Strategies of herding: Pastoralism in the middle Chalcolithic period of the West Central Zagros Mountains.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the evolution 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. This dissertation is based on archaeological fieldwork in the Islamabad Plain in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran, as well as on previous archaeological and ethnographic research in the region. 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. This process can be documented in the settlement pattern of the Islamabad Plain in the successive phases of the Chalcolithic period, with sedentary sites growing in number and size in the first half of the period, but dropping in the second half in favor of a rising number of temporary campsites with increasing distance from the agricultural zone. The evidence from excavations shows closer affiliation in material culture from temporary campsites and sedentary villages in the first half of the Middle Chalcolithic period, while by the second half of the period, campsites show both more specialization in herding activities and evidence for broader interregional contact suggesting large-scale movement usually associated with nomadic pastoralism. While evaluating hypotheses that seek to explain a prehistoric subsistence strategy in the West Central Zagros in the Middle Chalcolithic period, this study contributes both fresh empirical data and theoretical frameworks applicable elsewhere to studies of prehistoric economies, strategies for pastoralism, emergence of nomadic pastoralism, symbiosis between sedentary and nomadic populations, as well as the mechanisms of economic specialization and its social consequences.