Birds from the oven: the Middle Palaeolithic avifauna of Tabun Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2025) 17:90 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-025-02197-4 RESEARCH Birds from the oven: the Middle Palaeolithic avifauna of Tabun Cave, Mount Carmel, Israel Linda Amos1,2 · Reuven Yeshurun1 · Mina Weinstein‑Evron1 · Ron Shimelmitz1 Received: 24 July 2024 / Accepted: 27 February 2025 / Published online: 26 March 2025 © The Author(s) 2025 Abstract The long Middle Palaeolithic sequence of Tabun Cave covers a vital time of human dispersal across the Levant, both from Africa and from Europe. The sequence contains two of the human morphotypes found in the Levant during this period, most usually assigned to Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, providing a unique opportunity to investigate whether there are behavioural differences between the two human groups. We approach this through the bird remains that offer a novel proxy to examine changes in the palaeoenvironment and potentially, human subsistence at Mount Carmel during the Middle Palaeolithic. We present the first systematic account of avian remains from Tabun layers C and B, along with a detailed taphonomic study. We identified 47 avian species from 27 stratified samples at Tabun Cave, including game birds, diurnal and nocturnal raptors, waterbirds, pigeons, and small songbirds. All constitute part of the present, or historically documented, avifauna of Israel, though not necessarily in the vicinity of the cave. Raptors seem to be a major depositional agent of birds in the cave, especially in the upper sedimentary unit (Tabun B). In contrast, some human contribution to the avian deposition is suggested in the lower part (Tabun C), based on the taxonomic dominance of rock doves and some evidence for cooking. Humans likely collected and exploited birds from the adjacent coastal plain, too. The identified avian taxa represent a full annual cycle of sedentary and migratory species, indicating largely similar conditions to the present day in Tabun B. Conversely, fluctuations in humidity and temperature in Tabun C were in conjunction to the most substantial human occupation of the examined sequence. Keywords Palaeoenvironment · Levant · Middle Pleistocene · Late Pleistocene · Zooarchaeology · Taphonomy · Fossil Birds Introduction The Middle Palaeolithic (MP) of the Levant (ca. 250–50 kya BP) plays a key role in examining the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH) from Africa (Hershkovitz Tabun; from the Arabic: ‫)طابون‬, is a clay oven, shaped like a truncated cone, with an opening at the bottom from which to stoke the fire. Tabun Cave was such named because it presented a similar shape prior to excavations. * Linda Amos 1 School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, 3103301 Haifa, Israel 2 Archaeology Stable Isotope Lab, Institut für Ur‑ und Frühgeschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 24118 Kiel, Germany et al. 2015, 2018; Vandermeersch and Bar-Yosef 2019) and tracing potential episodes of interactions with other human morphotypes (Greenbaum et al. 2019; Zaidner et al. 2021), all against the potential effects of palaeoenvironmental shifts (Shea 2008; Frumkin et al. 2011; Frumkin and Comay 2021; Weissbrod and Weinstein-Evron 2020; Lev et al. 2023). Within the Levantine land bridge that connects Eurasia and Africa, the cave of Tabun, part of the Nahal Me‛arot cave complex in Mount Carmel, Israel, stands apart due to its relatively long MP sequence and the presence of at least two types of Middle Palaeolithic human populations (Garrod and Bate 1937; McCown and Keith 1939; Rak 1998, 2002; Harvati and Lopez 2017). While the sequence of Tabun Cave is most familiar from the work of Garrod (Garrod and Bate 1937), subsequent excavations at the site by Jelinek (Jelinek et al. 1973; Jelinek 1982a, b) and later by the current research team, have produced a higher resolution understanding of Vol.:(0123456789) 90 Page 2 of 30 the MP stratigraphic sequence. Significantly, the MP layers contain copious faunal assemblages, which are associated with diagnostic human fossils and have thus provided new venues for examining environmental and behavioural changes across the sequence (e.g., Bate 1937; Jelinek et al. 1973; Garrard 1982; Marín-Arroyo 2013; Lev et al. 2023; Fried et al. 2024). Here, we focus on bird remains from the Tabun Cave MP sequence that is generally ascribed to AMH presence at its middle/earlier part and to Neanderthals at its later part (Rak 1998; Coppa et al. 2005). By using birds as environmental markers, we test whether palaeoenvironmental and climatic conditions are connected to phases of human exploitation of the cave. Furthermore, we aim to taphonomically explore the extent to which the MP humans at Tabun interacted with the birds in their local environment and whether there are differences in the practices along the investigated sequence that was inhabited by different hominin populations. Pleistocene bird remains have proven to be useful as a proxy for environmental reconstruction as well as human behaviours (Blasco and Peris 2009; Finlayson et al. 2012; Blasco et al. 2016a, b). Yet, in the southern Levant, few MP bird assemblages have been properly examined, making the analysis of the Tabun avifauna timely indeed. Fourteen avian species were reported from the late Lower Palaeolithic (400–200 kya) Qesem Cave in the Samaria Hills, reflecting an ecotone between several habitats. Within this assemblage, direct evidence of human exploitation for food and feathers including cut marks, peeling and human gnawing, was observed on the bones of pigeons, starlings, a brown-necked raven, and a swan (Sánchez-Marco et al. 2016; Blasco et al. 2019). Two Neanderthal sites from the late Middle Palaeolithic, Kebara and Amud, produced some evidence. Tchernov (1962) and Belmaker (2019), investigated the avifauna from Kebara Cave (65–48 kya), located ca. 20 km south of Tabun and in a similar setting. Both found species indicative of an ecotonal setting between several habitat types. Wetland birds were especially prevalent, probably reflecting the presence of swamps and wetland habitats nearby. These wetland habitats appeared intermittently in the troughs between Mount Carmel and the coastal kurkar ridges stretching in a broken chain north from Kebara towards Atlit and Nahal Me‛arot until the early twentieth century (Sivan et al. 2011; Yom-Tov et al. 2012). Six species of birds were reported from six bones recovered from Amud Cave in the margins of the Jordan Valley in sediments dating to ca 55 kya. They were interpreted as the product of human agency based on the varied environments from which they were introduced to the cave (Simmons 2004). Along with sporadic identifications from the earlier sites of Misliya Cave (Yeshurun et al. 2007) and Hayonim Cave (Tchernov 1993), this is the current extent of avian research in the southern Levantine MP. Currently, the most solid record of Pleistoc (...truncated)