagros. Here we report on the recent ...excavations at Asiab, Kermanshah province, Iran, and argue that the principal feature found during Robert Braidwood’s excavation at the site in 1960 should be interpreted as an example of a communal building. We discuss the results of the previous and recent excavations, highlight the key features of this building, and the implications for our understanding of the early Neolithic in the ‘eastern wing’ of the Fertile Crescent.
Les pierres à feu en silex montrent une usure caractéristique : une série de coups aiguisés, irréguliers et des marques sur des surfaces restreintes de la tranche. On les connaît bien depuis l'âge de ...la Pierre et l'âge du Bronze en Europe du Nord. Au Proche-Orient, des pierres à feu ont été identifiées sur plusieurs sites néolithiques (Çatal Höyük, Aşikh Höyük, Labweh et Beidha). On suggère que, au Néolithique, la méthode qui consiste à frapper un morceau de silex ou de soufre contre un autre morceau de silex pour obtenir du feu était généralement utilisée en Anatolie et au Levant. Mais l'absence apparente de pierres à feu -et de pointes de flèche à pédoncule également -dans les assemblages de pierres taillées du Zagros et de Hassuna/Samarra pourrait suggérer qu'au Néolithique nous avons affaire à deux traditions lithiques différentes, régionalement déterminées : une tradition occidentale, prévalant en Anatolie et en Méditerranée orientale, et une tradition orientale couvrant la Mésopotamie du Nord et le Zagros. Firestones or strike-a-lights made of flint exhibit a characteristic kind of wear, seen as a series of sharp, irregular blow-offs and scars within restricted areas of the edge. They are well known from the Stone and Bronze Ages of Northern Europe. In the Near East firestones have been identified at several Neolithic sites (Çatal Höyük, Aşikh Höyük, Labweh and Beidha). It is suggested that the method of making fire by striking a piece of flint or sulphur against another piece of flint was generally used in Anatolia and in the Levantine Neolithic, whereas the apparent lack of firestones - and of tanged arrowheads as well - in the Zagros and in the Hassuna/Samarra chipped stone assemblages might suggest that in the Neolithic we are dealing with two different, regionally determined lithic traditions: a western tradition, prevailing in Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and an eastern tradition covering Northern Mesopotamia and the Zagros. تظهر لنا اﻷحجار الصوانية المستخدمة في إشعال النار تلفاً ملحوظاً: سلسلة من الضربات المشحوذة غير ﺍﻟﻤﻨﺘﻈﻤﺔ مع وجود ﻋﻼﻣﺎﺕ على أسطح محددة من الشريحة. عرفت هذه الحجارة بشكل جيد منذ العصر الحجري والعصر البرونزي في أوروبا الشمالية. وجدت حجارة النار في الشرق اﻷدنى، في عدة مواقع نيوليتية (شاتال هيوك، أسيكلي هيوك، اللبوة، بيضا). نعتقد أن استخدام هذه التقنية للحصول على النار من ضرب حجر صوان أو کبريتي على حجر آخر كانت تقنية مستخدمة بشكل عام في اﻷناضول والمشرق. لکن النقصان الظاهر في حجارة النار - وأيضاً في رؤوس السهام ذات الفرضات - في مجاميع الحجارة المطروقة في زاغروس، وحسونة/سامراء يستطيع أن يثبت أنه في الفترة النيوليتية يوجد تقليدين مختلفين للطرق، مميزين محلياً: تقليد غربي وهو الغالب في اﻷناضول والمتوسط المشرقي، وتقليد مشرقي .يغطي منطقة ﺑﻼﺩ مابين النهرين الشمالية وزاغروس .
Firestones or strike-a-lights made of flint exhibit a characteristic kind of wear, seen as a series of sharp, irregular blow-offs and scars within restricted areas of the edge. They are well known ...from the Stone and Bronze Ages of Northern Europe. In the Near East firestones have been identified at several Neolithic sites (Çatal Höyük, Aşıklı Höyük, Labweh and Beidha). It is suggested that the method of making fire by striking a piece of flint or sulphur against another piece of flint was generally used in Anatolia and in the Levantine Neolithic, whereas the apparent lack of firestones – and of tanged arrowheads as well – in the Zagros and in the Hassuna/Samarra chipped stone assemblages might suggest that in the Neolithic we are dealing with two different, regionally determined lithic traditions: a western tradition, prevailing in Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and an eastern tradition covering Northern Mesopotamia and the Zagros.
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