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The work by J. U. Duerst (1908) on the animal remains from Anau North was a foundation for the study of the origins of animal use in a developing food producing economy. Working without precedent, Duerst drew attention to the significance of archaeological remains for studying geographic variation and evolution in domestic mammals. His analysis of taxonomic abundance showed differences across the stratigraphic sequence, allowing him to speculate on the process of economic change. He made careful observations of traces which he interpreted as cultural modification, but he had only distant analogies to the remains from Neolithic Switzerland for most of his interpretations. The study of faunal remains from Anau North provides a baseline for comparison with other periods at Anau, as well as complementing data from contemporary sites in Central Asia and on the Iranian plateau. Here we present the most important findings from the excavations of the 1978-1982 excavations at Anau North in the context of Duerst’s main conclusions (Ermolova 1985). In addition, we place in context the recent reexamination of equid (horse/ass) bones from Anau North (Forsten 2000). Duerst was sent one-half ton of bones from the 1904 excavations, marked in the field with preliminary excavation contexts from the north, south, and east mounds. From the north mound excavations, the bones were marked with period “I, II, or III”, equivalent to Anau IA, Anau IB and Anau II respectively, in this study. Of this massive collection, 3500 identifiable bones were catalogued, studied, and published in 1908. Duerst claimed to have identified remains of horse, wild ox, wild sheep, gazelle, and wolf in the lowermost strata (Anau IA) and to have found bones of horse, wild ox, wild sheep, pig, red deer, gazelle, and fox in the strata above (Anau IB). In the uppermost strata of the North Mound (Anau II) Duerst identified remains of horse, wild ox, pig, sheep, camel, dog, gazelle, and rare bones of other fauna. The ability to key Duerst’s uppermost and lowermost samples into the present day sequence provides us with faunal samples from a large spectrum of layers at Anau North including layers of the earliest and latest occupations of the site for which no other samples are available. Duerst’s large sample of faunal materials from Anau North provides evidence of a significant number of young sheep- and goat-sized animals throughout the sequence. This pattern is comparable with the data from Ilgynli depe concerning herd composition , a strong indication that animals were tended at the site (Kasparov 1994b). In the uppermost layer (our Anau IIB), Duerst noted the appearance of a hornless domestic sheep in contrast to the horned sheep of the earlier levels. Duerst identified a substantial proportion of hunted animals in relation to herd animals throughout the sequence, as much as 25% of the food remains deriving from hunting (Duerst 1908:341). Duerst also observed a general decline in the importance of wild fauna in the collections of the uppermost layers (Anau IIA and IIB). While these observations could not be repeated at Anau North due to heavy erosion of the upper levels, the appearance of a smaller, more docile herd animal prior to the shift to a larger-scale urban occupation of the Anau delta is consistent with results found at the slightly later levels at the site of Ilgynli depe (Kasparov 12 Animal Herding, Hunting, and the History of Animal Domestication at Anau depe K. M. Moore, N. M. Ermolova, and Ann Forsten 1994a), as well as with the faunal assemblages of the later urban Bronze Age sites of the Kopet Dag foothill plain (Ermolova 1968, 1983). New Studies of the Faunal Remains The stratigraphic excavations of the North Mound at Anau from 1978 to 1982 produced an additional corpus of osteological material that included more than a thousand identifiable bones (NISP) (Table 12.1) (Ermolova 1985). The stratigraphic excavations in 1997 provided further information on the smallest fauna from the site such as rodents, fox, birds, and tortoise, expanding the picture of the site’s local environment, but do not change the overall picture of a sheep-cattle herding economy. Cattle At Anau North a large number of long-horned cattle bones were identified for the first time from the Kopet Dag region. Cattle were an original part of the local pastoral herd structure. Cattle bones make up 30-40% of the domesticated animals, but when unidentified bone of the sheep and goat size class are added to this sample...

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