Rethinking Caprines-As-Capital: Pastoralism and the Low-Power States of Early Mesopotamia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In ancient Mesopotamia, animal husbandry was intimately bound up with the process of state making. The twin institutional powers of palace and temple managed enormous herds of sheep and goats. But were these animals mere wealth-on-the-hoof, staple goods supporting a classic system of staple finance? Or were they something else, operating simultaneously across multiple registers, not just economic resources but complicated forms of social, political, economic, and religious capital? In this paper, we argue for the latter. Drawing on a theoretical framework that blends social zooarchaeology with a low-power model for the states of early Mesopotamia, we seek to complicate both the politics of state making in the region and the existing literature on human-animal-divine interactions. In a world of aspirational states and incomplete authority, sheep and goats served as a tool of strategic ambiguation, a means of projecting an image of broad-based sovereignty that did not yet exist in practice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Ancient Pastoralism in a Global Perspective   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40050.0