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Institute of Archaeology

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Kate Swinson

Over-Hunting, Population Pressure, or Climate Change? Meta-Analysis of the Drivers of Faunal Change in the Late Palaeolithic Levant

 

Email: kate.swinson.15@ucl.ac.uk
Section: Archaeological Sciences

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Over-Hunting, Population Pressure, or Climate Change? Meta-Analysis of the Drivers of Faunal Change in the Late Palaeolithic Levant

My doctoral research aims to unravel the drivers of faunal change in the Levant, during the Late Palaeolithic (28,000-12,000BP).

Flannery's influential Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) model, proposing a shift from larger to smaller, previously under-used animals during the Late Palaeolithic Levant, stimulated others to document the trend. Stiner et al. argue that the shift results from population pressure and over-hunting of large desirable prey, while Zeder suggests that 'cultural niche-construction' impacted species availability. After 40 years of BSR research, the question of what drove faunal diversity changes prior to agriculture has emerged as a crux of current debate.

My research aims to address the following research questions:

1. How do animal taxa vary temporally and geographically?

2. Does faunal 'turnover' occur synchronously across environmental zones?

3. To what extent do the following factors explain faunal variation?

a) Climate and ecological shifts impacting availability

b) Increased human population leading to over-hunting

c) Shifts in human selective choice

I plan to analyse all published faunal data from the Late Palaeolithic Levant - a rich data-set gathered from hundreds of sites. Relative abundance will be the main form of data analysed in order to assess taxa exploitation. However, metric and ageing data will also be incorporated in order to investigate shifts in size and age profiles. The data will be compiled in a database which upon completion will be an open resource for other researchers facilitating additional meta-analyses.

My research questions will be addressed using a statistical approach - correspondence analysis in combination with other exploratory methods. These methods will visualise patterns present in the faunal data, whilst subsequent regression analysis will investigate the explanatory power of underlying drivers.

Funding

LAHP (AHRC)

Education

    • DipHE, Medicine, University of Glasgow, 2011
    • BSc, Archaeology, University of Durham, 2015
    • MSc, Environmental Archaeology, University College London, 2016