Highland pastoralism in the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes cultural tradition: Stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotope analyses of herd mobility at Köhne Shahar in northwestern Iran

Abstract

Nomadic pastoralism and long-distance transhumance are often invoked as primary explanatory mechanisms for human migrations and regional interactions in the Early Bronze Age Kura-Araxes cultural tradition of the West Asian highlands. Based on established archaeological proxies of pastoralism, these arguments have rendered homogenous reconstructions of a complex pastoral landscape because of the effect of site formation processes that smooth out diagnostic archaeological signatures of diverse herd mobility strategies. Overcoming this equifinality requires an interdisciplinary approach that can empirically measure animal movements in the past. In this paper we use stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotope analyses of incrementally-sampled teeth to investigate sheep, goat, and cattle herding strategies at the Kura-Araxes settlement of Köhne Shahar. Our δ18O analysis reveals that cattle and caprines accessed different water sources, with cattle staying closer to the settlement and the more permanent bodies of water that it provided. Restricted intra-annual ranges in δ13C values also show that nearly all herd animals were managed locally, involving limited transhumance that was supplemented with dry foddering. We contextualise our observations with published zooarchaeological data to call for more nuanced interpretations of Kura-Araxes pastoral landscapes that deemphasise the role of long-distance pastoral mobilities.