Herding in mountain pastures: diverse isotopic biographies across species in the Late Bronze Age South Caucasus

Abstract

Bioarchaeological studies of faunal remains are an important method for understanding how prehistoric groups utilized mountainous regions, offering the possibility of studying the diversity and complexity of pastoralist practices in high pastures. The Late Bronze Age (1500 − 1100 BCE) in the South Caucasus is an era when the use of high mountain areas was substantially transformed as part of the development of new forms of social, political, and economic organization. Earlier work on herding practices during this time period revealed notable diversity in the diets and birth seasonality of sheep at sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain. This article presents strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes from a new sample of cattle and goat teeth, and uses the expanded assemblage of cattle and goat teeth from the sites of Gegharot and Tsaghkahovit to investigate how cattle and goat isotopic biographies differed from sheep. Stable oxygen and carbon isotope values indicate that cattle and caprines drank from different sources of water and may have had differently patterns of mobility, pointing to diversity in diets and water sources within and between these taxa. Cattle birth seasonality is neither substantially restricted or expanded. Goats show a pattern of extended birth seasonality, but one that differs from the pattern of extended birth season in sheep from these sites. These results indicate the complexity of the pastoralist system that developed at mountainous sites in the Late Bronze Age.