The Animal Provisioning System for a Late Bronze Age Temple at Hazor, Israel

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The tel site of Hazor, Israel is one of the largest such occupational mounds in the southern Levant. Excavated in the 1950s, 1960s, and continuously since the 1990s, archaeologists have uncovered monumental public buildings. One such building, now identified as one of several Late Bronze Age temples, contains evidence of divination and animal sacrifice and/or feasts. So documented, the question remains: how was this temple provisioned with animals to supply sacrifices, feasts, and the meals of temple workers? Did this societal segment have direct access to animal herds of its own? Were they tithed from the city’s population or purchased from nomadic pastoralists? To arrive at a possible explanation, I study zooarchaeological evidence in the form of sheep, goat, and cattle relative abundance, metric measurements, and kill-off profiles. I also draw on cuneiform tablets that record herd management practices at other cities. The questions posed, and approach taken, draw direct and indirect inspiration from Richard Redding’s work on feeding pyramid builders in Egypt, as well as Melinda Zeder’s more general efforts to untangle ancient food supply chains in ancient Iran.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39590.0