Traditional Living and Production Practices Based on Animal Husbandry in the Melendiz Region: Ethnographic and Ethnoarchaeological Approaches

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Modelling Human Behaviour through Ethnoarchaeology: Ethnoarchaeology as Long-Term Traditional Knowledge (L-TeK)" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In Turkey, the Tepecik-Çiftlik Archaeological Research Project is engaged in ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in the Melendiz Region of the Volcanic Cappadocia Region in the province of Niğde. The project's focus is on the living and production practices of communities with livestock-based subsistence economies. The subsistence strategies of the communities inhabiting the arid terrain of the Melendiz Mountains, reliant on animal husbandry, are supported by architectural structures constructed with locally sourced materials. Records from the Ottoman period and interviews with local residents indicate that this way of life has a long historical tradition in the region. The results of the field studies demonstrate how these communities have adapted to their environmental conditions and have preserved a substantial corpus of traditional knowledge spanning millennia. While flock owners entrust their herds to herders for grazing in the grasslands between mountainous areas and low altitudes, shepherds have developed a traditional way of life and production strategy that allows them to live and sustain animal food production in the temporary settlements they have established in the pastures they migrate to. These strategies of Melendiz Region communities for overcoming environmental challenges could help shape sustainable living models globally.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Modelling Human Behaviour through Ethnoarchaeology: Ethnoarchaeology as Long-Term Traditional Knowledge (L-TeK)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52888