New article on isotopic analyses of the Early Bronze fauna from Tell es-Safi/Gath

A new article (see here), spearheaded by Liz Arnold, has just appeared online. In this study, isotopic analyses of the Early Bronze Age fauna were conducted, which shed light on the pastoral economy and provisioning strategies at Tell es-Safi/Gath during this early urban period.

The full title is:

Arnold, E. R., Greenfield, H. J., Hartman, G., Greenfield, T. L., Shai, I., Carter-McGee, P. M., and Maeir, A. M. 2018. Provisioning the Early Bronze Age City of Tell es-Safi, Israel: Isotopic Analyses of Domestic Livestock Management Patterns. Open Quartenary 4(1).

Here’s the abstract:

It is often assumed that domestic animals in early urban Near Eastern centres either are a reflection of the local pastoral economy, or were raised at a distance by pastoral specialists. In this paper, we test these assumptions through detailed isotopic analyses (carbon, oxygen and strontium) of caprines (sheep and goat) from Tell es-Safi/Gath, an Early Bronze Age urban centre in central Israel. The isotopic analyses demonstrate that the bulk of the caprines were raised within the general vicinity of the site, suggesting that the majority of food resources were largely produced at the local level, within the territory of the city-state, and not at a distance by specialised pastoralists. It is the rare specimen that comes from a great distance and would have entered the local system through long distance trade networks.

Very interesting!