People and Birds in the Southern Levant: Ecological, Economic and Symbolic Relationships during the Early Neolithic

People throughout the world and throughout history have had special relationships with birds. Birds, together with their nests and eggs, have been sources of food; their plumage, flight and song have inspired artists, writers and musicians; scientists have been motivated by birds to gain fundamental insights about ecology and evolution; politicians, religious leaders and warlords have adopted birds as their symbols, whether to intimidate or reassure.

This complex web of people-bird relationships is especially striking in the southern Levant, the area now primarily covered by Israel, Palestine and Jordan, as evident from the representation of birds within the region's art and literature. Within the Old Testament, for instance, eagles, doves, storks, ravens and other birds appear as messengers, omens, metaphors, and as sources of food. The pervasiveness of birds in Levantine culture is perhaps not surprising because of the abundance and diversity of bird life within this region, although this is increasingly threatened by the loss of habitats and environmental change.

It is a reasonable proposition that varying arrays of ecological, economic, social and symbolic relationships between people and birds were also found in prehistoric cultures within the Levant, and that these provided the foundations of those in the historical periods and the present day. This project will explore this notion by seeking to reconstruct people-bird relationships within the earliest sedentary societies of the Levant, those of the early Neolithic, c. 12,000-10,000 years ago. These were communities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A culture. Although primarily living by hunting and gathering, these communities were increasingly cultivating wild plants and managing herds of wild goats, activities that ultimately led to domestication and farming economies. As such, these early Neolithic communities have a particularly important role to play in not only Levantine but world prehistory in general.

While drawing on data from numerous archaeological sites, the project will focus on the bird bones acquired from recent excavations at the settlements of WF16 and El-Hemmeh. These are the largest collections of bird bones ever recovered from Neolithic sites in the region. Both WF16 and El Hemmeh have evidence for complex social and symbolic activities in addition to those of a domestic nature; the bird bones come from meticulously documented contexts including burials, rubbish pits, hearths and occupation debris.

The bird bones will be catalogued and identified to species using the comparative collection of bird bones at the Natural History Museum located at Tring, UK. This will also identify which body parts are present and how the carcasses had been treated as a means to infer whether the birds had been used for food, for display, within ritual or even kept as live birds at the site. Interpretations of the data will draw on four additional sources of information: contextual information, such as whether the bird bones came from rubbish pits or burials; previously published bird-bone data from other Neolithic sites in the region; avian ecology, so we will know about the appearance and habits of the birds identified, such as whether they were migratory or had impressive plumage; and historical and ethnographic evidence for people-bird relationships within the region.

To synthesis and interpret this range of information the project will bring together an inter-disciplinary team composed of Neolithic archaeologists, an archaeo-zoologist, a cultural historian and an ornithologist. It will take approximately two years to complete, with researchers based in the UK, Germany and Jordan. The project team will work closely with JordanBirdWatch, an NGO committed to bird conservation, which will draw on the research outcomes to support its work in raising awareness about the importance of birds to the well-being of environments and society.

The People & Birds will have an academic impact via its capacity building for avian osteoarchaeology. It will also benefit four categories of non-academics:

1. The Governmental and private sector bodies who seek to develop eco-tourism by providing new information about a key element of the cultural and natural heritage of the region;

2. The businesses and local communities who immediately benefit from such tourism in Wadi Faynan by creating a new tourist resource of 'Ancient Birds and People' with the Wadi Faynan museum;

3. The tourists themselves by enhancing the content and quality of their experience;

4. The NGOs concerned with bird conservation by raising the profile of the avian heritage of the region, notably JordanBirdWatch.

The southern Levant, and especially the region of southern Jordan where the sites of WF16 and El-Hemmeh are located, is economically impoverished. The Jordanian Government, NGOs, the private sector, and local communities have made significant investments during the last two decades to develop eco-tourism for economic growth (see USAID 2014 Report on Economic Growth Through Sustainable Tourism). Two major growth areas are tourism to archaeological sites and bird watching. The outcomes of the People & Bird Project lie at the interface of these two growth areas and hence the project has considerable opportunity for achieving impact.

The key tourist destination in Jordan is Petra, receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. There is a desire to increase the number of tourists visiting other destinations in the region, one of which is Wadi Faynan (just 50Km north of Petra), where the site of WF16 is located. Investment into Wadi Faynan has involved the construction of an Eco-Lodge to provide tourists with a 'wilderness experience' and the construction of a new museum to display artefacts from excavations.

While visiting archaeological sites is one motivation for tourists coming to the region, another is for bird watching. Wadi Faynan is partly contained within the Dana Nature Reserve that has the highest bird diversity for all of Jordan, with c. 250 species including some of the most endangered types (e.g. the Syrian serin, Serinus syriacus). The Eco-lodge currently provides guided bird-watching walks. This activity is set to increase significantly throughout Jordan in light of a government-led initiative to train bird-watching guides. Six of the 12 major tour operators who offer bird watching tours have already developed Jordan-specific itineraries.

One of the outcomes of the People & Birds Project will be the creation of a display within the Wadi Faynan museum of bird bones entitled 'Ancient Birds and People'. This will have information boards and leaflets describing the relationships between birds and people in the Neolithic. Permission to create such as display has been provided by the Department of Antiquaries who own and manage the museum as part of the overall contribution of Mithen and Finalyson to the museum development. The 'Ancient Birds & People' display will be a unique resource within Jordan, helping to attract tourists to this impoverished region by combing their interests in both archaeology and birds.

By raising awareness about the ancient bird life within Jordan, this new resource, and the project in general, will also benefit JordanBirdWatch and other NGOs engaged in conservation. As noted in the 2013 report 'The State of Jordan's Birds', success in conservation is dependent upon raising the overall profile of the history and heritage of bird life in Jordan. The project will produce a companion report 'The State of Jordan's Birds 10,000 years ago' to be distributed by the Jordan BirdWatch NGO to a diverse range of stakeholders concerned with conservation.