New perspectives on the use of kites in mass-kills of Levantine gazelle: A view from northeastern Syria Melinda A. Zeder a, * , Guy Bar-Oz b , Scott J. Rufolo a , Frank Hole c a Program in Human Ecology and Archaeobiology, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA b Department of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel c Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA article info Article history: Available online 11 January 2013 abstract A deposit of gazelle bones at Tell Kuran in the Khabur Basin of northeastern Syria provides evidence for the use of desert kites in the mass-slaughter of steppic game. The deposit’s late 4th millennium BCE date, long after livestock had replaced game as primary meat sources, suggests that this practice was directed toward social rather than economic ends. Evidence for the use of kites in the mass killing of steppe animals in the Khabur Basin is examined and the possibility that not only gazelle, but also onagers and possibly other steppe animals’ were hunted in this way is explored. The role of such socially driven practices in the local extirpation of steppe species is discussed. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction World War I pilots were the first to record the presence of mysterious stone structures found in large numbers across the desert and steppe regions from the Arabian Peninsula to north- eastern Syria (Legge and Rowley-Conwy, 1987 , pp. 91). Though varied in form (Helms and Betts, 1987; Kennedy, 2011 , 2012), these structures are generally constructed of low stone walls that define a semi-enclosed round or oblong structure with an opening on one side from which two long walls lead outward in a funnel-like shape (Fig. 1). Called “kites” because of their resemblance to the child’s toy when viewed from the air (Rees, 1929), there have been multiple hypotheses proposed for their function e as fortresses built for the protection of herders and their livestock (Maitland, 1927; Rees, 1929; Kirkbride, 1946), as corrals used in the process of managing “semi-domesticated” animals (Echallier and Braemer, 1995), as structures used in water control (Helms, 1976), and even as having cultic functions (Eddy and Wendorf, 1999). The most likely, and the most widely accepted, function for these structures is that they were used for the entrapment of wild game animals (e.g. Helms and Betts, 1987; Legge and Rowley- Conwy, 1987; Betts and Yagodin, 2000; Van Berg et al., 2004; Nadel et al., 2010; Bar-Oz et al., 2011a; Kennedy, 2011 , 2012). Early traveler’s accounts dating as far back as the 17th century document the use of these and other similar structures in game drives by local Bedouin tribes (Teixeira, 1604; Burckhardt, 1831; Barker, 1876; Wright, 1895; Musil, 1928; Aharoni, 1946; see discussion in Legge and Rowley-Conwy, 2000, pp. 442e447). While a number of dif- ferent game animals are mentioned in connection with the use of kites in mass-kills, including oryx and ostriches (Field, 1954), the most common target was gazelle, with reports of large migrating herds being driven into kites or kite-like enclosures and killed in the hundreds (Burckhardt, 1831 , pp. 200e221; Aharoni, 1946, pp. 31e33, translated from the Hebrew by Meshel, 2000). Today, gazelle persist in the region only as remnant populations, with all three species of Levantine gazelle listed on the Interna- tional Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List as threatened species at high risk of extinction. Once, however, these animals were ubiquitous, found in large numbers across the entire region e the mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) in the low altitude, open woodlands and richer grasslands from Arabia to Syria (Mendelssohn et al., 1995), the smaller bodied, desert adapted Dorcas gazelle (Gazella dorcas) in the southern parts of the Arabian peninsula and North Africa (Yom-Tov et al., 1995), and the larger Persian or goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) thought to have once migrated across more steppic parts of the region from southern Arabia to eastern Turkey, and into Iran (Zhevnerov, 1984; Kingswood and Blank, 1996). Prehistorically, from the Late Pleistocene up to the widespread adoption of domesticates in the Early Holocene, gazelle were the primary prey species of Levantine hunteregatherers. Mountain gazelle were intensively hunted in the more humid parts of the southern Levant (Bar-Oz, 2004; Munro, 2004), and the Persian gazelle was the dominant prey animals in the more arid steppe from the eastern Jordan up through the middle Euphrates (Legge * Corresponding author. E-mail address: Zederm@si.edu (M.A. Zeder). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.12.045 Quaternary International 297 (2013) 110e125