Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Role of Foddering in Emergent Animal Husbandry Practices

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Cheryl Makarewicz is conducting research to determine the mode, path and tempo of goat domestication in the southern Levant. The Levant is part of the ?fertile crescent? of the Middle East, a region that saw the earliest widespread domestication of caprines (sheep and goats). The project is supervised by Professor Noreen Tuross. Specifically, the role of fodder provisioning in emergent goat husbandry practices and the contribution that foddering made to goat domestication is being examined. The domestic goat has been a major component of subsistence economies around the world for many thousands of years. The domestication of these animals drastically changed the subsistence base of human groups, initially by providing a readily accessible, reliable source of meat and later, by providing secondary products such as milk and wool. Using goat skeletal material recovered from some of the very first agricultural villages in the Middle East (c. 8500 to 6500 B.C.E.), Makarewicz uses a novel approach to identifying foddering practices through stable isotope analyses of bone collagen. At a finer scale, this project examines fodder provisioning of individual captive goats and portions of small herds and goes onto explore systematic fodder provisioning practiced on entire herds. Variation in foddering practices on an intra-site basis according to the sex and age of the animal is also explored, as herders may employ different foddering practices for animals of different ages and sex depending upon their short and long-term subsistence goals and herd maintenance strategies. Unlike other techniques, stable isotope analysis allows for direct documentation of human practice on individual animals. This opens a new ways of understanding the role and variation of individual human action in developing animal husbandry as a mode of subsistence that eventually led to domestication. This research will also articulate the relationship between goat husbandry practices such as foddering with greater social and cultural developments in the region. The period between 8, 500 and 6,500 BCE, also know as the ?Neolithic Revolution?, was a period of dramatic cultural, social, and economic change in Western Asia when the first large agricultural villages were built, elaborate symbolic and mortuary systems were used, and social differentiation emerged. This research provides a unique opportunity to examine how evolution of animal husbandry practices, such as foddering, contributed to the development of this dynamic cultural and economic setting.