Human-livestock Relations in the Early Bronze Age of the Southern Levant

This dissertation is concerned with the nature of human-animal relations in the context of southern Levantine village life in the Early Bronze Age. While scholars have devoted considerable effort to exploring the human exploitation of animals as an economic pursuit, investigating the human engagement with animals as a pursuit not limited to normative notions of economic rationality is the overall aim of this research project. This project articulates a broadened conception of the various roles that domesticated animals played and, concomitantly, how the multiple roles of livestock required people to make complex decisions not readily inferred from models of economizing rationality alone. I pursue this objective through three main research questions: (1) What was the nature of animal exploitation at an Early Bronze Age village in the southern Levant? (2) How did the taphonomic history of the site affect animal bone assemblages? (3) How can knowledge gained from answering these two questions, in combination with anthropological theories and ethnographic data pertaining to human-animal relations, inform our understanding of Early Bronze Age peoples’ perceptions of livestock in relation to new agricultural strategies of the period? These questions are addressed through a zooarchaeological analysis of faunal remains from two Early Bronze I strata at Horvat ‘Illin Tahtit (HIT) in central Israel. Following theoretical, environmental, archaeological and methodological backgrounds in Chapters 1 through 3, Chapter 4 provides detailed description and analysis of the faunal data from HIT. Chapter 5 offers an interpretation of the zooarchaeological data that is inspired by anthropological and archaeological theories of human-animal relations, ethnographic data from communities that engage with livestock, and culture-historical knowledge of the Early Bronze Age. The broad conclusion drawn from this research is that secondary products exploitation established a level of co-dependency between people and livestock that was unprecedented until the Early Bronze Age. Finally, Chapter 6 offers retrospective commentary on the strengths and limitations of the data, methods and theories that are used in this dissertation.Ph