Israelites. Only animals specifically slaughtered for food or for use in the sacrificial service could be eaten. Detailed lists of which animals, birds, and fish could be eaten and which were prohibited appear in the Bible ( and ), and animal bones found in the archaeological record tend to support this, with some exceptions. For the Israelites, food was one way for self-definition. While it is impossible to know to what extent dietary laws were observed, self-definition is most likely the basis for certain biblical lists of different kinds of animals permitted or forbidden for consumption. The taboo against eating certain animals, particularly the pig, may have developed from the early Iron Age. Archaeological evidence from various sites shows that the consumption of pork, while limited, was higher in the early Iron Age but had mostly disappeared during the later Iron Age. Sites in the highlands and the coastal plains show low levels of pig utilization in the early Iron Age, but on the coastal plain, excavations such as Ekron show a higher consumption of pig; this is usually associated with the arrival of the Philistines. However, even at Philistine sites, pig remains were a small proportion of the bones discovered, and these decline after the initial period of settlement. This may have been due to unsuitable environmental factors for raising pigs. At archaeological excavations at Mount Ebal in Samaria, from the period immediately after the Israelite conquest, animal bones discovered were only from animals considered permissible, such as cattle, sheep, goats, and deer. In addition, some taboos did not relate to the source of the food but to the way in which they were prepared, as in the prohibition against boiling a young goat in its mother’s milk (and mentioned in the Bible in three separate instances: , , ). Milk and its by-products served as offerings in Near-Eastern pagan worship to gods and kings. Milk was used in connection with the phenomenon of reproduction, and a goat kid would be cooked in its mother's milk. Thus, the Israelite practice was to avoid an act similar to that carried out by the Canaanites as part of their cult worship (). The Israelites believed that since an animal’s blood represented its life, its blood should not be consumed (). The blood of a slaughtered animal was thus drained before the meat was used and the blood itself was not used