Early cattle installation in Çatalhöyük.
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The 9500-year-old farming settlement of Çatalhöyük, in Turkey, which has spectacular wall paintings and sculptures of bulls, has long been considered the site of the first known domesticated cattle. But a new analysis of cattle bones at the site suggests it's not.
The claim was based on a 1969 Science paper by the late zooarchaeologist Dexter Perkins, who argued that the bones were not as large as those of wild cattle. But a new team of faunal experts led by Nerissa Russell of Cornell University and Louise Martin of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London has examined 4321 bone pieces. Relying not just on size but also sex and age patterns, which differ between hunted and herded animals, they conclude in the December issue of Current Anthropology that the cattle were wild during at least the first three-quarters of the 1200-year life of the settlement.
Zooarchaeologist Simon Davis of the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology in Lisbon says the conclusion is "a little strange" in light of recent evidence from Cyprus suggesting that cattle were herded there more than 10,000 years ago, as well as slightly later signs of domestication at other Near Eastern sites. But zooarchaeologist Melinda Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., says the new findings are "solid" and "more compatible" with the evident symbolic status of the animals, whose horns and skulls adorn many of Çatalhöyük's mud-brick houses. "Elsie the cow hardly makes an impressive cult figure," she says.
CREDIT: JASON QUINLAN/ÇATALHÖYÜK RESEARCH PROJECT
