Hunting Specialisation and the Broad Spectrum Revolution in the Early Epipalaeolithic: Gazelle Exploitation at Urkan e-Rubb IIa, Jordan Valley
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This present research explores the impact of Flannery’s (1969) Broad Spectrum Revolution model within the context of the Levantine Epipalaeolithic, specifically the early (Kebaran) Epipalaeolithic. This model attempts to explain changes in subsistence behaviour associated with the end of the Pleistocene leading up to the development of agriculture. The Jordan valley represents an ideal model for Flannery’s marginal habitat because of the range of different flora and fauna required more intensive resource exploitation strategies. The discussion here focuses on the zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of two faunal assemblages (representing two sub-horizons) from Urkan e-Rubb IIa, a Kebaran site located in the lower Jordan Valley, and excavated by E. Hovers (Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University Jerusalem), in 1986 and 1988. This site shows evidence of specialised gazelle hunting and processing. Initial interpretations of the site argued for a multi-purpose residential base camp, supported by lithic tool and shell bead manufacturing. Recent discussions of Epipalaeolithic diet breadth have concentrated on the end of the Pleistocene (Munro 2001, 2003, 2004, 2009; Stiner 2001; Stiner & Munro 2002; Stiner et al. 1999, 2000; Stutz et al. 2009) and have been directed towards explaining changing subsistence patterns towards the end of the Epipalaeolithic (i.e. the Natufian), where an increased use of wild cereals and small game has been well documented. The view that it is not until the Natufian that broad spectrum resource strategies were used is questioned here. Major questions that are addressed with this research include: What do the faunal assemblages from Urkan e-Rubb IIa tell us about Kebaran subisistence behaviour? Do broad spectrum models help to shed light on subsistence adaptations at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum? What can recent analyses of Jordan Valley faunal assemblages contribute to the discussion? These are addressed through a detailed zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the Urkan e-Rubb IIa fauana, followed by synchronic and diachronic analyses of Levantine Epipalaeolithic assemblages, through a combination of taxonomy-based diversity indices and prey-ranking indices.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".