Archaeology, archaeozoology and the study of pastoralism in the Near East (Review Article)

Sheep and goat herding, the basis of pastoralism in the Near East, has been integral to the social organisation, diet, economy, religion and environment of the region since the beginnings of animal domestication. Interestingly, this omnipresent factor of life in the Near East has not been a popular topic of enquiry in its own right amongst archaeologists—of course, they deal with pastoralism in one way or another, but they mostly manage to keep the herder separate from the king. Instead, the study of pastoralism in this region has been largely the domain of archaeozoologists who study the sheep, goat and indeterminate ‘sheep/goat’ bones that dominate Near Eastern faunal assemblages from the Early Holocene onwards (the notorious difficulty of distinguishing sheep and goat bones led archaeozoologists to invent the sheep/goat, now an official taxon in the Encyclopedia of Life no less