The Last Hunter-Gatherer Societies in the Near East, ed. C. Delage. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges. (BAR International Series 1320). 2004.

PLANT FOOD SUBSISTENCE ISSUES AND SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY IN THE EARLY NATUFIAN

Deborah I. Olszewski Department of Anthropology, University Museum

University of Pennsylvania

INTRODUCTION

Much of the recent literature describing and discussing the Natufian culture of the Levant inevitably focuses on issues of subsistence related to the eventual domestication of cereals because these became the staples of much of the modern Western world. The major research paradigm is thus one that seeks understanding and resolution of this major transition in human prehistory. This perspective can be clearly seen in the following brief examples:

"This emphasis on plants that ultimately became domesticated, especially cereals, no doubt reflects a cultural bias on the part of Westerners and, of course, the eventual importance of cereal production. It has, however, strongly affected the direction of research and interpretive models of Natufian subsistence." (Byrd 1989b: 172).

"Though only a few claim that the Natufian was an agricultural society in the full sense of the word, certain prerequisites essential for the appearance and establishment of farming societies had undoubtedly been met during the Natufian." (Belfer-Cohen 1991 : 173).

".....food processors, such as mortars, bowls, and pestles, are interpreted as evidence for processing wild cereals and legumes ...... The beginning of intentional widespread cultivation was the only solution for a population for whom cereals had become a staple food." (Bar-Yosef 1998: 167, 174).

For archaeological research on the Natufian, however, the intense focus on this problem has meant that our insight into hunter-gatherer behaviors, particularly as it relates to the Early Natufian, is, at best, uncertain. The literature provides several examples of the disparate viewpoints that characterize the plant food subsistence aspect of Natufian existence:

".....the ecology of wild cereals has too often directed research questions relating to the Levantine Epipaleolithic and has tended to obscure other possible plant- exploitation patterns." (Wright 1991: 20).

"The most parsimonious scenario is one that favors acorns as the focus of plant food procurement ...., with cereals occumng, as do legumes, in small patches in forest clearings." (Olszewski 1993: 426-427).

"....although acorns may have been harvested they were more likely a famine food, being low in nutritional value and difficult to process ...." (Lieberman and Bar-Yosef 1994: 433).

"....through the use of analogy between Natufians and Mediterranean-adapted hunter-gatherers in California, this study exemplifies a great and nearly untapped potential .... to examine deadlocked reconstructions in the ancient Near East where archaeological and palaeo- environmental data have unfortunately sometimes proved insufficiently preserved." (McComston 1994: 104).

There are many crucial distinctions between what has been termed the Early and the Late Natufian, including the geographical extent of the Natufian, the presence and character of "villages" or long-term base camps, differences in burial practices, and details of lithic tool types (see, for example, Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar-Yosef and Valla 199 1; Belfer-Cohen 1991; Byrd 1989b; Garrod 1936, 1957; Henry 1989). These distinctions presumably serve as a rough indication of changes in Natufian adaptations over the course of nearly 2,500 years. Scientifically speaking, the fact that we can track temporal differences in the archaeological signatures of the Early and Late Natufian suggests that we should consider an approach or approaches that examine each of these periods as distinct entities. In this sense, we can decouple the development of cultivation and agriculture from the context of the Early Natufian, and instead focus on deciphering the conditions that favored the development of this specific archaeological signature during this period, about 12,800 to 11,000 years ago. By redefining our focus and the set of research problems in this manner, we can more objectively assess plant food subsistence and economy for the complex foragers of the Early Natufian.

THE EARLY NATUFIAN: ITS SETTING AND CULTURAL RECORD

The investigations of Dorothy Garrod and her contemporaries in the early part of the twentieth century essentially set the tone for much subsequent research on the Natufian, particularly for archaeological sites of the western Levant that are part of the Mediterranean forest zone (Boyd 1999: 220-222). Garrod was influenced by the presence of sickle blades and the effort spent in crafting hafts for sickle blades in Natufian assemblages, which suggested to her that Natufians engaged in a type of early agriculture (Boyd 1999: 218; Garrod 1934: 138, 1957: 216). Such cultivation was, by default, one characterized by the use of cereal grasses as a major component of subsistence. There were researchers, such as Perrot (1966), who

adopted views contrary to agriculture during what was then called the "Mesolithic," or the time period of the Natufian. Ultimately, however, their theoretical positions modified our understanding of the Natufian only in so far as modem researchers do not consider the Natufians themselves to have been agriculturalists. The Natufian period, however, is still seen as one in which complex foragers maximized their strategies of cereal grass procurement to the extent that the subsequent Neolithic witnesses morphological and genetic changes in cereal grasses and the development of agriculture sensu stricto.

