ABSTRACT
In Anatolia (and the Near East in general) archaeological excavations occur more often in large urban centers than rural settlements. Consequently, our understanding of past subsistence practices is mainly based on assemblages from urban contexts. Solely urban subsistence strategies cannot be used for determining regional trends. The study of 17 faunal assemblages from urban and rural settlements located in the Upper Tigris River area illustrates the intra-regional variability of subsistence practices and its evolution from the beginning of the second to the middle of the first millennia BCE, demonstrating that consumers had preferential access to sheep and goats while producers had a diversified stock-breeding strategy that exploited relatively more cattle and pigs.
