Pastoralism (Other Keyword)
26-50 (92 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Every summer since at least AD 1000, hundreds of Basque herders from dozens of villages across the 1500 km2 Soule Valley in the French Western Pyrenees have converged with thousands of sheep on 90 km2 of high mountain rangeland in the parish-community of Larrau. The summer convergence of herders and sheep over the last millennium...
Early Herding Practices in Tanzania Revealed through Strontium Isotope Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. East African pastoralists today rely on extensive social networks through which livestock are exchanged to maintain herds. The role of such animal exchange networks among ancient pastoralist communities can be revealed through stable isotope analysis. Pastoral Neolithic sites are broadly distributed across southern Kenya and northern Tanzania....
Early Navajo Social Organization and the Diné-Dibé-Tł’oh Relationship circa AD 1750 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Navajo Pastoral Landscape Project is an ongoing study that explores the potential ways that incipient Indigenous pastoralism influenced early Navajo community life circa AD 1750. The recent dung-based identification of potential livestock enclosure features at four...
Economies and Identities in Flux: Consequences of the Arrival of Specialized Fulani Pastoralists in Mali’s Inland Niger Delta (2015)
In the Sahel, the Fulani are considered the archetypal cattle herders. Although their spread across West Africa is poorly understood, their arrival had profound effects on local populations. In Mali’s Inland Niger Delta, historical sources and isotopic analysis of archaeological cattle, sheep, and goat teeth from the site of Jenné-jeno and the modern town of Djenné suggest that specialized Fulani pastoralists arrived in the Delta between the 13th and 15th centuries AD. This coincided with...
Entangled Human and Nonhuman Life Histories: A Glance into the Perceived Value of Camelid Identity from the Central Andes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A multispecies approach to archaeology creates the potential for inclusive debate on the value of identity among both human and nonhuman beings. This paper explores the way that camelid life histories where shaped by and influenced sociopolitical relationships among the Late Moche...
Entheseal Changes in Bronze and Early Iron Age Mongolia (2018)
Extensive bioarchaeological research has addressed questions about stress, pathology, and activity in agricultural and semi-agricultural populations throughout the archaeological record, yet comparable studies pertaining to nomadic pastoral and semi-pastoral groups are relatively rare. During the Bronze Age in the Eurasian Steppes, archaeological evidence suggests a transition of lifeways from semi-sedentary agricultural to nomadic pastoralist. Entheseal analyses in bioarchaeology introduce an...
Evidence for Close Management of Sheep in Ancient Central Asia: Foddering Techniques and Transhumance in the Final Bronze Age (2018)
Ancient animal management strategies have important implications for debates on modern pastoral landscape use in Eurasia. As livestock production intensifies in in semi-arid regions there is a need to identify the diverse set of strategies employed by pastoralists. Sequential carbon (δ13C) and oxygen (δ18O) isotope analysis of teeth from domesticated sheep at Bronze Age sites in Kazakhstan exhibit varied isotopic sequences. Sheep from Kent exhibit an inverse relationship where low δ18O values...
The Excavation of the Mount Wood Woolscour, Tibooburra, New South Wales (1984)
In this paper the author, who is Historian in the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, reconstructs the little-known process of station-based woolscouring from documentary and archaeological evidence. It is argued that the relatively Late survival of this form of scouring In western New South Wales resulted primarily from severely limited transport facilities. The considerable variation in scour design, evident in the literature and at Mount Wood, as attributed to individual...
Expanding frontier and building the sphere in the western deserts (2017)
During the early and middle Holocene the deserts of Mongolia and northern China were characterized by arid grasslands and numerous lakes and wetlands. Specialized wetland exploitation defined land-use during this period, but more detailed data on subsistence is not clear. The prevalent use of microlithic technology and the lack of architectural structures underscores the presumption that these groups were highly mobile hunter-gatherers, but increasing evidence reveals that pastoralism spread...
Exploring (In)Visible Impacts of Multispecies Living among Hunter-Fisher-Herders in Boreal North Asia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Rangifer tarandus (reindeer and caribou) are a keystone species that have shaped the complex fabric of mobile hunter-fisher societies in North Asia, not only as herded animals and wild game but as animate persons. In western Siberia and northern Mongolia, descendant...
From Bit Wear to Ancient DNA: Steppe-ing Out (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We found our first entry into steppe archaeology in 1989-1992 through a study of microwear caused by bits on horse teeth, which we hoped would identify bitted, and therefore ridden or driven, horses. From then through to the publication of the Samara Valley Project (2016) we...
From herders to wage-laborers and back again: mountain mobility in the Puna of Atacama, northern Chile. (2016)
Towards the end of the 19th Century, the subsistence mode of indigenous Atacameño society transited from an agricultural-pastoral economy to a more diversified capitalist-based one. This transformation resulted from a growing mining industry in the northern region of Chile. While part of the indigenous population migrated to the new productive enclaves, others remained in their territory, especially the herders of the puna. These highlanders, however, also took part of the new capitalist order...
Frontier Dynamics in the Eastern Eurasian Steppe: Examining the Unique Characteristics of Long Wall Construction and Associated Defensive Features through Archaeological Geophysics (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The eastern Eurasian steppe region was a dynamic area of contact between Chinese dynasties and pastoral nomadic communities occupying the steppe ecological zone. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries AD the situation was even more complex as the people of nomadic or seminomadic origins...