If we are to develop new ways of thinking about the Natufian, as suggested by Boyd (1999: 221), we must be able to take a long, hard look at the existing data sets divorced from the paradigm that has long guided research on this archaeological entity. I propose that this can be done, in part, by examining what we apparently know about the Early Natufian, particularly as it is expressed in the context of the Mediterranean forest zone'. This choice is predicated on the decision to limit the number of variables, in so far as that is possible, by controlling for the major ecological setting and one segment of the Natufian timeframe. In this section, a brief overview of the pertinent data sets (Early Natufian in the Mediterranean forest) is given. Readers are referred to existing syntheses (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 199 1; Belfer- Cohen 1991; Byrd 1989b) and to site publications (i.e., Bar-Yosef 1991; Belfer- Cohen 1988; Edwards 1991; Garrod and Bate 1937; Noy et al. 1973; Perrot 1966; Turville-Petre 1932; Valla 1984, 1991 ; Weinstein-Evron 1997, 1998) for more detailed presentations of original data.

Defining the boundaries of the Mediterranean forest zone is partially confounded by attribution of the Early Natufian by various researchers to a "core area" or "homeland" (Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1992). When this concept was developed, Early Natufian sites appeared to be confined to a

geographical region of the western Levant that prehistorically and in recent historic times was characterized by this type of vegetation cover. This zone could be and is still in some areas, a dense growth (Naveh 1984: 32). For the most part, however, the Mediterranean forest is described as more open in nature2, the associated corollary being that the open areas would contain wild cereals, pulses, vegetables such as wild celery, radishes, and so forth (Zohary 1983: 108-1 13).

The boundary of the so-called "core area" of the Early Natufian, however, has changed a great deal in the past ten years (e.g., compare Bar-Yosef and Belfer- Cohen 1992: 27, Figure 3, to Bar-Yosef 1998: 160, Figure 1). This transformation of perspective, which is the result of increasing numbers of Early Natufian sites being found in the eastern ~ e v a n t ~ , is shown in Figure 1. Of some concern, however, is the fact that the expanded version of the "core area" for the Early Natufian now includes geographical regions that were not characterized by Mediterranean forest (see for example, the reconstruction of vegetation zones ca 9,000 bc in Hillman 1996: 190, Figure 10. lob and for 13,000 bp and 1 1,000 bp in Moore et al. 2000: 79, Figure 3.18a and b), although it has been the practice to assume that the expanded "core area" is also Mediterranean forest (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998: 162). Pollen from the eastern Levant, for example, from the Early Natufian site of Wadi Judayid (52) in southern Jordan, clearly documents very open conditions, with some presence of an arboreal component consisting of Ficus and pinus4 (Emery-Barbier 1995: 381- 383). These data do not support even a minimum scenario of a very open Mediterranean woodland configuration, but are far more suggestive of steppic conditions with an occasional tree in this part of the Natufian "core area" (as defined in the 1998 Bar-Yosef article).

If Early Natufian occupations are found in a variety of ecological zones, then we can hardly expect that the plant food aspect of subsistence strategies is similar throughout

this expanded "core area." How Natufian hunter-gatherers organized themselves and the types of archaeological signatures they left in each ecological setting are likely to be quite different. Discussions of the Early Natufian in its entirety should both acknowledge and factor in these differing circumstances. Unfortunately, this has not generally been the case (although see Delage 2001 for an exception), and it has led to a conflation of information that masks rather than clarifies the behavioral adaptations of the Early Natufian period.

The Early Natufian of the Mediterranean forest zone has often been seen as remarkable for the presence of sites with considerable stone architecture in the form of "house" or "ramada" foundations, installations such as "storage pits" or "silos," numerous heavy ground stone tools such as mortars, pestles, basins, and grindstones, art in the form of figurines and engraved stone and bone objects, and large burial populations, some individuals of whom are buried with personal ornamentation and other grave goods. The "villages" or "base camps" appear in the archaeological record on a scale that, that by implication in articles about the Natufian, is unprecedented for earlier prehistory in the Levant. In point of fact, however, the scale of their appearance is most remarkable only if the entire Natufian period (early and late phases) is considered. If we look at the sites that have architecture reminiscent of dwellings, we find that only three sites (Ain Mallaha, Wadi Hammeh 27, and Hayonim Cave) in the Mediterranean forest zone either date to the Early Natufian or have components that date to the Early ~atufian'. Jericho also has some structural evidence in the form of pits dug into a clay foundation, although this was attributed by Kenyon to a "ritual" purpose rather than as a "dwelling" (Kenyon 1981: 272).

Ground stone equipment, art objects and personal ornamentation, as well as burials, however, come from a slightly greater number of Early Natufian sites in the Mediterranean forest zone than does

Mediterranean Sea

- extended Early Natufian "core" as defined in 1998

Figure 1. Map Showing Different Definitions of the Early Natufian "core area" and Relevant Sites Mentioned in Text

evidence of "dwellings." Sites with art, burials, and/or numerous ground stone implements include Ain Mallaha, Hayonim Cave, Wadi Hammeh 27, Kebara, el Wad, and Jericho (Bar-Yosef 1991; Belfer-Cohen 1991; Edwards 1991; Garrod 1957; Garrod and Bate 1937; Ken yon 1960, 198 1 ; Perrot 1966; Turville- Petre 1932; Valla 1991). Arguably, one could make the case that even in the absence of "dwellings" at some of this set of Early Natufian sites (e.g., Kebara and el-Wad in particular; the Jericho structure conceivably could also represent a form of dwelling space), the investment in and treatment of burials, as well as the presence of heavy ground stone tools or bedrock mortars, might signal base camp situations in these locales. Corroborating evidence for semi-sedentism or year-round occupation is often derived from the presence of human commensals such as house mice and house sparrows (Bar- Yosef and Tchernov 1966: 138; Tchernov 1984; 1991), although not all researchers agree on the strength of this line of evidence (e.g., Edwards 1989: 28-31). Of particular interest, is the fact that these human commensals have been discussed only for the Early Natufian at Hayonim Cave; the house sparrow is not, for example, mentioned in the extensive research on the avifauna from Ain Mallaha (Pichon 1991).

