Exploring Food Practices among the First Agro-Pastoral Communities of the Southern Levant: The Ground Stone Tool Perspective

The development of agro-pastoral communities in the southern Levant is associated with a diversity of dietary and food practices, as highlighted by the variability found between sites in the specific and relative occurrence of plant and animal species. The ground stone tools (GST), commonly employed to reduce something into smaller particles, are examined here in order to further explore food practices in such contexts. This article discusses how GST analysis can contribute to unravel the types of food processed, the end-products obtained, and social contexts of production and consumption. Based on the analysis of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB ~8600-6350 cal. BC) assemblages of Kfar HaHoresh and Beisamoun, and on comparisons with other contemporary sites, it is argued that the observed variability in GST most likely reflects differences in the types of resources exploited, the range of processing methods, as well as in “grinding habitus” and culinary recipes.