Persistence in Pastoralist Practices During the Uruk Period at Tepe Farukhabad

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Uruk period (4100 - 3100 BCE) was a transformative time in Southwest Asia, marked by the precursors of writing, the rise of urbanization, and an intensification in cross-cultural interactions. Subsistence strategies were shifting as well, as hunting declined relative to herding and animals such as sheep and goats became favored for both their primary and secondary products. Tepe Farukhabad, located on the Deh Luran plain on the fringes of Mesopotamia, offers an opportunity to study how these developments manifested in changes in herd management strategies. In this paper, stable isotope analysis is used to investigate the herding strategies utilized in the Middle and Late Uruk through the reconstruction of the diet and landscape use of herded ruminants from Tepe Farukhabad. Sequential sampling of sheep and goat teeth produced carbon and oxygen isotope values (δ13C and δ18O) which showed a variety of herding strategies were implemented in both the Middle and Late Uruk. Some animals were foddered or herded seasonally to higher elevations in order to access better grazing pastures, while others were herded near the site. The variety of strategies used at Tepe Farukhabad reflects resilience among pastoralists in the midst of the many changes of the Uruk period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38549.0