Janet Larios
Research Mentor(s): Laura Motta
Mentor Department: Classsical Studies and Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
Authors:
Session: Sessioin 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Presentation Type: Creative Project
Abstract
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology houses the faunal remains from Tel Anafa, a site excavated by the University of Michigan in the 60s and 70s in modern-day Israel. It is located outside of Tyre in the southern Levant, and was used as an elite residence and an agricultural production site between the Bronze Age and late Roman period. Within this project, we are exploring ancient human-animal relationships through zooarchaeological analysis to further our understanding of agricultural practices, and investigate the estate’s inhabitants’ interactions with their local environment. This project will be addressing the second of these goals, and is focused on the mollusks excavated from the estate. Most of these are freshwater species, probably extracted from the Hula Lake (10 km to the southwest of Tel Anafa) and the Jordan River (2.7 km to the west). The research has consisted of analyzing carefully the structure of the grastropods and bivalves, identifying the various species of the specimens, their age, color, and size. This data is compared to more modern published specimens and from the Museum of Zoology collections. The comparison of the physical characteristics of ancient seashells to their modern counterparts can reveal potential environmental and ecological changes that have taken place between the ancient past and the present. This is significant, as the size of the Hula Lake has fluctuated over time, flooding and drying intermittently, and was completely drained in the 1950s, dramatically changing the character of the lake and causing the extinction of several species. Moreover, little is known about the use of freshwater species, especially mollusks, at Tel Anafa and in the broader region of the southern Levant, so this study fills a significant gap in our knowledge.
