Meat on the Hoof: Isotopic Evidence of Administrative Herd Management at Khirbet Summeily, Israel

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Khirbet Summeily is an Iron Age II site located northwest of Tell el-Hesi in Southern Israel. Excavations have revealed a large, singular structure with an adjoining ritual space dated to the Iron Age IIA (ca. 1000–870 BCE). Recent interpretations suggest the site was integrated into a regional economic and political system and functioned as a potential administrative outpost based on the material culture and architecture recovered from the Iron Age IIA layers. This paper presents the carbon, oxygen, and strontium isotopic analyses of intra-tooth samples from ovicaprine and cattle remains to test herd management strategies in connection to administrative provisioning activities. The animal remains are used as proxies to identify political and economic ties through shared foodways and herd management patterns. Results suggest direct evidence of goats herded in the Egyptian Nile Valley prior to arrival in the southern Levant. This is the first evidence of Egyptian livestock trade in the Greater Hesi Region during the Iron Age IIA. Implications from this research address herd management and mobility patterns as well as the level and identity of the larger political network the site was integrated into, thereby testing the hypothesis that Khirbet Summeily was an administrative outpost.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Animal Bones to Human Behavior   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32071