## 2 Materials and Methodological Framework
### The Northern and Southern Lenant  
In the modern rural village of Tell Seker al-Aheimar, in the Upper Khabur in northeastern Syria, northern Levant, a geo-ethnoarchaeological approach explored plant and faecal microfossils excreted with dung by different animals, predominantly ruminants with additional comparative records from dogs, hens, and commensals including rodents (house mouse), corresponding to a variety of ecologies, environments, animal control practices, and known diets, as recorded through ethnographic fieldwork conducted during the archaeological excavations at the Neolithic mound located in the same village [15]. A number of modern reference samples were obtained from soils from fallow agricultural fields and pasture grounds, cattle, sheep, and goat penning deposits, mud-brick manufacturing areas, firing installations (including hearths and _tamur_ ovens fuelled with wood-dominated or mixed ovicaprine dung matter), agricultural by-products, and a wide range of household storage installations and discarding areas. By comparing integrated phytolith and spherulite contents associated with household activity areas at the Neolithic site of Tell Seker al-Aheimar [15; 63], as further inferred from ethnographic records and modern reference materials [15], the research focused on the identification of household activities and their spatial arrangements, and on assessing the nature of the microfossil records deposited on-site within indoor and 'dirty' open spaces. The results indicated that a varied range of plant materials derived from agricultural products and by-products were deposited on site, such as crop storage and crop-processing, animal fodder, building materials, and household debris, but also as derived from livestock dung, including the use of dung for fuel purposes, as in many other regions across the Near East [28; 64]. In addition to the above case study in northeastern Syria, aimed at producing comparative reference records for the identification of archaeological dung remains linked to household activity, more spatially localised approaches emerged from the examination of recently abandoned Bedouin campsites in different regions within the southern Levant using geo-ethnoarchaeological methods [14; 16]. Short-lived or ephemeral occupations are characteristic among many pastoral nomadic populations and foragers, whose settlement patterns reflect the demands of their highly mobile lifestyles [16]. Ethnoarchaeological studies of Bedouin campsites have long been applied to better understand many aspects of archaeological pastoral nomadic occupations, which are critical for tracking the emergence and spread of sedentism and farming, including formation processes associated with their abandonment and the spatial analysis of campsite floors through thin-section micromorphology (e.g., [65; 66; 67]. A recent study adopted a geo-ethnoarchaeological approach using a dual geochemical and phytolith methodology for identifying activity areas in seasonally occupied Bedouin campsites at Wadi Faynan, in southern Jordan [16]. The use of a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instrument and of phytolith analysis of sediment samples from six campsites (five abandoned for six months and up to fifteen years; only one occupied at the time of sampling) were found to be useful for distinguishing between activity areas, including sheep and goat penning, floors, and firing installations (hearths fuelled with dung cakes), providing insights into anthropogenic enrichment patterns and the impact of short periods of abandonment on the assemblages. The results indicated that both geochemical and phytolith signatures can be recorded in soils at the locations where activities took place and that these may be preserved even when the depositional contexts were left exposed to erosion, wind, and rain for several years. The ethnographic work recorded the use of dung cakes for fuel purposes as a common activity that may make difficult to distinguish between activity areas and that can potentially mask other traces.