‘Go(a)t milk?’ New perspectives on the zooarchaeological evidence for the earliest intensification of dairying in south eastern Europe

Abstract

The origins of secondary product exploitation for domestic livestock, in particular milking, is a long-standing debate in archaeology. This paper re-analyses zooarchaeological age-at-death data from the central Balkans of south eastern Europe to demonstrate that the earliest intensive milking in this region probably occurred through the exploitation of goats, and not cattle or sheep, and that they were exploited in this manner from the beginning of the Neolithic. The analyses also suggest that there is a change in cattle and sheep exploitation patterns beginning during the Eneolithic, when secondary product exploitation becomes visible in age-at-death patterns, which can be interpreted as an increased scale of secondary products exploitation. This proposal is congruent with the ceramic lipid and zooarchaeological data from the region and has larger implications for understanding and identifying the origins of milking throughout the Old World.

Keywords:

• Milking
• Balkans
• Neolithic
• domestic livestock
• secondary products
• zooarchaeology

Acknowledgements

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the timely and helpful comments provided by Jacques Brochier, Liora K. Horwitz, Tina L. Jongsma-Greenfield, Nimrod Maron, Richard Meadow, David Orton and Rivka Rabinovich during the preparation of this article. We also would like to thank Nerissa Russell for permission to use her Opovo data. The views described above reflect our own and any errors are our own responsibility. The preparation for this paper was begun while Greenfield was the Annual Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem. This research for this paper was supported by various grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Manitoba (Faculty of Arts and St. Paul’s College), Grand Valley State University, International Research and Exchanges Board, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship Program.

ORCID

Haskel J. Greenfield http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6703-932X

Notes

1 All dates are based on calibrated radiocarbon dates.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Haskel J. Greenfield

Haskel J. Greenfield, PhD, CUNY, 1985, is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. His research focuses on the evolution of early agricultural and complex societies in the Old World, with interests in zooarchaeology, spatial analysis and ancient butchering technology. Aside from his research on the Secondary Products Revolution, he has also conducted extensive studies of regional subsistence and land-use systems, the spatial dynamics of intra-settlement organization and the spread of new technologies (i.e. metallurgy) in the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages of Europe, Near East and southern Africa. Most recently, he has been studying the spatial organization of Early Bronze Age communities in the Near East by examining the distribution of remains from early urban sites in south eastern Turkey and Israel.

Elizabeth R. Arnold

Elizabeth R. Arnold, PhD, University of Calgary, 2006, is an assistant professor at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, US. She is an environmental archaeologist and a zooarchaeologist specializing in stable isotope analyses. Research interests include palaeobotany (phytolith analyses), ethnozooarchaeology, pastoralism and the Secondary Products Revolution. Her current research focus is the bones and teeth of animals to examine diet and health of domestic animals and to reconstruct environments including those that have been impacted by humans, (i.e. by foddering or overgrazing). Primary interest is the documentation of exchanges that may indicate economic, political and social exchanges of animals that are important in the rise of complex societies.