Animals at the Periphery: Investigating Urban Subsistence at Iron Age Sam’al (Zincirli Höyük, Turkey)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The site of Zincirli Höyük, the ancient city of Sam’al, provides nuanced archaeological testimony to the complex interactions between imperial ambition and local concern in the Iron Age of Southern Anatolia (ca. 850–600 BCE). During this period, Syro-Hittite city-states gradually came under the political influence of the expanding Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the course of its expansion, the empire encountered and engaged with long-established cities, landscapes, ecologies, and attendant practices of animal husbandry. The comparative analysis of zooarchaeological remains from the site’s Southern Citadel (Area 3) and Northern Lower Town (Areas 5 and 6), can attest to the ways in which the inhabitants of this ancient city adapted to projects of imperial integration. These excavations provide rich faunal assemblages and span Sam’al’s transition from an Assyrian vassal to a provincial capital, testifying to practices of animal utilization in both upper and lower town contexts. This paper will present preliminary zooarchaeological analyses and examine patterns of change and stability in strategies of animal husbandry through this transition, revealing the ways that urban subsistence functioned as a political tool in situations of ancient imperialism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33393