Reconstructing agro-pastoral practice in the Mesopotamian-Zagros borderlands: Insights from phytolith and FTIR analysis of a dung-rich deposit

Abstract

Understanding everyday agro-pastoral practice is critical for reconstructing the formation and maintenance of ancient societies. The ancient Near East (Southwest Asia) has one of the longest histories of agro-pastoral practice and one of the richest textual datasets anywhere on the globe. Yet, our knowledge of local, day-to-day agro-pastoral management strategies remains conjectural in many regions of Southwest Asia during the Bronze Age (late 4th–2nd millennium BCE). In this study we used phytoliths, dung spherulites, and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to identify and examine dung-rich sediments from Khani Masi, a mid-second millennium BCE Kassite site located in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. While micro-remain and geochemical approaches have not yet been widely applied in Mesopotamia (Ancient Iraq), they have the potential to shed light on the production systems supporting its Bronze Age cities, states, and empires. Our aim was to investigate (1) the range of local pastoral management strategies, (2) the degree of integration between agricultural and pastoral practice, and (3) the presence of signals related to the local ecology, seasonality, and environmental change and continuity.Phytolith results indicate that sheep-goat herds were primarily free grazed on wild grasses. The dominance of wild grass inflorescences, a potentially strong seasonality indicator, may suggest transhumant pastoralism. However, further evidence, including occasional foddering with cereal chaff, a diverse range of crop types, and significant accumulation of burnt dung within the site, collectively suggests a closely linked local agro-pastoral subsistence economy. This study provides much-needed empirical botanical data as well as productive insights for future application of phytolith studies in the Mesopotamian region, and sheds new light on agro-pastoral practice in the Zagros foothills during the second millennium BCE Kassite period.