Perinatal Remains of Livestock: An Under-utilised Line of Evidence for Animal Penning in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia

Lisa Yeomans, Pernille Bangsgaard and Golnaz Ahadi

Environmental Archaeology, 2023, vol. 28, issue 3, 207-221

Abstract: Archaeological evidence for penned animals is increasingly used to indicate managed livestock. Advances in techniques allowing the identification of dung and urine-derived components in sediments have enabled the expansion of this line of enquiry. Corralling animals into settlements protected them from predators at night and provided more control over their breeding. Deposits associated with livestock management at Neolithic settlements across Southwest Asia sometimes contain bones of perinatal animals. Reviewing the literature, it is evident that these faunal remains are not systematically reported or preserved in all burial environments. However, their distribution may reflect different patterns of livestock integration into human settlements. The presence of perinatal remains at sites where early livestock herding took place has important implications. Not only are they compelling evidence for herd management, particularly if there is also evidence for penning deposits, but also death of livestock during the perinatal phase of life informs us about the health of animals in early herds. This in turn, provides information about the skills needed by early pastoralists as they developed animal management strategies and the possible effect of transmissible diseases as animals were kept together in closer proximity.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14614103.2021.1962497 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:yenvxx:v:28:y:2023:i:3:p:207-221

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/yenv20

DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2021.1962497

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Archaeology is currently edited by Tim Mighall

More articles in Environmental Archaeology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().