Ordinary or Extraordinary? Analytical Disjunctures between Production and Rituals in Pastoralist Societies

Summary

This paper considers the connection between the quotidian practices of pastoralism and the role of herd animals (and their material remains) in ritual practices in the Late Bronze Age in the South Caucasus. Zooarchaeological and isotopic analysis of faunal remains from Late Bronze Age (1500-1100 BCE) sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia have revealed new, if perplexing, evidence about everyday practices of production, distribution, and consumption of pastoralist products and the incorporation of animals in ritual practices in walled sites and mortuary assemblages. Specifically, this paper examines the incorporation of isolated skeletal elements into ritual spaces, contextualizing this practice within the broader scope of Late Bronze Age human-animal relationships. Avoiding analytical reduction to tokens of economic transactions or singular items of ritual value, this approach situates both ritual and production as material efforts to stabilize the fluid and multiple connections between activities taking place within fortress sites and the suite of quotidian and extraordinary practices that constituted social worlds lived primarily beyond the confines of walled sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20903