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Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

Abstract

The Syrian elephant (Elephas maximus asurus Deraniyagala, 1951) constitutes the extinct westernmost population of the Asian elephant and occupied parts of the Near East until the early first millennium BCE. Although historical, iconographic, and dental evidence for this population has been discussed extensively, its postcranial anatomy remains poorly documented. We present a revised osteological and morphometric study of cranial and postcranial remains recovered from the Late Bronze Age Gavur Lake Swamp assemblage (ca. 1650–1400 cal BCE) in Kahramanmaraş, southeastern Türkiye, during rescue excavations conducted in 2021 and 2022. The material derives from a natural swamp deposit rather than from an anthropogenic context such as an ivory workshop, ritual deposit, or ship cargo, and this context allows the skeletal anatomy to be assessed with better control over depositional and association data than is possible in many anthropogenic assemblages. We describe key craniodental, mandibular, and postcranial elements; provide osteometric data; and compare the Gavur Lake specimens with extant Elephas maximus and selected Quaternary elephantids. The assemblage represents at least four individuals, including a securely associated mature adult for which cranial and postcranial elements can be discussed together on the basis of excavation context. The postcranial material shows an overall Elephas-type articular pattern combined with marked robusticity. However, this robust construction is interpreted conservatively as an individual-level pattern until additional associated skeletons become available. The Gavur Lake material therefore provides an excavation-based postcranial reference set for late Holocene Elephas from southeastern Türkiye and offers an important comparative basis for future work on fragmentary elephant remains from Southwest Asia.

Author ORCID Identifier

SERDAR MAYDA: 0000-0001-5432-3559

YARENKÜR ALKAN: 0000-0002-8339-5655

DOI

10.55730/1300-0985.2023

Keywords

Elephas maximus asurus, Syrian elephant, Gavur Lake, Late Bronze Age, Holocene, postcranial osteology

First Page

336

Last Page

353

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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