For Mitchell Rothman the key lies in the search for a market in metals and pastures.211 He uses the metaphor of ‘ripples in a stream’ to help explain multiple migrations over time, each prompted by social and cultural circumstances specific to their own period.According to Rothman, this helps explain the recurring appearance of distinctive Kura-Araxes assemblages in regions like Malatya, and the differences across the culture province. These ‘ripples’ were the manifestation of nomads, transhumant pastoralists, and farmers on the move. In all cases, there is evidence of hybridity – the result of interaction between Kura-Araxes migrants and local populations. Stephen Batiuk builds on Rothman’s view and adds that the exchange of resources and emulation of lifestyles should also be considered as drivers of hybridity.212

Compelling evidence for migrant communities, most probably small kinbased groups, stems from the renewed excavations carried out by the Tel Aviv team at Tel Bet Yerah over some fifteen years. Through high resolution excavations and analysis, the team has been able to show close similarities to Caucasian and east Anatolian sites with respect to the technology of pottery construction; the manufacture of stone tools; modes of construction, especially the persistent use of wattle-and-daub; and the arrangement of furniture and use of space within dwellings.213

The Mobile and the Settled – The Economy of the Kura-Araxes

The lopsidedness of our understanding of the Kura-Araxes tradition, leaning as it does towards the study of ceramics and to a lesser extent metalwork, is perhaps most sharply reflected in the debate over the subsistence strategies practised by its communities. More than any other aspect of Kura-Araxes lifeways, we know least about their pastoral and agricultural activities, owing to the small number of detailed studies of animal bones and palaeobotanical macro-remains. Available data from early investigations are marred owing to poor methods of sampling animal bones. This circumstance has encouraged researchers to look at material culture for an answer. A combination of portable objects such as vessels with small, perforated handles, dwellings (free standing wattle-and-daub structures) that resemble in plan those constructed by present-day nomadic groups, and the swift dispersal of the Kura-Araxes tradition has given rise to the widely held view that mobility played a key role in the life of these mountain people.214 But determining the nature of their

211Rothman 2003a, 2003b, 2005.

212Batiuk 2005; Batiuk and Rothman 2007. For the view of emulation, see also Philip and Millard 2000.

213Greenberg and Goren 2009; Iserlis 2009; Iserlis et al. 2015.

214Whallon Jr. and Kantman 1969: 103; Burney and Lang 1971: 57; Cribb 1991: 221; Sagona 1993. Frangipane and Palumbi 2007; Palumbi 2010, 2012.

mobile pastoralism, especially the way Kura-Araxes communities managed their herds, is quite problematic.The link between stock-herding and population movements is particularly strong, so much so that the search for grazing lands is seen as an impetus for the Kura-Araxes migrations.

Animal Husbandry

In its broadest sense, pastoralism, or animal husbandry, is concerned with the raising of livestock. In the ancient Near East, a pastoral community generally refers to one that tended and used domestic animals such as sheep, goats and cattle as part of their subsistence strategy.The degree to which a community moved with their herds, or integrated stockbreeding with farming determined the type of pastoral society in question.215

Jennifer Piro succinctly summarises the range of pastoral societies:

At one end of this spectrum are sedentary pastoralists who live in permanent settlements (typically villages) and feed their herds year-round on pastures relatively nearby. If, as so often happens, these people also engage in agriculture, they may be classed as agropastoralists.This type of pastoralism is also known as village-based herding and is secondary to agricultural activities in the subsistence economy. At the other end of the spectrum is full-fledged nomadic pastoralism, which is a highly specialized form of pastoralism. In a purely nomadic pastoralist society, all or almost all of the population moves with the herds from place to place and from one elevation to another in search of pasture throughout the cycle of seasons, living in temporary encampments and often traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles over the course of a year. Because of their continual movement, pure nomadic pastoralists have little opportunity to practice agriculture and often rely on economic relationships with settled agriculturalists to obtain such resources.216

Within this spectrum is transhumance, a strategy involving part of a community moving with their fl ocks, seasonally or periodically, to different environmental zones. This usually entailed moving to highland pastures in spring and summer, where herders also prepared milk products, and back down to the plains and valleys in the autumn and winter.217 It is important to note that transhumance generally supplements farming. That is, a community who decides to take their herds to higher altitudes in summer is itself sedentary. Conversely, semi-nomadism is an economic strategy whereby pastoralism is the primary focus, but augmented by the planting of crops at a base point.

