西亚家猪驯化研究的进展与启示

Progress and Enlightenment of Study on Domestication to Domestic Pig in Western Asia

本文结合动物考古和新兴科技方法的研究成果,回顾了西亚家猪驯化研究近二十年来的进展和新发现。对该问题的研究历程表明,驯化是一个缓慢而复杂的动态发展过程。除了试图厘清驯化发生的时间和地点,生物科技手段的加入,为我们窥探古代家猪的饮食、形态、活动和谱系提供了新的可能,丰富了我们对这一过程中人与猪互动关系的认识。而这些针对西亚古代家猪的研究对于我们探索中国家猪驯化历程提供了很好的借鉴和启示。

The substantial fieldwork and zooarchaeological research to date concerning the region of West Asia lay the basis for tracing back the process of pig domestication from at least 10 thmillennium B.P.in Southeastern Anatolia.The zooarchaeological evidence located the earliest centre of pig domestication at the Upper Tigris region and possibly the Euphrates basin as well.Besides traditional zooarchaeology,a variety of methods applied in bioarchaeology devel-oped substantially during the past two decades,including mega-data analysis,stable isotope analysis,geometric mor-phometrics,and a DNA,which hugely contribute to our knowledge of pig domestication and continuously renovate our understanding of the dynamic human-pig relationships.In this paper,we first review the key archaeological sites displaying early zooarchaeological evidence of pig management in Southeastern Anatolia,and further integrate some re-cent results derived from the bioarchaeological methods mentioned above.Finally and the most importantly,we pro-pose preliminarily what we have learned from these studies on pig domestication in West Asia and how they can in-spire our research on pig domestication happened independently in Neolithic China,as well as the difficulties and fu-ture research areas claiming much more attention.