Southwest Asia (Other Keyword)
1-2 (2 Records)
Prevailing theories concerning the role of climate change in the transition from foraging to farming in SW Asia view socioeconomic change as a response to climate deterioration (push theories) or improvement (pull theories) which caused resource depression or abundance respectively. With this paper I propose that periods of socioeconomic and cultural innovation correlate with periods of climatic instability, which occurred at the timescales of direct human experience of the landscape (i.e., at...
Ecology, ceremony, and animal bones from southern Mesopotamia (2015)
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez has written numerous zooarchaeological papers that wonderfully balance attention to both the ecosystemic and the cultural influences that shape how humans interact with animals. In a 2008 essay exploring zooarchaeology’s potential contributions to the study of daily life, she wrote that pastoralists’ herd management strategies are constructed in the contexts not only of regional ecosystems and animal biologies, but also of human economies, ideologies and politics. At the...