215Khazanov 1984: 19–25;Abdi 2003: 400–05; now see Potts 2014.

216Piro 2009: 5.

217I observed this pattern in the 1990s during the field seasons at Sos Höyük, where transhumant pastoralists would arrive from Urfa and settle for the summer in the yaylas above the plain of Pasinler.

Various models of pastoralism have been suggested for Kura-Araxes. One proposes that their communities were stock-keepers engaged in migratory, seasonal transhumance, whereas others explain the Kura-Araxes subsistence as oscillating between mobility and sedentism, depending on environmental circumstances.218 Yet another view is that towards the end of the Early Bronze Age and in the subsequent period, defined by the appearance of barrow burials, communities became more nomadic, a view inferred from the shallowness and at times ‘invisibility’ of occupation deposits.219

So what, then, does mobile pastoralism actually involve in terms of herd management practices? At the core of this question are the decisions stockbreeders make, which are determined by a number of factors, including the physical environment in which they live, the socio-political organisation of their community, and the cultural tenets on which their society is based.These aspects will define a range of production goals and herding strategies, such as whether the community will, for instance, reduce the risk in maintaining their animal stock and aim to maximise on returns, or conversely adopt a specialised plan focused on animal resources. Another decision in keeping a herd is whether lambs and goat kids are raised as replacement stock or for slaughter. Which of these two categories is chosen will further determine how quickly the animals gain weight and, accordingly, what feeding programme they should be on. Knowledge is required not only of the physiological changes of caprine (sheep and goat) digestive systems, but also the types and amount of feed lambs and young goats can eat. Critical in this regard are three periods in a life of young caprines: the milk-feeding period, weaning, and post-weaning, when solid foods are introduced.

These and other decisions have to be thought through carefully in order to maximise three products that are most exploited in a caprine pastoral economy: meat, milk, and wool/mohair.The relative scale of exploitation of these products is reflected in different age/sex and sheep/goat profiles of a herd, which, in turn, can be used to deduce management strategies adopted by an ancient community.220 For example, a herd maintained primarily for meat consumption will show marked reduction in young males between 18 and 30 months, just before they reach their maximum weight, which is promoted by early weaning. Females in the same herd, on the other hand, would survive until they are of no further use for breeding, generally placed at five years.

218Kushnareva 1997: 192–6 (long-distance transhumance); Cribb 1991: 221; Sagona 1993: 453–4 (vacillating subsistence).

219Kushnareva 1997: 208.

220Two theoretical models are often used to determine management strategies based on kill-off patterns for sheep and goats. One, developed by Sebastian Payne (1973) focuses on production, whereas the other generated by Richard Redding (1984) looks at herd security/stability and energy/protein maximisation.

A herd maintained for milk would show quite a different kill-off pattern when compared with one aimed at meat production. In order to preserve milk supplies, young males are slaughtered shortly after weaning, between one and two months. If wool or mohair is the exploited product, then both male and female animals are kept through to old age, and the animal bones would reflect a slower mortality rate. Finally, we should be aware that a claim of any form of specialised pastoralism (nomadic, semi-nomadic, or transhumant), involving a high or considerable degree of mobility, needs to be substantiated by evidence in the animal remains.There is no straightforward rule of thumb to determine specialisation, but a number of criteria need to be met. These include data associated with the intensive management of a herd, such as restricted age and sex distribution, and gaps (or peaks) in the culling patterns. A seasonal site, for instance, might have a sample with more examples of tooth eruption than normal.221

Turning to the archaeological evidence, we find ourselves guided by a handful of published modern studies of animal bones.These are the samples from Gegharot in north-western Armenia, Sos Höyük in north-eastern Anatolia, Arslantepe in east-central Anatolia, and Godin Tepe in west-central Iran.222 Interestingly, in each of these cases, it appears unlikely that mobile pastoralism was an element of the Kura-Araxes economy, partly because it is a riskier form of subsistence than settled mixed farming. Moreover, the areas where the Kura-Araxes tradition spread, including the highland pastures, would not have necessitated mobile pastoralism, compared to, say, the landscapes inhabited by ancient communities of the lowland Turkish-Syrian steppe or Zagros fl anks.

Skeletal and dental evidence from Sos Höyük does not reveal specialised pastoralism as was once thought. Instead two studies of different sample groups have shown that the ancient villagers at Sos adopted a conservative herding strategy that minimised risk by diversifying the resource base. Hence, the animal remains from the site show a consistently high proportion of sheep and goats, followed by moderate amounts of cattle bones, and very few pig remains.223 This broad-based production system would have acted as a buffer in difficult circumstances, providing the community with subsistence-level meat and dairy foodstuffs. That young male animals were slaughtered before they gained their full weight suggests that high meat yields were not one of the aims. Sheep greatly outnumber goats in all periods defined by the KuraAraxes.This profile makes sense, given the high-altitude environment and the availability of grazing land the high plains would have offered; goats like other browsers, on the other hand, would have preferred leaves and green stems from

221For a summary of these criteria, see Piro 2009: 74–5.

222Bartosiewicz 1998, Bökönyi 1983 (Arslantepe); Crabtree 2011 (Godin Tepe); Monahan 2007 (ArGATS); Howell-Meurs 2001, Piro 2009 (Sos Höyük). See also Porter 2012.

223Howell-Meurs 2001; Piro 2009.

plants.The relative increase in goat numbers compared to sheep in the Early Bronze Age II–III period might be the result of any of several environmental issues. Overgrazed land is the most likely reason.This could have been caused either by too many sheep per acreage, or the adoption of agricultural intensification through the keeping of cattle, which, as grazers, would have competed with sheep. The sample from Sos Höyük belongs overwhelmingly to that of domestic animals. Of the wild taxa, red deer is amongst the most prominent, but even then they account for only two per cent of the sample collected. Moreover, the skeletal remains of red deer, whose antlers were used to fashion tools, show no signs of butchery marks, indicating that the remains were collected from the environment.

Gegharot provides a comparable picture in terms of risk management, even though the proportion of animals kept is different. While the sample size is very small, amounting to no more than 400 identifiable specimens, the higher number of cattle bones (49 per cent) compared to sheep/goat bones (47.4 per cent) indicates that the community was clearly sedentary.224 There is no evidence at Gegharot to support an argument for specialised pastoralism, or the seasonal movements that it requires. A broadly similar animal profile is found at Mokhra Blur Level V (caprine 50.2 per cent; cattle 42 per cent).225 Here again we encounter an agro-pastoral community with a low risk economic subsistence strategy based in part on the exploitation of a broad range of products from a diversified herd of domestic animals. So despite the difference in altitude between Gegharot, located in the highest altitudes, and Mokhra Blur, situated in the Ararat Plain, their economic subsistence is very similar.

A different situation is seen at Godin Tepe. In the first instance, the great majority of animal bones belong to sheep and goats (80 per cent), with cattle accounting for only 10 per cent.226 The culling patterns indicate that most animals survived well past their early stages, suggesting that the herders at Godin were primarily interested in wool, mohair, and possibly dairy products. Even so, the data from Godin does not readily fit the usual models of management strategies.That so few young lambs and goats are represented has been interpreted as that they were raised away from the site.The absence of sharp peaks in the mortality patterns and various pathologies symptomatic of penning pressures points to a village occupied year-round, with an agro-pastoral economy.

Of all the Kura-Araxes sites that have published zooarchaeological data, Arslantepe best fits the model of a specialised pastoral system.227 Whereas Period VII shows an equal proportion of cattle and sheep/goat bones

224Monahan 2007; Badalyan et al. 2014: 163.

225Piro 2009: 279–82.

226Crabtree 2011.

227Bökönyi 1983; Bartosiewicz 1998.