Animal work before capitalism: Sheep's reproductive labor in the ancient South Caucasus

Abstract

AbstractRecent anthropological interest in “animal work” has focused on contemporary human‐animal relations. This article explores the “provocation” of animal work in the deeper past through an analysis of human‐herd animal relations in the Late Bronze Age (1500–1100 BCE) in the South Caucasus. Zooarchaeological and isotopic data reveal unexpected traces of the complexity and diversity of human and animal labor, with implications for political life. Challenging the anthropocentrism of (zoo)archaeological practice, animal labor provides a starting point for repurposing standard tools to ask new questions. Engaging with critical ethnographic perspectives on (animal) work, I consider how the question of animal work in the deeper past raises important questions about labor prior to or outside of capitalism—and its relationship to hierarchy and inequality, and the implications for archaeology more broadly. This challenge to narratives, within and beyond archaeology, that treat production in the deeper past as the origin or a prototype of production and inequality under capitalism also undermines accounts that link contemporary human‐animal relations to an origin in the deep past.