Archaeozoology of the Bronze Age of the Southern Urals

Stability and Changes in Pastoralism

Bibliographic Data

ID21780922
AuthorsA Yu Rassadnikov (0000-0002-3772-303X, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume79
Issue2
Pages127-135
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUral Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1728-9718
PublisherInstitute of History and Archaeology of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Science (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.30759/1728-9718-2023-2(79)-127-135
OpenAlexW4381665890
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited9

The article is devoted to a discussion of the main results of archaeozoological studies of materials from settlements of different periods of the Bronze Age in the Southern Urals (the Sintashta and Alakul cultures) and new methodological approaches to the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. The basis of the life support system of the inhabitants of the settlements throughout the Bronze Age was the breeding of livestock. The main parameters of animal husbandry were relatively stable and did not undergo evolution from the Sintashta to Alakul periods of the Bronze Age. Modern archaeozoological studies have made it possible to fix the specific manner of fragmentation of bones, the alleged working exploitation of cattle and stall keeping of livestock, as well as to reveal the evolution of these processes during the Bronze Age. Drawing upon the results of the study of modern animal husbandry made it possible to identify osteophagy of ungulates, to assess the possibility of a settled model of pastoralism and typical pathologies of livestock for materials from the Bronze Age. The article proposes the use of bones with traces of exposure by ungulates as a reliable marker of the location of livestock in the Bronze Age settlements. The most important changes in animal husbandry include a slight decrease in the size of cattle, a change in the system of bone fragmentation, as well as the alleged termination of the tradition of working use of bulls/oxen in the Alakul time. The analysis of indirect markers and the results of the study of modern animal husbandry allow the reconstruction of a sedentary type of cattle breeding in the Bronze Age of the Southern Urals, in which herds of domestic ungulates graze all year round near settlements

Agriculture · Animal husbandry · Archaeology · Bronze · Bronze Age · Chalcolithic · Geography · Human settlement · Livestock · Pastoralism · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Forestry

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