Spread of domestic animals across Neolithic western Anatolia: New stable isotope evidence from Uğurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey

RESEARCH ARTICLE Spread of domestic animals across Neolithic western Anatolia: New stable isotope evidence from Uğurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey Suzanne E. Pilaar Birch ID1,2*, Levent Atici3, Burçin Erdoğu4 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America, 2 Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States of America, 3 Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America, 4 Department of Archaeology, University of Akdeniz, Antalya, Turkey * Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Pilaar Birch SE, Atici L, Erdoğu B (2019) Spread of domestic animals across Neolithic western Anatolia: New stable isotope evidence from Uğurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey. PLoS ONE 14(10): e0222319. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222319 Editor: Peter F. Biehl, University at Buffalo - The State University of New York, UNITED STATES Received: December 20, 2018 Accepted: August 28, 2019 Published: October 10, 2019 Copyright: © 2019 Pilaar Birch et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and Supporting Information files. Funding: This research was made possible by grants to Levent Atici (PI) and Suzanne E. Pilaar Birch from National Geographic Society (Grant# 9674-15) (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/), to Levent Atici from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (http://www.unlv.edu), to Suzanne E. Pilaar Birch from the University of Georgia (http://www. uga.edu), to Burçin Erdoğu from the Turkish The origins of agriculture in Southwest Asia over 10,000 years ago and its subsequent spread into Europe during the Neolithic have been the focus of much archaeological research over the past several decades. Increasingly more sophisticated analytical techniques have allowed for better understanding of the complex interactions that occurred amongst humans, animals, and their environments during this transition. The Aegean Islands are critically situated where Anatolia and the mainland Greece meet, making the region pivotal for understanding the movement of the Neolithic into Europe. Located on the largest Turkish Aegean island of Gökçeada, the site of Uğurlu Höyük dates to the early Neolithic and has been the subject of ongoing excavations and research integrating a rigorous dating program with comprehensive zooarchaeological research. This paper focuses on the combination of bone collagen and tooth enamel stable isotope data with existing archaeological data to develop a fine-resolution picture of the spread of the Neolithic, particularly the importation and management of domestic fauna on Gökçeada, with broader relevance for understanding Aegean-Anatolian interactions. The stable isotope values from the fauna at Uğurlu have been used for both diachronic intrasite analyses and intersite comparisons between contemporaneous mainland sites. Integrating stable isotope and zooarchaeological datasets makes Uğurlu one of the first island sites to provide a comprehensive understanding of the geographic origin of Neolithic livestock populations and the timing of their spread from Anatolia into Europe during the process of Neolithization. Introduction The current body of research surrounding the Neolithization of Europe and the spread of agricultural lifestyles from the Near East across Anatolia, the Balkans, and beyond has grown exponentially in recent years, with studies that increasingly combine emerging methodologies and PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222319 October 10, 2019 1 / 18 New stable isotope evidence from Uğurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism (http://www.kultur. gov.tr/?_dil=2) and the University of Thrace (BAP 2014-25) (http://www-en.trakya.edu.tr). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. techniques with extant archaeological data. It is critical that secondary types of analysis on faunal remains, such as that of stable isotopes and ancient DNA, are performed at sites and on material that has already been studied by a zooarchaeologist in order to provide a solid foundation for interpretation [1]. This paper builds on over a decade of excavations at the site of Uğurlu Höyük, Gökçeada, Turkey, directed by B. Erdoğu [2–8] and the most recent comprehensive analysis of the faunal assemblage to date, published by the authors (Atici et al.) in 2017 [9]. Here, we first incorporate the stable isotope analysis of terrestrial taxa at Uğurlu into broader anthropological questions about the spread of agriculture from approximately 6500 to 5000 cal. BC. We then situate the site and our results within a wider regional context (Fig 1) and explanatory framework. We do not set out to provide an exhaustive review of the multifaceted and complex process of the spread of domestic livestock throughout Anatolia, but rather consider the unique contribution of stable isotope data from faunal remains to our understanding of their role at Uğurlu, given its setting as both an island “endpoint” as well as a dynamic landmark on the thoroughfare of agricultural spread. Regional zooarchaeological context Uğurlu Höyük is a low mound covering an area of approximately 250 × 200 m. Six main cultural phases have so far been identified and designated I-VI from the top down. In this paper, we focus on Phases V-III at Uğurlu, which correspond to the early Neolithic (6500–6000 cal BC, Phase V), late Neolithic (5900–5600 cal BC, Phase IV) and early Chalcolithic (5500–5000 cal BC, Phase III) [3]. In our previous paper [9], we discussed established relationships between Uğurlu and the island of Gökçeada with sites in western and central Anatolia, Marmara, Thrace, the Balkans, and other Aegean islands based on ceramics, technological typologies and lithic sources, and added faunal evidence to that corpus. Here, we briefly review some of these as well as other sites relevant to a discussion of faunal assemblages and their isotopic analysis. Despite the continuing growth of stable isotope analysis in archaeology in general, there are still relatively few published faunal-centered studies with large sample sizes in Turkey that date to the Neolithic. Contemporaneous sites in western Anatolia include Çukuriçi and Ulucak. At Çukuriçi, the earliest dates for the Neolithic are 6770–6480 cal BC and there are domestic sheep, goat, cattle, and some young pigs, with substantial marine input in the diet; wild animal (...truncated)