Gazelle Hunting Strategies in the Early Ahmarian: Close-Range Visuospatial Characteristics of Site Locations Indicate Spatially Focused Hunting Strategies on Gazella sp. During the Early Ahmarian

Abstract Visual conditions around Palaeolithic sites determine how the landscape was perceived by prehistoric hunter-gatherers. By placing site in different landscapes, visual foci were encoded locational characteristics of places. For Early Ahmarian Levant, it can be shown that differ significantly with combination large ungulate prey exploited at respective location. A Higuchi viewshed approach combined total viewsheds study area to introduce a human scale into modelling. While diverse locations Mediterranean biome provide an overview over landscape, specialised steppe biomes Irano-Turanian and Saharo-Arabian have their focus on immediate vicinity sites. This correlates placement context highly humid environments which best exemplified Al-Ansab 1 escarpments Jordanian Rift Valley. Here, environmental acted as magnet, focusing gazelles migration between environments.