“1st century BCE occurrence of chicken, house mouse and black rat in Morocco: Socio-economic changes around the reign of Juba II on the site of Rirha”

• Published in: Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
• Main Authors: Oueslati, Tarek, Kbiri Alaoui, Mohamed, Ichkhakh, Abdelfattah, Callegarin, Laurent, de Chazelle, Claire-Anne, Rocca, Elsa, Carrato, et Charlotte
• Other Authors: Histoire Archéologie Littérature des Mondes Anciens - UMR 8164 (HALMA), Université de Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Ministère de la Culture (MC), Institut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine (INSAP), Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC), Inspection des monuments historiques et des sites, Essaouira (Maroc), Identités, Territoires, Expressions, Mobilités (ITEM), Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: Morocco; Mauretanian; Zooarchaeology; Invasive species; Translocation; Trade; Phylogeography; [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences; [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; Rattus rattus
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02438164; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.102162

International audience This paper provides new data on the human-mediated introduction of chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus Linnaeus, 1758), black rat (Rattus rattus Linnaeus, 1758) and house mouse (M. musculus domesticus Schwarz & Schwarz, 1943) on the stratified site of Rirha, located in the Gharb plain, Morocco. The Mauretanian Tell, with its mud brick houses, streets, kitchens and dump areas have been excavated extensively and benefitted of sieving which provided clear evidence of the presence of the galliform and of the two murids in 1st century BCE levels and probably earlier around the 3rd 2nd c BCE for house mouse. This renews our understanding of the phylogeography of these three allochthonous species in Morocco. At a larger scale, our results feed the archaeological understanding of the occupation of this diachronic site and the evolution of the dynamics of trade and exchange prior to the Roman period in this area of northern Africa.