Animal Economy in the Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant: From Meat Source to Marketable Commodity

Economic development resulting from the exploitation of animals in the Chalcolithic period is considered one of the major factors that promoted early urbanism in the period that followed. In the current paper, we examine the animal economy in two phases of the Chalcolithic period, and track changes in exploitation of animals over time. We examine when and where exploitation of secondary products became intense. To do this, we reviewed published faunal assemblages from the southern Levant, and, based on models, estimated the exploitation of animals. Our results suggest that evidence for the exploitation of cattle for work and caprines for milk is present only beginning in the Late Chalcolithic-Ghassulian, and not from the earlier Wadi Raba and Pre-Ghassulian cultures. This significant economic advance, which transformed animal roles from a source of meat into a marketable commodity, occurred gradually across the studied period.