Worked sheep and gazelle foot bones as possible figurative representations: a 12,000-year-old cluster of artifacts from Shubayqa 6, Jordan

2021/05/04 by Lisa Yeomans, Unn Gelting, Kathryn Killackey +3 · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies

paper · doi:10.1080/00758914.2021.1974206

openalex publication_date 2021/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27

Abstract

The use of animal bones to form figurative representations is well documented ethnographically and archaeologically. In this paper, we describe an intriguing group of bones from Shubayqa 6, a transitional Late Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in north-east Jordan, and consider the possibility that these bones are figurative representations. The assemblage is comprised of sets of articulating phalanges, from 21 limbs of wild sheep and gazelle, found as part of a group of artefacts. If this tentative interpretation for the Shubayqa 6 bones is correct, future discussions on the frequency of figurative representations by communities at the transition from hunting and foraging to agriculture in Southwest Asia may benefit from broader consideration of bones clusters.

Citations

• The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP)

Cited by

• Waterfowl Eggshell Refines Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction and Supports Multi-species Niche Construction at the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Levant

Related

• A 12,000-year-old clay figurine of a woman and a goose marks symbolic innovations in Southwest Asia
• Monumentality, Social Memory, and Territoriality in Neolithic–Chalcolithic Northwestern Arabia
• Earliest evidence for the use of desert kite mass-hunting structures in southeastern Jordan during the late pre-pottery neolithic B
• The Late Neolithic colonization of the Eastern Badia of Jordan
• Modeling identities among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay personal ornaments in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia