CHIPPED STONE GROUND STONE UNBAKED CLAY SHELL BONE “ARCHITECTURE”] Karim Shahir did not yield direct evidence of the kind of vegetable food its people ate. The animal bones showed a considerable increase in the proportion of the bones of the species capable of domestication--sheep, goat, cattle, horse, dog--as compared with animal bones from the earlier cave sites of the area, which have a high proportion of bones of wild forms like deer and gazelle. But we do not know that any of the Karim Shahir animals were actually domesticated. Some of them may have been, in an “incipient” way, but we have no means at the moment that will tell us from the bones alone. WERE THE NATUFIAN AND KARIM SHAHIR PEOPLES FOOD-PRODUCERS? It is clear that a great part of the food of the Natufian people must have been hunted or collected. Shells of land, fresh-water, and sea animals occur in their cave layers. The same is true as regards Karim Shahir, save for sea shells. But on the other hand, we have the sickles, the milling stones, the possible Natufian dog, and the goat, and the general animal situation at Karim Shahir to hint at an incipient approach to food-production. At Karim Shahir, there was the tendency to settle down out in the open; this is echoed by the new reports of open air Natufian sites. The large number of cracked stones certainly indicates that it was worth the peoples’ while to have some kind of structure, even if the site as a whole was short-lived. It is a part of my hunch that these things all point toward food-production--that the hints we seek are there. But in the sense that the peoples of the era of the primary village-farming community, which we shall look at next, are fully food-producing, the Natufian and Karim Shahir folk had not yet arrived. I think they were part of a general build-up to full scale food-production. They were possibly controlling a few animals of several kinds and perhaps one or two plants, without realizing the full possibilities of this “control” as a new way of life. This is why I think of the Karim Shahir and Natufian folk as being at a level, or in an era, of incipient cultivation and domestication. But we shall have to do a great deal more excavation in this range of time before we’ll get the kind of positive information we need. SUMMARY