Fodder for change: animals, urbanisation, and socio-economic transformation in protohistoric Italy

In central and northern Italy, the first millennium BC was characterised by the rise of urbanism and an expansion of nearly every area of production. Agriculture was no exception, and an increase in the scale and intensity of agricultural production sustained, and was sustained by, economic and population growth. Within this context, animal management also evolved to meet the needs of the changing protohistoric landscape. Pigs grew in importance as meat producers, and a greater emphasis was placed on animal-derived products like wool. These changes can be linked to the subsistence requirements of urban populations and the value of raw materials; however, beyond these functional explanations, the wider socio-economic context of animal husbandry is rarely explored. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the zooarchaeological evidence for livestock production and the socio-economic transformations that drove animal management. Three aspects of protohistoric husbandry are explored through discussion of pig, cattle, sheep, and chicken exploitation: greater differentiation in livestock production between different site types, specialisation of animals through selective breeding, and the adoption of new forms of livestock. These lines of evidence demonstrate the role of animals in socio-economic networks of distribution and dependence, and they highlight the importance of agricultural produce in the articulation of social hierarchies. As in the transformation of other forms for material culture during this of this period, livestock husbandry regimes were not simply the deterministic result of wider socio-economic change, but a medium actively adapted for its expression.