Cat and mice: commensalism and shifting of continental connectivity

CNRS Éditions eBooks2024pp. 467–476

Thomas Cucchi, Katerina Papayianni, Jean‐Denis Vigne

Abstract

This chapter analyses the 41 bone and tooth rodent remains together with the only cat bone found in Klimonas. Gnowing marks studies and contextual analyses clearly show that mice were living in the village as commensals. Their remains were especially concentrated in the packed earth floor of the three main successive Communal buildings, suggesting that the latter was the main crop storage area, like in PPNA sites in the Euphrates Valley. One first lower molar was identified as mus m. domesticus via geometric morphometric analysis, indicating that the house mouse had already been introduced to Cyprus at the beginning of the 9th millennium cal BC. One cat phalanx strongly suggests that Felis s. lybica was also introduced with early cultivation, “pre-domestic” cereals and mice, as part of the “PPNA package”. The morphometric study of dental shape similarities among PPN populations of house mice from Cyprus and the nearby continent suggests that m. m. domesticus was introduced from Anatolia, but that the continental source of house mouse dispersal had shifted to the Northern Levant during the PPNB, then to the Southern Levant during the PPNC and Pottery Neolithic. These observations support and clarify our current understanding of Cyprus PPN connectivity with the continent based on cultural studies.

Abstract

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