ABSTRACT
This chapter integrates zooarchaeological data from all Late Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic sites in Switzerland that are dated between 6000 and 3500 BC. For information about the dating and naming of Neolithic cultures, it refers to chronological table in Jacomet 2007. It was necessary to exclude the data on fish and small bird bones because systematic soil sampling and wet sieving was not carried out at all excavations; these results and interpretations, therefore, are based on only hand-selected bone material. Red deer antler remains were also excluded because most had been worked and were therefore derived from highly fragmented artefacts. The zooarchaeological data for Late Mesolithic sites in Switzerland are very poor. In Switzerland, it is necessary to distinguish between two different preservation conditions found on dryland sites and wetland sites. In the wetland sites, a great deal of organic material is preserved, especially non-charred plant material; and on dryland sites, it is only the charred plant material that survives.