The evidence, then, for the uniqueness of the Early Natufian in the Mediterranean forest, compared to earlier prehistory, comes down to the presence of between three to six sites at which an argument might be made for relatively large-sized base camps. The extent to which they represent sedentary occupations or repeatedly visited locales remains open to debate. These sites contain accumulations of heavy or stationary tools (ground stone implements andlor stone bowls), art, worked bone, personal ornamentation, and burials, and three of the sites also have contiguous stonewall "dwellings."

EVIDENCE FOR PLANT FOOD SUBSISTENCE IN THE EARLY NATUFIAN

As frequently noted by Levantine researchers, there is scarcely any direct evidence for the plant foods exploited by Natufian groups. This is partly the result of poor preservation conditions in the terra rosa soils that typify many areas of the Mediterranean forest zone (Bar-Yosef 1983: 23-24). Only two Early Natufian sites have yielded plant remains, Hayonim Cave and Wadi Hammeh 27 (Table 1). These show a range of edible plant foods including wild barley, goat-faced grass, lupines, wild peas, lentils and almonds. The presence of fruit and nut bearing trees and shrubs of the Mediterranean forest in relatively close proximity to Early Natufian sites is additionally provided by the analysis of wood charcoal from Wadi Hammeh 27 (see Table 1). Edible fruits and nuts would have been available from oak, pistachio, hackberry, hawthorne, almond, and buckthorn components of the Mediterranean forest. The scarcity of macrobotanical materials, however, makes it difficult to lend much credence to arguments for wide scale dependence on wild cereals and blanket dismissal of plant food resources such as acorns, such as often is the case in the existing paradigm that sees hunter-gatherers of this time frame as groups who increasingly specialize in harvesting grains.

There are, additionally, several lines of indirect evidence that have been used to suggest plant food subsistence emphases for the Natufian. These include the macrobotanical remains from Ohalo I1 and from Abu Hureyra I, reconstructions of the vegetation configuration of the Mediterranean forest zone, and the presence of ground stone tools and sickle blades with polish. The macrobotanical remains from Abu Hureyra I (Hillman 2000) will not be considered here for two reasons. First, this site is situated in a

Table 1. Plant Remains from Early Natufian Sites

Food Plants Hayonim cave1 Wadi Harnrneh 272 wild barley Hordeum spontaneum Hordeum spontaneum goat-faced grass - Aegilops sp. lupines Lupinus pilosus - wild peas Pisum sp.? - lentils - Lens sp. wild almond Amygdulus communis Charcoal Wadi Hamrneh 27' oak wild almond wild pistachio buckthorn hawthorne

Quercus sp. Amygdulus sp. Pistachia sp. Ramnus sp. Crataegus sp.

hackberry Celtis sp. 1 Hopf and Bar-Yosef (1987); Edwards (2003); Edwards et al. (1988: 557).

different ecological setting than was characteristic for the Early Natufian of the "core area." Second, the Epipaleolithic from Abu Hureyra I corresponds to the period of the Late Natufian and thus falls outside the parameters of this paper.

Ohalo 11, an Early Epipaleolithic site along the former (lower) shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, is some 5,000 years earlier than the Early Natufian (Nadel et al. 1995). Floral remains have been well-preserved here due to submergence of the site by rising lake levels, a situation that persisted until recently, when the site was exposed and several seasons of excavation conducted here (Nadel and Hershkovitz 1991). Use of the macrobotanical evidence from this site, therefore, is a key toward understanding the range of resources used by hunter-gatherers in a Mediterranean forest setting, but by no means is it meant to imply that Early Natufians would have necessarily followed a similar pattern of exploitation. Table 2 shows the plant food remains found at this site. These include wild barley, wild emmer, goat-faced grass, wild oat, almond, acorn, pistachio, hackberry, wild olive, wild grape, Christ's Thorn, and lentil.

The existing macrobotanical remains and analyzed wood charcoals from Early Natufian sites, as well as those from the much earlier occupied site of Ohalo 11 during the Early Epipaleolithic, provide examples of many of the plant food resources of the Mediterranean forest ecological setting. In addition to these, others that have been noted for this zone, particularly for the northern areas such as Anatolia, northern Iraq, and northern Syria, include vetches and the grass pea (Zohary and Hopf 1988: 107-1 10). Their geographical distribution is primarily in areas north of the Early Natufian "core area," but vetches and the grass pea were likely also part of the natural vegetation configuration that could have been exploited by Early Natufian groups.