Geographic origin of sacrificed camelids at Huanchaquito (Chimú period, northern coast of Peru): insight from stable isotopic analysis (2017)
Excavations at the Chimú site of Huanchaquito located in the Moche Valley (northern coast of Peru) leaded to the discovery of an exceptional sacrificial deposit of more than 200 domestic camelid skeletons. This finding adds to the many testimonies of the presence of camelids on the Peruvian coast during the pre-Hispanic era. The abundant presence of animals suggests - but does not bring definitive evidence - that breeding took place locally in an unfavorable arid environment. Measurements of...
GRAR: a Chalcolithic Site in the Northern Negev, Israel (1989)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Herbivore Dung Biomarkers: A Reference Collection for the Archaeology of Pastoral Domestic Spaces in Western and Central Mongolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "New Directions in Mongolian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lipid biomarkers such as alkanes, fatty acids, and steroids together with their stable carbon and hydrogen isotope ratios are nowadays leading proxies for the identification of past climate variability, human activities, and animal presence in a site. These can be extracted from modern feces, desiccated dung, and soil sediments. When applied to...
Herder land use and nutrient hotspots in southern Kenya: geochemical analysis of anthropogenic soil enrichment. (2017)
Mobile herding societies are often considered to leave behind few traces in the archaeological record, however pastoral settlements may have helped shape the broader landscape. Herders relying on domesticated cattle, sheep and goat arrived in the most productive grasslands of East Africa >3600 calBP years ago. Our collaborative research investigates the legacies of their land-use through geoarchaeological analyses. We present results of analyses of five Pastoral Neolithic era archaeological...
Horse Warriors and Warrior Horses (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Survey in the Rio Grande Gorge of New Mexico over the past decade has revealed a robust corpus of Plains Biographic rock art depicting the coups and accomplishments of human warriors. While horses are equally present, most of them are secondary to the narratives depicted and appear as ridden mounts or captured wealth. However, an...
Identifying Animal Management Practices Using Oxygen Isotopes in Neolithic Croatia (2018)
Transhumance is a typical Mediterranean adaptation for securing adequate forage and water for domesticates by seasonally bringing animals to new pasture. However the antiquity of this adaptation is unclear. We present new oxygen isotope data from the Dalmatian coast, Croatia, to test the hypothesis that Neolithic herds were seasonally transhumant. Incremental sampling of ancient animal teeth produced data that are compared with modern isotope data of water showing altitudinal variation to assess...
The Influence of Pastoral Cultivation Strategies and Novel Cuisines on Newly Introduced Crops in Central Asia during the Bronze and Iron Ages (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When crops are spread into new landscapes, communities, and their associated subsistence practices and culinary preferences, the crops undergo substantial selective pressure. This pressure can come in the form of new environmental constraints, such as a different growing season, or cultural pressure from differences in preferred taste, productivity, or...
Is the Anthropocene a Beastly Problem? Thoughts on Human-Animal Relationships and Contemporary Narratives of Change (2017)
Pizzly bears and coywolves have been making headlines over the past few years. Offspring of illicit pairings between species of charismatic and aggressive megafauna, these hybrid monsters are presented as signs and portents of a troubled future. This paper explores the relationship between contemporary discourses about unruly and uncanny hybrid species and academic efforts to define and engage with the Anthropocene. It questions the relationships between tacit understandings of the animal as a...
Kinship and Cattle in Harappan Gujarat (2018)
Pastoralism, the production and management of livestock, was integral to the lifeways practiced by the peoples of the Indus Civilization (2600-1900 BC), South Asia’s first experiment with urban society. The integration of Gujarat (India) into the interregional flows of people, goods, and ideas that knit together the Indus Civilization, for example, is associated with the widespread adoption of pastoralism in a region that was formerly characterized by small-scale horticulturalist-hunting...
Late Bronze Age women of the steppe frontier: a bioarchaeological analysis of multiple sites in northern China (2017)
The late Bronze Age in the Inner Asian steppe was a transitional period, with the adoption of mobile herding, as well as increasing sociopolitical interaction and complexity among groups in this region. Although archaeological studies have indicated that many steppe groups engaged in a variety of subsistence practices, pastoralism in general has been characterized as a rather uniform lifestyle; and nomadic pastoralism in particular has been associated more often with the role of males, i.e., as...
Late Holocene occupations at the Pinnacle Point Shell Midden Complex (2015)
Surveys identified a series of Holocene Later Stone Age shell middens along the westernmost extent of the Pinnacle Point estate near Mossel Bay, Western Cape, South Africa. Excavations during 2006 and 2007 revealed a well-preserved record of human activity ranging from 3000 ± 75 BP to 890 ± 30 BP across six spatially and temporally distinct shell middens. Dubbed Areas 1 - 4 of the Pinnacle Point Shell Midden Complex (PPSMC), each midden presents a picture of human subsistence patterns that...
Late Holocene Pastoralism and Environmental Change in the Puna Highlands of South America: Stable Isotope Analysis of Camelids Bones and Teeth (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this work is to study llama herding in the Puna Highlands of Atacama during the final period of the Late Holocene (700 years BP to present day), focusing on the link between mobility and climate change. South American camelids are the only large mammals that were domesticated in the Americas and llamas have been an important resource for Andean...