Collapse, complexity, and caprines: Zooarchaeological investigations of the Hittite state and its afters

Abstract

• Zooarchaeological evidence from the collapse of the Hittite empire and its aftermath does not align well with conventional understandings of the reorganization that accompanies societal collapse. • Results from the Hittite capital demonstrate a surprising degree of continuity in the organization of the animal economy post-collapse. • Results from a rural center show that daily life outside the administrative heart of the empire was heavily affected by the political dissolution of the Hittite state. This paper analyzes zooarchaeological evidence from the Late Bronze Age collapse of the Hittite empire in central Turkey (ca. 1200 BCE), placing it in dialogue with broader discussions of societal collapse and its aftermath. Zooarchaeological data from the Hittite capital, Hattuşa, and from a nearby rural center, Çadır Höyük, are used to reconstruct day-to-day economic life in the Hittite heartland and to analyze local responses to the disintegration of the Hittite political superstructure. This work allows for the assessment of two common collapse narratives. The first assumes that the state is an integrated whole, characterized by massive scale systemic inter-dependence, so that when one aspect of the state’s organizational structure (e.g., its political system) fails, its other organizational structures (e.g., its economic systems) must follow. The second assumes that rural settlements tend to be considerably less affected by societal collapse than major centers. Drawing on several lines of zooarchaeological evidence, the results of this analysis show that, while changes in central Anatolian lifeways did occur following the collapse of the Hittite empire, the nature of these changes does not always follow the trajectories assumed in conventional narratives of societal collapse.