Although ground stone implements appear in some Upper Paleolithic and Early Epipaleolithic contexts in the Levant, their frequency is quite low at individual sites and their use is sometimes inferred to be oriented primarily toward non-plant food processing activities, such as ochre grinding (Wright 199 1 : 22-28). The abundance of ground stone at some Early Natufian sites, however, is more often

Table 2. Plant Remains from the Early Epipaleolithic Site (ca. 19,000 bp) of Ohalo 11'

Food Plants wild barley Hordeum spontaneum, H. bulbosum, H. glaucum wild emmer Triticum dicoccoides goat-faced grass Aegilops sp. wild oat Avena sterilis, A. barbata other edible grasses Bromus sp., Catabrosa aquatica wild almond Amygdalus communis hawthorne Crataegus sp. wild pistachio Pistachia atlantica acorn Quercus sp. wild olive Olea europaea wild grape Vitis vinifera Christ's Thorn Ziziphus spina-christi lentil Lens sp.

I Kislev et al. (1992)

seen as partially explained by a greater emphasis on processing of plant foods at base camps (Wright 199 1 : 3 1). Distinctions have occasionally been made between different forms of ground stone in efforts to link them to particular plant foods (Wright 199 1 : 3 1). For example, mortars and pestles, which tend to be quite common at Mediterranean forest sites, are sometimes inferentially linked to processing of nuts (Hole 1984: 54; Moore 1985: 13), while grinding slabs and handstones, which occur frequently at steppic sites, are thought to be indicative of cereal or seed processing (Goring- Moms 1987: 367; Moore 1985: 13, 2000: 179-180). In fact, some researchers go farther in assuming that all ground stone processing tools at Natufian sites are linked to cereal or seed grinding or pounding (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998: 167). As pointed out by Wright (1991: 35). however, there is no a priori basis for assuming that ground stone tools should be conceptualized as representing only cereal or seed processing. When such assumed linkages between a single food plant source and ground stone tools are presented as fact, they tend to bias our perceptions about subsistence during the Early Natufian in the Mediterranean forest.

Stone tools identified as sickle blades due to the silica polish present on them are a final line of evidence used to support an emphasis on cereals, although other types of plant cutting are also represented by their polishes. They are found at several Early Natufian sites including Wadi Hammeh 27, Ain Mallaha, el Wad, Hayonim Cave, and Kebara. Garrod (1932: 268) and Neuville (1934) were among the earliest of the researchers to attribute the presence of sickle blades to "agriculture" in the Natufian, but precise knowledge of their use awaited the increasingly intense interest in microwear studies that began in the 1960s (e.g., Keeley 1980; Semenov 1964; Tringham et al. 1974). As microwear studies advanced in methodology, some researchers increasingly focused on the determination of which types of polish could be attributed to which groups of plants for the Epipaleolithic of the Near East (e.g., Anderson 1983, 1986; 1991; Unger- Hamilton 1983, 1989, 1991).

Early Natufian sickle blades from the Mediterranean forest sites of el Wad and ~ e b a r a ~ were studied by Unger-Hamilton (1989, 1991). Of a total of 233 sickle blades from these sites during this period, about 46% were identified as exhibiting

cereal polish of the type specific to wild barley or wild emmer (Unger-Hamilton 1989: 96, 1991: 512-514). An additional 46% were attributed to a category of "Probably Cereal," although given the many issues involved in polish identification (e.g., Ode11 2001: 50-55), it is most parsimonious to accept as prima facie evidence only those sickle blades that were definitively identified as documenting cereal polish. Somewhat encouragingly, the two types of wild cereals identified by their polishes on sickle blades are precisely the two that are known from the scanty macrobotanical record for Early Natufian sites in this region. Wild einkorn, on the other hand, which is neither documented in the macrobotanical record of the Natufian nor from sickle blade polish analysis, is distributed in the Mediterranean forest zone of more northerly areas (e.g., Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and the Zagros region) (Hillman 1996: 162), and thus outside the range of availability for the Early Natufian "core area."

E T H N O G R A P H I C A N D EXPERIMENTAL ANALOGUES

The closest ecological analogue to the "core area" Mediterranean forest of the Early Natufian is the situation present in California (Naveh 1967; Raven 1973; Shmida 1981; Zohary 1973: 131-137, 500- 565). There are, however, notable differences, such as rainfall intervals (rainfall occurs over more months in California, for example), which could have an effect on the development and growth of winter plants in California because of greater moisture stress there, as well as thousands of years of human impact on the environment in the Levant which has degraded what was in pre- Natufian times likely a much denser climax forest and maquis (Naveh 1967: 448). Steppic members of the arid fringes, i.e., the Irano-Turanian zone, have been able to readily colonize areas of the Mediterranean forest zone in Israel and Jordan, thus altering the composition of the vegetation in the Mediterranean zone.

