Heading for the hills? A multi-isotope study of sheep management in first-millennium BC Italy

Trentacoste, Angela; Lightfoot, Emma; Roux, Petrus le; Buckley, Michael; Kansa, SW; Esposito, Carmen; Gleba, Margarita

doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.102036

Cited by 12 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 130 publications

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“…The very high percentage of pigs at Republican Ostia (87%: the highest point in Figure 2 and outlying habitation assemblage in Figure 3) would also be linked to special types of provisioning at a major exchange node. High proportions of pig bones in central places suggest these animals were mobilised from the surrounding hinterland, as has been documented for sheep in Etruscan Orvieto (Trentacoste et al 2020) and pigs in France at Iron Age Leroux (Frémondeau et al 2017). Etruscan inscriptions document the involvement of particular families in certain religious rites and sacrifices (Jannot 2005: 81-82).…”

Section: Pigs For the Peoplementioning

confidence: 91%

“…Recent analysis of suid bones from the Archaic town of Forcello in the Po Plain has demonstrated that the pigs consumed acorns and were herbivorous, strongly suggesting off-site management in the local woodland (see Alldritt et al 2019;McCullagh, Hedges, et al in prep.). Similarly, stable isotopes from Roman pig bones indicate that pigs in Imperial Italy were also generally herbivorous, similar to sheep and cattle, rather than omnivorous like dogs or humans (see Trentacoste et al 2020). These results suggest that many pigs were not stall-fed on table scraps or human food waste, but instead grazed in out-of-town environments.…”

Section: Pigs For the Peoplementioning

confidence: 93%

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Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy

Trentacoste

2020

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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In central and northern Italy, the first millennium BC was characterised by the rise of urbanism and an expansion of nearly every area of production. Agriculture was no exception, and an increase in the scale and intensity of agricultural production sustained, and was sustained by, economic and population growth. Within this context, animal management also evolved to meet the needs of the changing protohistoric landscape. Pigs grew in importance as meat producers, and a greater emphasis was placed on animal-derived products like wool. These changes can be linked to the subsistence requirements of urban populations and the value of raw materials; however, beyond these functional explanations, the wider socioeconomic context of animal husbandry is rarely explored. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the zooarchaeological evidence for livestock production and the socioeconomic transformations that drove animal management. Three aspects of protohistoric husbandry are explored through discussion of pig, cattle, sheep, and chicken exploitation: greater differentiation in livestock production between different site types, specialisation of animals through selective breeding, and the adoption of new forms of livestock. These lines of evidence demonstrate the role of animals in socioeconomic networks of distribution and dependence, and they highlight the importance of agricultural produce in the articulation of social hierarchies. As in the transformation of other forms for material culture during this of this period, livestock husbandry regimes were not simply the deterministic result of wider socioeconomic change, but a medium actively adapted for its expression.

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Section: Pigs For the Peoplementioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Pigs For the Peoplementioning

confidence: 93%

Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy

Trentacoste

2020

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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“…In particular, there appears to be a paucity of isotope studies on southern European and Mediterranean settings, where only in recent years research has been intensified (e.g. Valenzuela-Lamas et al 2016;Knockaert et al 2018;Tornero et al 2018;Trentacoste et al 2020) and transhumance is a central topic (Maggi et al 1990a, b;Barker 2005;Arnold and Greenfield 2006;Carrer and Migliavacca 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Along with the potential for determining birth seasonality, the application of stable isotopes to detect seasonal mobility in archaeological herds has attracted the attention of the scholars since the early 2000s (Pederzani and Britton 2019) and remains a very frequent approach (Gerling et al 2017;Chazin et al 2019;Tomczyk et al 2019;Bishop et al 2020;Trentacoste et al 2020;Ventresca Miller et al 2020), due to the prominence of the debate revolving around ancient forms of mobile pastoralism (Arnold and Greenfield 2006;Jourdain-Annequin and Duclos 2006).…”

Section: Isotopic Background (δ 18 O δ 13 C δ 15 N) and Current Interpretative Models For Animal Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequential analyses of bovid tooth enamel and dentine collagen (δ18O, δ13C, δ15N): new insights into animal husbandry between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age at Tana del Barletta (Ligurian Prealps)

Morandi

Frémondeau

Müldner

et al. 2021

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Tana del Barletta is an upland cave used from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, located in the vicinity of the coast in Liguria (NW Italy). The excavation revealed the presence of a faunal assemblage dominated by caprine and cattle remains. In order to gain new data on late prehistoric farming strategies (e.g. seasonal mobility, coastal grazing, animal diet), intra-tooth series of stable oxygen and carbon isotopes have been obtained from cattle and sheep/goat tooth enamel, along with intra-tooth series of nitrogen and carbon isotopes from cattle dentine collagen. Due to the prevalence of maxillary teeth, a modern calf has also been analysed to assess intra-individual isotopic differences between the maxillary and mandibular dentition. Modern data on oxygen isotope values of meteoric water from different altitudes around the area of the site were used as a reference for interpretation. The results indicate that the water ingested by the herd was mostly characterised by particularly low δ18O values, highlighting the importance of the uplands for the late prehistoric farmers of the region. However, the input of water sourced from lower elevations, especially during the winter months, cannot be dismissed. In addition, the nitrogen isotopic composition of cattle collagen rules out the ingestion of salt-tolerant vegetation or seaweed, suggesting that grazing did not occur directly on the coastal plain.

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“…Raw materials such as bone and horn, metal ores and clay, as revealed by the pXRF analysis, were sourced locally. A recent pilot study of sheep husbandry and mobility using stable and strontium isotopes to analyse sheep teeth from Poggio Civitate showed that all the animals were kept in the same geological environment, which corresponds to the local signature (Trentacoste et al ., 2019). The latest interpretation of the site by the excavators is that OC2/Workshop was likely engaged in satisfying the needs of the community in the immediate vicinity under the aristocratic control of the site, which was largely locally oriented (Tuck, 2014, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tools for Textiles: Textile Production at the Etruscan Settlement of Poggio Civitate, Murlo, in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries Bc

Cutler¹,

Dimova²,

Gleba³

2020

Pap. Br. Sch. Rome

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This paper discusses some of the insights that have been gained from the study of the textile tools from the Etruscan settlement of Poggio Civitate di Murlo and coeval textiles recovered from the adjacent cemetery site of Poggio Aguzzo di Murlo. Over 1,600 textile tools (including spindle whorls, loom weights, and spools) are analysed from a functional perspective, and results suggest that the textiles found in burials were likely produced at the site. This new information is discussed in light of other subsistence and craft activities documented at the settlement, all of which indicate an inward-oriented economy that catered to the local elites and the populations they controlled.

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Heading for the hills? A multi-isotope study of sheep management in first-millennium BC Italy

Cited by 12 publications

References 130 publications

Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy

Fodder for Change: Animals, Urbanisation, and Socio-Economic Transformation in Protohistoric Italy

Sequential analyses of bovid tooth enamel and dentine collagen (δ18O, δ13C, δ15N): new insights into animal husbandry between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age at Tana del Barletta (Ligurian Prealps)

Tools for Textiles: Textile Production at the Etruscan Settlement of Poggio Civitate, Murlo, in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries Bc

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