The Animal Economy, Mobility, and the Urban Transition in Western Central Italy (Ninth - Sixth Centuries B.C.E.) (15 min)

Presenters

Vicki Moses, Harvard University

Abstract

As people moved into population centers in Rome and nearby settlements during the urban transition that occurred in the centuries leading up to the Archaic period, the food system had to adapt. The nucleation of people within tighter settlement zones and the increase in population suggest an increase in agricultural and meat production. This paper focuses on the impacts of this movement toward Rome and its neighbors on the animal economy, such as the role of the hinterland in meat production and the connection between meat consumption and identity.

While meat contributed less often to the diet than staple crops, meat was critical to creating the social cohesion upon which early cities depend. This includes establishing shared dietary norms and encouraging a unified civic identity through public events that entailed animal sacrifice and communal consumption of meat. With the city expanding, the need for food has led to the assumption that the food system was drastically overhauled with a growing dependence on the hinterland. To the contrary, the faunal evidence supports a continuity of animal-rearing practices across the urban transition that continued to produce meat locally and without an extreme intensification of production. This paper draws together zooarchaeological and isotopic evidence from sites in western central Italy dating to the Late Iron Age through Archaic period (such as Gabii, Veii, and the Curiae Veteres) to investigate the movement of people to cities, the movement of animals on the landscape as these cities formed, and the impacts of urbanization on the animal economy.

  AIA-2B