A new system for computing dentition-based age proﬁles in Sus scrofa Ximena Lemoine a, * , Melinda A. Zeder a , Katelyn J. Bishop b , Scott J. Rufolo a a Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, USA b Department of Anthropology, University of California Los Angeles, USA article info Article history: Received 30 December 2013 Received in revised form 31 March 2014 Accepted 1 April 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: Aging Sus scrofa Pig Harvest proﬁles Tooth eruption Tooth wear Zooarchaeology abstract Reconstructing demographic proﬁles is valuable for revealing animal exploitation strategies at archae- ological sites. For pig (Sus scrofa), the method presented by Grant (1982) demonstrates a promising technique for estimating age through dental wear pattern analysis. Grant’s study is, however, limited as it requires complete or nearly complete mandibles, exclusively uses mandibular teeth, and offers only a relative scale for aging. While some work has been done to establish useful age classes based on tooth eruption and wear patterns in S. scrofa, a systematic study producing a standardized and comprehensive methodology for using tooth wear to age pigs remains to be conducted. The study presented here is part of ongoing research aimed at developing new methods for the construction of S. scrofa demographic proﬁles based on both dentition and long bone fusion. In this paper, we present the results of a study of eruption and wear patterns in a large modern assemblage of wild boar which provides the basis for a new method for constructing pig harvest proﬁles and addresses some of the most serious limitations of Grant’s earlier study. The utility of this method in detecting subtle differences in pig prey/harvest proﬁles is demonstrated through its application to three Near Eastern archaeological assemblages from three distinct time periods: Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Halaﬁan Banahilk, and Epipaleolithic Hallan Çemi, where residents likely employed widely different pig exploitation stra- tegies. The results of these case studies demonstrate the ability of this method to reliably reconstruct age demography and distinguish age proﬁles between sites with different animal procurement strategies. This method provides a standardized means of collecting accurate and reliable age data crucial in examining patterns of past pig exploitation. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Reconstructing the demographic proﬁles of faunal remains from archaeological sites is essential for revealing the nature of past animal exploitation strategies. Previous work on a wide diversity of species has shown that construction of demographic proﬁles based on both dental eruption and wear and long bone fusion is a powerful tool for detecting a wide variety of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic factors that structure prey populations in the past (Davis, 1983; Klein, 1982; Payne, 1973; Stiner, 1990; Zeder, 1991 to name just a few). Demographic proﬁles have also proven espe- cially useful in tracking the process of animal domestication (Hole et al., 1969; Hesse, 1978; Zeder and Hesse, 2000). Emphasizing the human behavior behind animal procurement, demographic proﬁles for age and sex composition of harvested animals are capable of revealing subtle patterns in human animal management strategies not visible when utilizing other markers of domestication such as morphology or genetics. Instead, they provide a ﬂexible medium that is capable of documenting even incipient or intermediary ep- isodes in the continuum of human intervention from hunting to herding (Zeder, 2006a). The sequence and rates of both long-bone fusion and dental eruption and attrition have been used successfully to reconstruct such age proﬁles at archaeological sites (Ervynck, 1997; Ervynck et al. 2001; Fandén, 2005; Hongo and Meadow, 1998; Hole et al. 1969; Magnell, 2005; Payne, 1973; Rolett and Chiu, 1994; Zeder, 2006a,b). For domestic caprines (Greenﬁeld and Arnold, 2008; Zeder, 2006c) and gazelle (Munro et al. 2009) there has been sig- niﬁcant success in calibrating both fusion and dental techniques, establishing age classes with meaningful and useful deﬁnitions that can be applied to archaeological assemblages. These methods have also been applied to pig (Sus scrofa spp.) remains, and a quick inspection of the literature reveals a healthy amount of work towards establishing similarly useful methods for constructing demographic proﬁles in this important species, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 775 762 3780. E-mail addresses: lemoinex@SI.edu, ximenadehuesos@gmail.com (X. Lemoine). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.04.002 0305-4403/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Archaeological Science 47 (2014) 179e193