Ecological and Economic Factors in the Determination of Pastoral Specialisation

Bonté, Pierre

doi:10.1163/156852181x00373

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…With the transition to a state-level society, it is expected that herders and farming communities would become two parts of a more complex economy (Chang and Koster, 1986) in which herding forms the base of aristocracy's wealth (Robb, 1994a). When this happens, herding is performed by specialized herders, a small subset of the population (Bonte, 1981). If this was the situation among the Samnites, most Alfedena males would have been involved in low-mobility agricultural tasks, and, at a population level, CSG indicators of mobility should be low.…”

Section: Expectations Of the Comparison With The Neolithic Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Iron Age, transhumance functioned as part of a capitalistic market economy forming the base of aristocracy's wealth (Robb, 1994a). Pastoralism was performed by a small subset of specialized herders, and become a distinct and separated activity with respect to farming activities (Bonte, 1981;Chang and Koster, 1986). This process was still incipient in the short-distance, vertical transhumance of Alfedena Samnites, and become fully developed only later, after Roman conquest (Salmon, 1967;Palasciano, 1999;D'Ercole, personal communication).…”

Section: Lower Limbmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Changes in skeletal robusticity in an iron age agropastoral group: The samnites from the Alfedena necropolis (Abruzzo, Central Italy)

Sparacello

Pearson

Coppa

et al. 2010

American J Phys Anthropol

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Cross-sectional geometrical (CSG) properties of an Iron Age Samnite group from the Alfedena necropolis (Abruzzo, Italy, 2600-2400 B.P.) are compared with a Ligurian Neolithic sample (6000-5500 B.P.). In the period under examination, Samnites were organized in a tribal confederation led by patrilinear aristocracies, indicating incipient social stratification. In comparison, Neolithic society lacked clear signs of social hierarchy. The subsistence of both groups was mainly based on pastoralism and agriculture, but changes in habitual behavior are expected due to the socio-economic transformations that characterized the Iron Age. The Samnites' warlike ideology suggests that unimanual weapon-use and training would have become frequent for males. The intensification of agriculture and the adoption of transhumant pastoralism, performed by a smaller subset of the population, likely led to a lower average level of logistic mobility. The strongly genderized ideology of the period suggests a strict sexual division of labor, with women primarily performing sedentary tasks. CSG properties based on periosteal contours were calculated for humeri, femora, and tibiae (N = 61). Results corroborated the expectations: Alfedena males show substantial humeral bilateral asymmetry, indicating prevalent use of one arm, likely due to weapon training. In both sexes lower limb results indicate reduced mobility with respect to the Neolithic group. Sexual dimorphism is significant in both humeral asymmetry and lower limb indicators of mobility. Although both groups could be broadly defined as agropastoral based on archeological and historical evidence, CSG analysis confirmed important differences in habitual behavior.

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Section: Expectations Of the Comparison With The Neolithic Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Lower Limbmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in skeletal robusticity in an iron age agropastoral group: The samnites from the Alfedena necropolis (Abruzzo, Central Italy)

Sparacello

Pearson

Coppa

et al. 2010

American J Phys Anthropol

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“…Livestock are valued for the meat, milk, dung, and draught power they provide; they are valued for purposes of local exchange, both as gifts and as payments; they are valued for the social and spiritual sense of well-being they afford their owner; for the role they play in mediating relations between people, and between people and the Badimo (Gods) (cf. Bonte, 1975Bonte, , 1981. Cattle are used in curing ceremonies and are sacrificed at rituals; as such they offer a direct link between the material-social domain of people and things and the spiritual domain of gods and power.…”

Section: The Local Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drought as a Revelatory Crisis: An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana

Solway¹

1994

Development and Change

106

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This article analyses drought in Botswana as a ‘revelatory crisis' in which structural contradictions as well as deteriorating socio‐economic conditions are exposed. Paradoxically, however, drought also enables such conditions to be concealed because they can be attributed to the ‘crisis' and not to deeper problems and trends. In addition, crises such as droughts disrupt conventional routine sufficiently to allow actors (including government policy‐makers as well as rural producers) to innovate with normative codes. This fact along with the opening up of structural fault lines often leads to accelerated rates of social change. Change is analysed here both in terms of the structural conditions in which it takes place (and alters) and with regard to the actions taken by individuals and institutions in order to reveal the links between structure and agency. The article draws upon an extended case study from Central Botswana and utilizes Sen's method of entitlement analysis to examine changing social processes.

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“…The models available to archaeologists for independent pastoralists’ social behavior are problematic. They come from ethnographies of modern pastoral specialists, whose subsistence, material culture, sociopolitical organization, and histories reflect their interdependence with agricultural societies (e.g., Bonte 1981; Khazanov 1984; Khoury and Kostiner 1990; Lees and Bates 1974). These models have been valuable in understanding the archaeological record of specialized pastoralism and exchange in the Bronze Age (Khazanov 2009; McCorriston and Weisberg 2002; Porter 2002; Stein 2004) and in the interpretation of Levantine Neolithic and Chalcolithic groups who did have contact with farmers (Bar‐Yosef and Bar‐Yosef‐Mayer 2002; Bar‐Yosef and Khazanov 1992; Grigson 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cattle Cults of the Arabian Neolithic and Early Territorial Societies

McCorriston

Harrower

Martin

et al. 2012

American Anthropologist

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At the cusp of food production, Near Eastern societies adopted new territorial practices, including archaeologically visible sedentism and nonsedentary social defenses more challenging to identify archaeologically. New archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence for Arabia's earliest‐known sacrifices points to territorial maintenance in arid highland southern Yemen. Here sedentism was not an option prior to agriculture. Seasonally mobile pastoralists developed alternate practices to reify cohesive identities, maintain alliances, and defend territories. Archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence implies cattle sacrifices were commemorated with a ring of more than 42 cattle skulls and a stone platform buried by 6,400‐year‐old floodplain sediments. Associated with numerous hearths, these cattle rites suggest feasting by a large gathering, with important sociopolitical ramifications for territories. A GIS analysis of the early Holocene landscape indicates constrained pasturage supporting small resident human populations. Cattle sacrifice in southern Arabia suggests a model of mid‐Holocene Neolithic territorial pastoralism under environmental and cultural conditions that made sedentism unsustainable. [prehistory, Arabia, sacrifice, territoriality, Neolithic]

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Ecological and Economic Factors in the Determination of Pastoral Specialisation

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Changes in skeletal robusticity in an iron age agropastoral group: The samnites from the Alfedena necropolis (Abruzzo, Central Italy)

Changes in skeletal robusticity in an iron age agropastoral group: The samnites from the Alfedena necropolis (Abruzzo, Central Italy)

Drought as a Revelatory Crisis: An Exploration of Shifting Entitlements and Hierarchies in the Kalahari, Botswana

Cattle Cults of the Arabian Neolithic and Early Territorial Societies

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