Communal hunting in the Natufian of the southern Levant: the social and economic implications

The Natufian culture of Palestine has been seen as an important stage in the transition from hunting and gathering to food production. This paper uses faunal data from the site of Salibiya I in the lower Jordan Valley to suggest that the Natufians practised communal hunting of the mountain gazelle. Ethnographic studies suggest that communal hunting entails planning, timing and the organization of large numbers of people. We suggest that it was the social organization needed for the communal hunt, rather than sedentarization, or demographic or ecological factors, that provided the preconditions for the beginning of agriculture. -from Authors