Degradation of the Mediterranean landscape in California dates primarily to only about the past 200 or so years (Naveh 1967: 449). Changes to the Mediterranean ecosystem in California thus would not have acquired the same magnitude as in the Levant and are less likely to have substantially affected the subsistence practices of native groups in California, as recorded by ethnographers (e.g., Baumhoff 1963; Cook 1955; Gifford 1971; Merriam 1905), despite claims to the contrary (e.g., McComston 1994: 100- 101). The more serious analogy issue would appear to be twofold-the assumption that plant species that are associated today were necessarily so associated in the past, as in the case for the extrapolation of the modem association of wild cereals and the Mediterranean forest community to the distant past, and that they were as abundant then (especially in the case of wild cereals) as they can be documented in present conditions (Blumler 1996: 30).

The appearance and composition of the Mediterranean maquis-woodland in the Levant at present is not to be confused with its likely appearance and composition in pre-agricultural prehistory, such as the period of the Early Natufian. Observations of the modem ecological context suggest that species such as Quercus calliprinos, now often seen as a shrub or small tree, would, in fact, have been full stature trees (10 - 15 m tall) with quite thick trunks (Zohary 1973: 505). As a taller tree, Q. ca l l ipr inos would have formed a dominant, extensive evergreen forest in pre-agricultural times in the "core area" of the Early Natufian, unlike its present distribution as a mostly smaller, maquis shrub (Zohary 1973: 505). Dense oak stands with their potential acorn crop would thus have been a major ecological component available for subsistence choices during the Early Natufian.

Ethnographic Context Just as many plant foods known to be consumed by humans, acorns require not only harvesting and transport, but also processing in order to make them

palatable. In terms of harvesting techniques, such as those known to have been used by various California Native American groups, acorns can be gathered with relatively little need for equipment. Documented instances show that the acorns were knocked out of the oaks with long wooden poles (e.g., Baurnhoff 1963: 166), shaken out of the trees (e.g., Baumhoff 1963: 162; Dubois 1935: 18), or simply collected from the ground surface after they had fallen naturally (Barrett and Gifford 1933, cited in Basgall 1987: 26). In some instances, the acorns were raked into piles that facilitated gathering. The collection of acorns from natural falls would require some amount of quick response time, as well as constant monitoring of tree stands, due to the rapidity with which other animals would make use of this food resource (Jackson 1991: 304). Of these three harvesting strategies, only one requires equipment (wooden poles), which because of issues of organic preservation, is unlikely to be found at most archaeological sites. Such poles possibly could be left at the harvesting locales and thus also be unlikely to enter the archaeological record.

At this point, there are two options. Either the acorns can be shelled at the harvesting locale, or they can be taken in the shell to a base camp for this processing (the shelling of acorns at harvesting locales is discussed below in the section on experimental research). Transporting acorns, whether shelled or not, is consistently documented in the California examples as occumng through the use of burden baskets (Baumhoff 1963: 166; Gayton 1948: 222). As with the wooden poles occasionally used in harvesting, organic basketry is unlikely to have preserved at most sites.

Once the acorns are transported to the processing area, they can be either stored7 or processed immediately after drying. Processing involves pounding and grinding the shelled acorns into a fine flour. In much of the California area, pounding and grinding was accomplished using mortars (including bedrock mortars)

and pestles, although handstones (manos), grindstones (metates), and possibly bedrock slicks were also used by some groups (Baumhoff 1963: 167; Jackson 1991: 304-308). Ground stone processing tools, of course, have a high likelihood of being recovered in archaeological contexts.

Although some oak species and/or individual trees produce "sweet" acorns that lack a high tannin content and therefore do not need leaching in order to remove the tannins (Gifford 1971: 238; Watson 1979: 70; Zohary and Hopf 1988: 176), much of the ethnographic record documents the leaching process in some detail, especially because many Native California groups exploited oak species with "bitter" acornss. Leaching often proceeded with the acorn flour placed in a shallow basin and water continually poured over it, a process that took several hours to complete (Gifford 1971: 238; Jackson 1991: 305; Merriam 1918). Various sources discuss whether or not the water was cold or hot. Hot water requires an additional labor step in that the water must be heated, but it leaches the tannins from the acorn flour much faster than cold water. The advantage to the use of cold water is that it helps retain the oil content of the flour (Jackson 1991: 305). Of some interest is that fact that the leaching process requires access to substantial amounts of water, and therefore has archaeological implications in that sites where leaching occurred are likely to have been situated close to sources of water, such as springs or streams.

Experimental context Despite the fact that some archaeological researchers have dismissed acorns as "famine" food and low in nutritive content (e.g., Lieberman and Bar-Yosef 1994: 433)-and thus of no significant importance to prehistoric groups such as the Natufian-such comments are misleading at best and, at worst, inaccurate misstatements of nutritional data, including kilocalories, on acorns. While acorns are somewhat lower in protein and carbohydrates compared to cereals, they

are far higher in fat content, and generally outrank all cereals except einkorn wheat9 in kilocalorie returns (Baumhoff 1963: 162-163; Basgall 1987: 24-25; Barlow and Heck 2000,2002; Wolf 1945: Table 1).

Coupled with the fact that cereals and acorns ripen during different seasons (springlsummer and fall, respectively), each could potentially be exploited to advantage as there would be no group task scheduling conflicts related to harvesting, transporting, and processing of these two resources. The yield per oak tree can be highly variable depending on the species and local climatic factors from year-to- year, but falls into the range of between 30 lbs to 500 Ibs in good years (Baurnhoff 1963: 164-166). For oak species yielding medium to small acorns, as would have been the case for most oak trees available in the "core area" of the Early Natufian, analogous yields per oak treelshrub in a good year are likely to be in the range of 100 lbs to 200 lbs.

Analyses of archeological ground stone implements such as mortars and pestles, as well as hand stones and grinding slabs, in conjunction with ethnographic data have shown that there is no one-to-one correlation between implement morphology and specific plant food to be processed (Wright 1991 : 3 1-34). It is, however, the case that experimental work has demonstrated that de-husking of cereals is best undertaken using a wooden pestle with a stone mortar (Hillman 1984; Wright 199 1 : 38), while processing of acorns by Native California groups is usually associated with stone mortars and stone pestles (Driver and Massey 1957: 235; Jackson 1991: 304, 310). The use of mortars and pestles to process acorns was thought by Kroeber (1925: 411) to be related to the oil content of this resource, which might create difficulties in efficient or effective grinding if hand stones and grinding slab forms are used.

Recently, optimal foraging considerations have also been applied to the case of acorn and cereal exploitation (Barlow and Heck 2000, 2002). For estimates of labor

investment and kilocalorie returns for acorns, these researchers used data from analogous oak species in California due to the lack of published data on the acorns from Near Eastern oaks1'. They were, however, able to use Near Eastern cereal data from published sources to assess exploitation of cereal grasses in the Levant. The extent to which the oak/acorn data from California is comparable to the Levant is a consideration, but likely not a major one. Regardless of whether one examines California or Levantine species, production values per oak treelshrub will vary from individual plant to individual plant, and from year to year. The more important aspect is to assess the relative merits of oak species producing large, medium, and small acorns against kilocalorie returns for the relevant Near Eastern cereals.

The results of the Barlow and Heck (2002) study provide interesting insight into targeting acorns or cereals as food resources. They considered collection costs, transport costs, and processing costs (threshing, dehusking, and grinding for cereals; shelling, grinding, and leaching for acorns) weighed against the energetic benefits of large, medium, and small acorns, einkorn and emmer wheat, and barley. Table 3 provides a brief summary of their findings. Oak species producing large acorns are the most productive resource available. They are closely followed by wild einkorn wheat. Oak species producing small acorns rank third, followed by wild emmer wheat, and finally wild barley. Based on these data, there is no scientific reason to exclude acorns from consideration as a major potential resource, whenever oak species are present in an area.

When the kilocalorie returns for small acorns, wild emmer wheat, and wild barley are examined, it is clear that all three are relatively similar in return rates, with small acorns perhaps a slightly better choice than wild barley but not wild emmer wheat. It is of some interest that the small amount of macrobotanical remains available for Early Natufian sites

Table 3. Energetic Benefits of Various Sized Acorns and Near Eastern cereals'

Plant Food Resource Kilocalorie Returns Per Hour large acorns (cf. Quercus ithaburensis) 1,150 - 1,350 wild einkorn (Triticum monococcum ssp. boeoticum) 1,232 small acorns (cf. Quercus calliprinos) 866 - 1,000 wild emmer (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides) 988 wild barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum) 87 1 Data summarized from Barlow and Heck (2000,2002)

in the "core area" show evidence for wild barley1' but not for wild emmer wheat. This may be suggestive of type of wild cereal grass most often immediately available near the locales of Natufian "villages," as Barlow and Heck (2000) predict that cereals will be collected close to sites (and thus be representative of local vegetation), while acorns can be collected from much greater distances. Contra other predictions of the Barlow and heck (2002) model, their hypothesis that the earliest emphasis would be on acorns at the probable expense of cereal grasses (with the possible exception of wild einkorn wheat) is not met by the conditions available to the Early Natufians of the "core area." This is because large acorns and wild einkorn wheat are prevalent primarily in the northern Levant and Turkey rather than the Early Natufian LL core area."

In contexts where small (or medium) sized acorns form the majority of the resource base for acorns, the Barlow and Heck (2002) model suggests that the maximal kilocalorie returns are gained from transported unshelled acorns from the collection area to the archaeological site for processing. This is, however, the most optimal of the optimal foraging strategies available. It is also possible that Early Natufians both collected and shelled small to medium sized acorns at the collection site, and transported shelled acorns for later grinding and leaching at the archaeological site. While this latter scenario would result in lower kilocalorie returns per hour, these return rates will still be comparable to the wild emmer

wheat and wild barley return rates, as the two cereals being with lower return rates on average than small acorns.

DISCUSSION

On the basis of direct and indirect data currently available for wild cereals and acornsI2 that would have been accessible to Early Natufian groups in the "core area," it is possible to consider the likelihood of their exploitation. If we approach this assessment from a scientific perspective, then we cannot eliminate either food resource on the basis of scant macrobotanical remains, types and forms of resource processing implements, population densities and settlement permanence, anecdotal stories of how acorns are regarded as "famine foods" or "taste bitter" to ourselves and/or to Middle Eastern villagers who have spent millennia in cereal growing pursuits, or Western biases imbued with the historic importance of cereal crops which make erroneous claims as to the food value or exploitation costs of acorns.

Some years ago, Wright (1991: 35) commented that we have no evidence that cereals dominated the Natufian diet. It is our Western biases that have conditioned us to see cereals as an attractive resource. Processing cereals, in fact, is every bit as time consuming and difficult as processing a resource such as acorns (including the leaching needed to remove tannins from acorns). One might even argue that there is precedence for the use of leaching by Early Natufians in that we have recovered

wild lupines at Hayonim Cave. Wild lupines need to be processed for bitter alkaloids before they are edible, a task that can be accomplished by either boiling or steeping them in water (Zohary and Hopf 1988: 112).

Aside from perspectives that key in on the importance of cereals today, and therefore their . imputed importance to past prehistoric groups, other objections to the use of acorns as a major food resource in the Natufian are based on issues of population density and settlement, and on resource stress (e.g., McCorriston 1994: 102-103). McCorriston essentially suggests that because population density in the Levant is estimated by various researchers to be only about half the extrapolated population density of Native California groups in a similar sized region, it is unlikely that Natufians exploited acorns to any extent. This is because if Natufians had focused on acorns, their population density would be much higher than what has been estimated-the California analogy indicates that acorns were exploited by large groups of sedentary peoples. While there is no doubt that Natufian archaeological evidence, particularly in the Early Natufian, is far from overwhelming with respect to large groups, it is, however, true that the Early Natufian period is our first extensive record of settlements that appear to be sedentary and that yields evidence for activities often associated with higher population densities, such as art and large burial populations. While the Early Natufians may not appear to merit the distinction of high population densities, at least on the basis of the California analogy, they do merit the distinction of being unusual in Levantine prehistory, especially with respect to the Early Epipaleolithic and Upper Paleolithic in that region. When we examine the Early Natufian in this context, then, the archaeological record does provide direct evidence of a temporal change in how prehistoric hunter-gatherers are organized ca. 12,800 years ago and later. The California example is analogous in this respect, although it is predicated on an

observed shif t from milling slabshandstones to mortars and pestles (assuming in this case that mortars and pestles are primarily associated with acorn processing). In California this shift in resource .processing occurs in the interval between about 4,000 to 1,000 years ago, depending on the specific region (Basgall 1987: 35).

The second key element to McCorriston's (1994: 103) argument is that acorns are adopted as a food resource only when there is resource stress, as is hypothesized for the California groups. She further argues, based on Henry (1991). that such resource stress is not a consideration for the beginning of the Natufian, but rather for their eventual disappearance at the advent of agriculture. In this case, acorns would not be a major food for Early Natufians, and Late Natufians would focus on emphasizing cereals during times of increasing stress, a strategy that eventually leads to agriculture. The California resource stress model for acorns, though, is built upon Basgall's (1987: 41) view that groups will not exploit acorns, unless very specific socioeconomic conditions arise, because of the high costs in time and labor for acorn processing. We have seen, however, that optimal foraging modeling of acorns and wild cereals for the Levant indicates that both cereals and acorns are equally time consuming and labor intensive (e.g., Barlow and Heck 2000, 2002). There is, therefore, no a priori reason to dismiss acorns as desirable on the basis of energetic costs, or to suggest that that acorns became a focus of exploitation only because groups must exploit them in order to survive (e.g., Basgall 1987: 44). The fallacy that must be avoided is one in which the rationale underlying the explanation of acorn use by one set of groups (Native California) is transferred to others (Early Natufian) who surely did not share a similar way of organizing the world around them (other than being complex foragers). In other words, it is one thing to compare hard facts such as nutritional aspects, chemical composition, cost and benefits modeling, plant food species analogues, and so forth,

all of which can be assessed objectively. It is quite another to suggest that the specific cultural subsistence strategies and preferences of two disparate cultural groups in similar environments (a Mediterranean forest setting), but widely separated in time and space, will be the same, as is implied in McCorriston's (1 994) analysis.

Archaeological modeling of plant food subsistence in the Early Natufian needs to seriously consider the likelihood that wild cereals and acorns were equally important to Early Natufian diets. That we find little o r no direct evidence of acorns at archaeological sites of the Natufian is not surprising. Optimal foraging models show that when acorns in the shell are brought back to residential sites for processing, the shell waste constitutes only about 25% of the resource. This is a relatively small amount of material to be discarded compared to the 60%-70% of wild cereals that are processing wastes (Barlow and Heck 2000). In effect, this means that traces of wild cereals at archaeological sites are more likely to be recovered given that more of their waste will be deposited at the sites. Furthermore, it is quite interesting that the Barlow and Heck (2002) predictions indicate that wild emmer wheat and wild barley should be expected in prehistoric diets only where there are conditions of lower foraging efficiency. The emphasis should rather be on acorns whenever and wherever they are available. Such a prediction runs directly counter to how most researchers describe the Levantine situation during the Natufian, and implies that the archaeological signature of the Early Natufian may be, in part, a reflection of the dual inclusion of acorns and wild cereals in the diet.

