An Archive of Pasture Plots from Ur-IIIĜirsu

Journal of Near Eastern Studies 79(2), 2020

in Stockhammer Ph.W., Maran J. (eds), APPROPRIATING INNOVATIONS ENTANGLED KNOWLEDGE IN EURASIA, 5000–1500 BCE, Oxbow Books, Oxford , 2017

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2022 • 34 (3, 2022

The work is devoted to a detailed study of modern livestock breeding in the south of the Chelyabinsk region. Th e article describes in detail the system of grazing and keeping livestock in the summer and winter periods in the villages of the Southern Urals. Th e main purpose of the work is to create an information basis for future archaeological and archaeozoological studies of the sites of pastoralists of the Bronze Age and more correct interpretations in the reconstruction of ancient pastoralism. Th e main research tools were interviewing shepherds and personal observations of grazing and keeping livestock at diff erent times of the year. Th e main form of grazing and keeping livestock at present is the pasture-stall system, which is quite variable depending on various factors. Th e warm period of the year is characterized by grazing in the vicinity of villages and stall keeping in the cold season. Th e study shows the wide possibilities and resistance of small areas of the steppe river valleys to grazing. Th e results of the study of modern pastoralism can be used in archaeological research in various studies that are associated with a settled model of pastoralism.

This paper explores the changes in early forms of pastoralism in the West Central Zagros Mountains from village-based herding in the Neolithic period to initial stages in the formation of full-fledged nomadic pastoralism by the Late Chalcolithic period. It has been argued that the initial development of pastoralism in the Central Zagros Mountains should be viewed as an adaptive strategy to a highland environment with limited and dispersed resources in order to supplement a primarily agricultural village-based economy. With expansion of the agricultural regime, the distance to be traveled to pastures by herders became greater, and as a consequence, the organization of labor involved in herding had to be modified to meet the more complex task of moving sizable herds over larger areas. The empirical evidence for the assessment of hypotheses proposed in this paper comes from archaeological fieldwork in the Islamabad Plain in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran, as well as previous archaeological and ethnographic research in the region.

The Competition of Fibres, 2020

The Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent and the origins of fibre technology 5 Ofer Bar-Yosef 3. Early wool of Mesopotamia, c. 7000-3000 BC. Between prestige and economy Catherine Breniquet 4. Continuity and discontinuity in Neolithic and Chalcolithic linen textile production in the southern Levant Orit Shamir and Antoinette Rast-Eicher 5. Fibres, fabrics and looms: a link between animal fibres and warp-weighted looms in the Iron Age Levant Thaddeus Nelson 6. An archaic, male-exclusive loom from Oman Janet Levy 7. The Topoi Research Group Textile Revolution: archaeological background and a multi-proxy approach Wolfram Schier 8. Fibres to fibres, thread to thread. Comparing diachronic changes in large spindle whorl samples Ana Grabundžija and Chiara Schoch 9. Finding the woolly sheep: meta-analyses of archaeozoological data from southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe

Coming to Terms with the Future. Concepts of Resilience for the Study of Early Iranian Societies", edited by Reinhard Bernbeck, Gisela Eberhardt & Susan Pollock, 2023

Some forty clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform from the site of Goshtāspi, Kohgiluye va Boyer-Ahmad province and dating to ca. 1100 BCE, attest to the Middle Elamite state administration in the southern Zagros mountains, between the capitals Anšan and Susa. Six tablets contain lists of cattle. They feature an excessively high number of second-year cows, which in no way reflects a natural composition of herds. Interestingly, royal investments in decentralized cattle husbandry, by sending young cows to a province, is not a unique historical phenomenon, but it can also be identified in the state of Ur in Lowland Mesopotamia (twenty-first century BCE). The textual evidence thus forces us to understand husbandry in the mountain regions and local economic developments in a larger frame of political history as well.