Live Stock and Dead Things : The Archaeology of Zoopolitics Between Domestication and Modernity.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chazin, Hannah.

Series:

Animal Lives Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animal remains (Archaeology).

Bronze age--Caucasus, South.

Bronze age.

Domestication--Political aspects--Caucasus, South.

Domestication.

Human-animal relationships--Caucasus, South.

Human-animal relationships.

Livestock--Social aspects--Caucasus, South.

Livestock.

Pastoral systems--Caucasus, South.

Pastoral systems.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Summary:

Reconceptualizes human-animal relationships and their political significance in ancient and modern societies. In Live Stock and Dead Things, Hannah Chazin combines zooarchaeology and anthropology to challenge familiar narratives about the role of nonhuman animals in the rise of modern societies. Conventional views of this process tend to see a mostly linear development from hunter-gatherer societies, to horticultural and pastoral ones, to large-scale agricultural ones, and then industrial ones. Along the way, traditional accounts argue that owning livestock as property, along with land and other valuable commodities, introduced social inequality and stratification. Against this, Chazin raises a provocative question: What if domestication wasn’t the origin of instrumentalizing nonhuman animals after all? Chazin argues that these conventional narratives are inherited from conjectural histories and ignore the archaeological data. In her view, the category of “domestication” flattens the more complex dimensions of humans’ relationship to herd animals. In the book’s first half, Chazin offers a new understanding of the political possibilities of pastoralism, one that recognizes the powerful role herd animals have played in shaping human notions of power and authority. In the second half, she takes readers into her archaeological fieldwork in the South Caucasus, which sheds further light on herd animals’ transformative effect on the economy, social life, and ritual. Appealing to anthropologists and archaeologists alike, this daring book offers a reconceptualization of human-animal relationships and their political significance.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Introduction

1: Flyover History and Domestication as an Ontostory

2: Herd Animals and Relations of Use

3: How to Do Things with Herds

4: Unearthing Politics in the Tsaghkahovit Plain

5: Making Milk: Human and Animal Labor

6: Livestock and Dead Things: Pre- and Postmortem Value

7: Choreographies of Value

New Stories, New Questions

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

REFERENCES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226837499

0226837491

OCLC:

1478691791