Understanding the organisation of food production is vital for understanding ancient societies. Multiple factors may influence decision making, including the local environmental capacity of a given area and individual and cultural preferences. This study compares zooarchaeological data from sites across the length and breadth of the Holocene Near East with modelled patterns of land use. The goal is to determine how far variation in the capacities of local landscapes impacted the choices made in animal production. Our approach allows us to investigate trends through time as well as between different regions of the Near East. The spatial and temporal scales employed also mean we can investigate the relationship between food production and climate trends. We find substantial patterning in the choices made in animal production, reflecting complex and regionally diverse production approaches. We demonstrate a prioritisation of individual and societal preferences to produce specific animals which is rarely impacted by either short or long term changes in aridity. We also find that the emergence of urban sites has a major impact on provisioning structures, and argue that the resulting organisational forms may have resulted in urban sustainability at the expense or rural sites.

了解粮食生产的组织对于了解古代社会至关重要。多种因素可能会影响决策，包括特定地区的当地环境容量以及个人和文化偏好。这项研究将来自全新世近东地区长度和宽度的遗址的动物考古数据与模拟的土地利用模式进行了比较。目标是确定当地景观能力的变化对动物生产选择的影响有多大。我们的方法使我们能够调查随着时间的推移以及近东不同地区之间的趋势。所采用的空间和时间尺度也意味着我们可以调查粮食生产与气候趋势之间的关系。我们在动物生产中的选择中发现了大量模式，反映了复杂和区域多样化的生产方法。我们展示了个人和社会偏好的优先级，以生产很少受干旱的短期或长期变化影响的特定动物。我们还发现城市场地的出现对供给结构有重大影响，并认为由此产生的组织形式可能以牺牲或农村场地为代价导致城市可持续性。