Revisiting Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size change in the southern Levant: A case for anthropogenic impact.

ABSTRACT: The average body size of human prey animals in archaeological sites is influenced by myriad environmental, physiological and anthropogenic variables. When combined with supporting evidence, body size has the potential to provide a proxy for several variables of fundamental interest to archaeologists including climatic change, food availability and hunting impacts, among other things. In the southern Levant changes in mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size in the Late Pleistocene were initially interpreted as evidence for a climatic downturn, but the picture has become increasingly murky as data has grown. Here we reconsider trends in gazelle body size using an updated dataset from the Mediterranean zone that spans the Early Epipaleolithic to the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period

SUBMITTER: Munro ND 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9432756 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature