University of Groningen New Archaeozoological Data from the Fayum “Neolithic” with a Critical Assessment of the Evidence for Early Stock Keeping in Egypt Linseele,

Faunal evidence from the Fayum Neolithic is often cited in the framework of early stock keeping in Egypt. However, the data suffer from a number of problems. In the present paper, large faunal datasets from new excavations at Kom K and Kom W (4850–4250 BC) are presented. They clearly show that, despite the presence of domesticates, fish predominate in the animal bone assemblages. In this sense, there is continuity with the earlier Holocene occupation from the Fayum, starting ca. 7350 BC. Domesticated plants and animals appear first from approximately 5400 BC. The earliest possible evidence for domesticates in Egypt are the very controversial domesticated cattle from the 9/8 millennium BC in the Nabta Playa-Bir Kiseiba area. The earliest domesticates found elsewhere in Egypt date to the 6 millennium BC. The numbers of bones are generally extremely low at this point in time and only caprines are present. From the 5 millennium BC, the numbers of sites with domesticates dramatically increase, more species are also involved and they are usually represented by significant quantities of bones. The data from the Fayum reflect this two phase development, with very limited evidence for domesticates in the 6 millennium BC and more abundant and clearer indications in the 5 millennium BC. Any modelling of early food production in Egypt suffers from poor amounts of data, bias due to differential preservation and visibility of sites and archaeological remains, and a lack of direct dates for domesticates. In general, however, the evidence for early stock keeping and accompanying archaeological features shows large regional variation and seems to be mainly dependent on local environmental conditions. The large numbers of fish at Kom K and Kom W reflect the proximity of Lake Qarun. Citation: Linseele V, Van Neer W, Thys S, Phillipps R, Cappers R, et al. (2014) New Archaeozoological Data from the Fayum ‘‘Neolithic’’ with a Critical Assessment of the Evidence for Early Stock Keeping in Egypt. PLoS ONE 9(10): e108517. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0108517 Editor: David Caramelli, University of Florence, Italy Received May 19, 2014; Accepted August 23, 2014; Published October 13, 2014 Copyright: 2014 Linseele 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: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All archaeozoological data on which this study is based are included in the tables in the text and in the supplementary data. Additional details and other archaeological data, will be made available through the UCLA Digital Library, Los Angeles, as part of a monograph that is currently in preparation, containing a final report of the project. Funding: The excavations are funded through private sponsors. V.L. is a postdoctoral research fellow of the FWO-Flanders (www.fwo.be). The contribution of W.V. N. to this paper presents research results of the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme Belgian Science Policy (www.belspo.be). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 1. None of the research costs or authors’ salaries were funded in whole or in part, by a tobacco company. 2. The private sponsors do not have any competing interests in relation to this work. 3. The identity of the donor is not relevant to editors or reviewers’ assessment of the validity of the work. 4. The authors are not aware of any competing interests. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * Email: Veerle.Linseele@arts.kuleuven. be