Anthropologists confirm the existence of specialized sheep-hunting camp in prehistoric Lebanon

The presence of a hunting camp, currently situated in north-eastern Lebanon, over 10,000 years old, has been confirmed by anthropologists at the University of Toronto – one that straddles the period marking the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural settlements at the onset of the last stone age.

The study of decades-old, collected from the Nachcharini Cave high in anti-Lebanon mountains that form the modern-day border between Lebanon and Syria, shows the site as a short-term hunting camp that served as a temporary outpost to emerging and more substantial villages elsewhere in the region, and that sheep were the primary game.

The finding confirms the hypothesis of retired U of T archeologist Bruce Schroeder, who excavated the site on several occasions beginning in 1972, but who had to discontinue his work when the Lebanese Civil War began in 1975.

“The site represents the best evidence of a special-purpose camp – not a village or settlement – in the region,” said Stephen Rhodes, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science and lead author of a study published this week in PLOS ONE.

“The cave was a contemporary of larger settlements further south in the Jordan Valley, and is the first site of its kind to show the predominance of sheep among the animals hunted by its temporary inhabitants.”

Radiocarbon dating of animal bones recovered from the site shows that it dates to an era known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), a period from about 10,000-8,000 BCE during which the cultivation of crops, the construction of mud-brick dwellings and other practices of domestication began to emerge. The stone tools found at the sites are mostly tiny arrowheads used for hunting.  

The new dates place the main deposits at the cave securely in the PPNA.

“Previous dates established in the 1970s were problematic and far too recent for unknown reasons, possibly due to contamination or incorrect processing,” said Rhodes, who coauthored the study with Edward Banning and Michael Chazan, both professors in U of T’s department of anthropology. 

“The results highlight the fact that people in the PPNA took advantage of a wide variety of habitats in a complex system of subsistence practices.”

It was already known that sheep hunting was practiced in this region throughout periods that preceded the PPNA, and the evidence found at Nachcharini Cave reinforces that understanding.

According to Rhodes, it consolidates our knowledge of the natural range of sheep, which pertains to a potential beginning of domestication in later years.

“We are not saying that hunters at Nachcharini were engaged in early stages of this domestication,” he said. “But the evidence of a local tradition makes this area a possible center of sheep domestication later on.”