CONCLUSION

Wild cereals and acorns ripen in different seasons of the year and thus do not create scheduling difficulties or timellabor competition for groups. Both are labor intensive food resources that can be

ground using the same set of implements (mortars and pestles), although wooden pestles may be more effective for wild cereal dehusking than stone pestles. Both plant food resources are highly storable for relatively long periods of time, and likely could be stored in similar ways, i.e., in baskets. Acorns and wild cereals also complement each other in that acorns provide fats (oils), carbohydrates, and fiber, while wild cereals are sources for carbohydrates and protein. Finally, in the context of the Early Natufian "core area," the likelihood of greater small acorn availability (rather than large acorns) in the Mediterranean maquis-woodlands, along with wild cereals, means that optimal foraging strategies place both food resources within the same range of kilocalorie returns (see Table 3).

There are no archaeological data that exclude either one of these plant foods, just as the data to support the use of either one is equally scanty for both resources. At the current time, it is not unreasonable to conclude that acorns and wild cereals may have been equally important to the economic structure of Early Natufian society and that they are both a direct reflection of the expanded Mediterranean forest zone prior to the onset of the environmental conditions of the Younger Dryas (Late Natufian period). Vorsila Bohrer (1972: 145) once said that "Cultural traditions ... tint the eyeglasses with which we view the world ...." To this should now be added that it is time to remove our "cultivation-colored" glasses to more clearly see the Early Natufian not only from the standpoint of their plant food subsistence ecology, but also for a better understanding of the rationale underlying their unusual cultural signature in the archaeological record. Just as Zeder (2002) has applied the scientific methodology of examining the domestication of goats and sheep from the perspective of:

"a constellation of biological and cultural factors played out in highly localized ways across Southwest Asia depending on the specific mix of topography, biota, and people in each region"

so too must we now apply a similar scientific approach to the study of the Early Natufian. To continue to describe the Early Natufian on the basis of Western biases regarding the importance of cereal grasses is not science, but a just-so story.

NOTES

1. Early Natufian sites are found in the eastern Levant as well. I confine the majority of my discussion, however, to those sites characteristic of the Mediterranean forest zone.

2. We have no solid evidence that general openness was a main feature of the Mediterranean forest zone prehistorically. There have been arguments made that the forest was much denser (e.g., Bohrer 1972: 152; Moore 1978: 71; Moore et al. 2000: 79, Figure 3.18a and b; Weinstein- Evron 1998: 128).

3. These include Site 70 (Palumbo et al. 1996: 384), Beidha (Byrd 1989a), Ain al- Saratan (Garrard 1991), Bawwab al- Ghazal (Rollefson et al. 1999: 3), Tabaqa (Byrd and Colledge 1991; Olszewski and Hill 1997; Olszewski et al. 1998a), Yutil al-Hasa Area D (Coinman et al. 1999; Olszewski et al. 1994, 1998b), Wadi Judayid 52 (Henry 1995: 319-335), and Wadi Mataha 2 (Johnson et al. 1999).

4. It is important to remember that Pinus pollen can air-travel over great distances (up to ca 160 km), so that its presence at a site need not indicate that pine trees grew in the immediate vicinity (Dincauze 2000: 344-345).

5. There is also a stone wall of undetermined function at el Wad Terrace, although it is not specifically ascribed to the Early Natufian period in the published references, but simply to the Natufian (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1992: 29; Weinstein-Evron 1997: 158; 1998: 160).

6. Sickle blades from Hayonim Cave were also studied by Unger-Hamilton, but these are attributed to an "indeterminate" Natufian period and thus are not included in this dilcussion of the Early Natufian.

7. Acorns in the shell can be stored for up to two years (Gayton 1948: 187).

8. Solecki and Solecki (1997: 2) document boiling of shelled acorns (presumably to leach tannins), with subsequent pounding and grinding into acorn flour, among Kurdish groups in the Zagros region of the Middle East, as does Bishop (1891: 11, 420), Helbaek 1964: 123). and Watson (1 97 1 : 70), among others.

9. Einkorn wheat was not part of the Mediterranean forest complex in the "core area" of the Early Natufian, but occurred farther to the north.

10. Barlow and Heck (2000, 2002) and Mason (1995) urge that detailed study of Levantine oaks be undertaken to address potential concerns with comparability to California oak species.

11. Of note is that wild barley is dominant in the macrobotanical assemblages from the Early Epipaleolithic site of Ohalo I1 (Kislev et al. 1992) in what will become the Early Natufian "core area" several millennia later.

12. As with many other researchers, I do not imply that wild cereals and acorns were the only plant food resources exploited by Early Natufian groups. There are a variety of others such as almonds, pistachios, hawthorne fruits, legumes, etc. Unfortunately, many of these have not yet been studied in detail with regard to exploitation costs and therefore comparisons are more difficult to pursue (Barlow and Heck 2002).

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