Hunting and Extinctions in Southwest Asia and North America explores communal game traps for harvesting ungulate herds in two continents, utilizing a comparative approach addressing settings, species and the hunters’ societies.

The kites of Southwest Asia have been known to archaeologists for almost 100 years but with the advent of high-resolution satellite images thousands of sites have been found. Using the rich data from the Southwest and Central Asia and North America, this book addresses some of the important questions which arise concerning the social, economic and environmental implications of ancient and recent use of large game traps. The book has four major parts. The first introduces the book and reviews the evolution of human hunting. The second part presents examples of desert kites from various areas of Southwest and Central Asia. Detailed case studies are included that use a variety of evidence such as aerial surveys, field surveys, excavations, eye witnesses accounts and petroglyph depictions. Environmental and geographical settings of the isolated traps, the clusters of traps and the long chains are explored to provide conceptual models regarding past herd behavior and their seasonal migrations. The third part presents examples of communal game traps in various regions in North America, addressing the same issues discussed in the second part. The fourth part provides a comparative study of game traps in North America with the kites of Southwest Asia, focusing on the settings, species and social organization of the hunters.

With the research on communal game traps increasing rapidly, this book provides the first inclusive synthesis on the subject and is for archaeologists, anthropologists, zoologists, ecologists and environmentalists who are interested in past interactions between humans and their environments, and the impact of past human communities on the landscape and on target game populations, as well as the consequences that are still relevant today.