Table Of ContentThe Origins of Transhumant
Pastorialism in Temperate South
Eastern Europe:
A Zooarchaeological Perspective
from the Central Balkans
Elizabeth R. Arnold
Haskel J. Greenfield
BAR International Series XXXX
2006
BOOK JUSTIFICATION
This book is designed as a test case for the identification of transhumant pastoralism using zooarchaeological
techniques that have been proposed in the literature. Most studies that try to identify transhumance do not use
zooarchaeological methods and hence are open to a variety of interpretations. By moving the study out of an arid
environment and into a temperate environment, we remove the important variable of environment as a constraint. Most
studies have tried to identify transhumance as deriving from the Early Neolithic (and beginning of animal
domestication), where it is difficult to see differences because of similarities between hunter-gatherer and early pastoral
behaviour. In our study, we try to get beyond these issues by working in an area without any expectation of
transhumance associated with the earliest farming cultures and testing for its later appearance as part of a package of
larger changes associated with the secondary products revolution. Little is still known about the evolution of this
important and ancient form of land use and domestic animal management, especially in temperate environmental zones.
Yet, zooarchaeological data can be used to answer basic questions concerning the origin and nature of early
transhumant pastoralism. Such research has yielded data suggesting that transhumant pastoralism may have initially
appeared in the central Balkans early in the Post Neolithic (Eneolithic – ca. 3300 B.C., calibrated radiocarbon dating).
This is the earliest dates for the appearance of transhumant pastoralism in the temperate zones of Europe.
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ABSTRACT
This book addresses the issue of the temporal origins of transhumant pastoralism in temperate southeastern Europe
(northern half of the Balkan Peninsula). In this region, there is little of the environmental imperative frequently cited to
account for the origins of transhumance, in contrast to the Mediterranean littoral. The climate does not force the
migration of animals from the lowlands in the summer into the highlands, and back into the lowlands because of
insufficient graze and harsh temperatures. Yet, this form of land use and animal exploitation pattern has a very long
history in southern Europe, extending at least to the Roman period. However, little is known about its origins and
development.
In recent years, several hypotheses have been suggested to explain when and why transhumant pastoralism with
domestic animals appeared across the southern Mediterranean. Each hypothesis proposes a different point in time when
transhumance would appear, ranging from the appearance of the earliest domestic animals (advent of the Early
Neolithic), to the appearance of secondary product exploitation (advent of the Post Neolithic), and to the appearance of
complex societies (advent of the Iron Age). Previous attempts to test these hypotheses has indicated that transhumance
with domestic stock did not appear in the temperate zone until the advent of the Eneolithic (c. 3300 BC), long after the
beginning of animal domestication in the Early Neolithic (c. 6100 BC).
The hypotheses are tested by examining the tooth remains from three domestic animal taxa (Ovis/Capra, Bos taurus and
Sus scrofa) from archaeological sites in the central part of the northern Balkans (also known as the Central Balkans).
Data from eleven sites in the region, with statistically sufficient samples and spanning the period from the Early
Neolithic through to the Early Iron Age, were tabulated to test the hypotheses.
The primary technique involved the creation of harvest profiles from mandibular tooth wear and eruption data of
domestic animal to examine age of death, the associated season of death and exploitation strategies. Season of death and
the seasonality of culling practices were also examined for each taxon through additional graphical evaluation of the
data and were supplemented by the secondary technique of cementum analysis of modern and archaeological
mandibular Ovis aries and Capra hircus teeth. The specific hypothesis used in this investigation was that transhumant
pastoralism would appear at the temporal point where complementary culling patterns between highland and lowland
sites in the region appear. Based on other sources of data, such a pattern was expected to appear at the advent of the
Post Neolithic.
Several overriding taphonomic issues affecting sample size greatly hampered the creation of the traditional harvest
profiles and limited the capability to evaluate the original hypotheses by these means. However, the harvest profile data
does lend itself to provide further support for the secondary products revolution model, which is hypothesized to occur
at the advent of the Post Neolithic (Eneolithic-Iron Age) in the region. The seasonality data, both graphically and from
the cementum analysis, show complementary profiles between highland and lowland areas in the Post Neolithic,
lending support to the original hypotheses of transhumant movement. At the same time, problematic divisions of age
groups of Ovis/Capra are revealed as potentially masking herd movements that might otherwise be revealed in the
traditional harvest profiles.
It is clear from the analysis that strong changes in not only culling patterns, but also land use take place during the
Eneolithic and Bronze Age of the region. These are interpreted in light of two regional developments – the advent of
transhumant pastoralism and the beginning of the Secondary Products Revolution.
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CHAPTER SUMMARY
Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background to the research problem and outlines the methodology, techniques and
data that are utilized in the research.
Chapter 2 provides a definition and discussion of transhumant pastoralism and relevant environmental and ecological
parameters.
Chapter 3 examines previous research on the origins of transhumant pastoralism in Europe focusing on both the
Mediterranean and the northern temperate region of the Balkans. The research of Geddes, Halstead and Greenfield are
the focus.
Chapter 4 introduces the characteristics of the regional environment including topography, climate and vegetation in
order to consider the viability of transhumant pastoralism within the northern Balkans.
Chapter 5 summarizes the culture history of southeastern Europe from the Neolithic through the Early Iron Age.
Aspects of settlement, fauna, and evidence for sedentism and mobility are examined.
Chapter 6 describes the methodology to be utilized and details the two chosen techniques, tooth wear and eruption and
cementum analysis.
Chapter 7 describes the data examined in this investigation. In the chapter, each site is described, including site
location, environment and nature of deposits. The mandibular and loose teeth remains are quantified by species and by
major period. It also describes the thin sectioning data, both the modern comparative collection and the archaeological
sample.
Chapter 8 presents the results of the data analysis. The first part focuses on the tooth wear and eruption data, examining
both production strategies and implications for the transhumant movement of herds. The second part focuses on the thin
sectioning results.
Chapter 9 presents the final conclusions regarding the data and discusses their implication in terms of the origins of
transhumant pastoralism in the northern Balkans.
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FOREWORD
This work is an example of an idea that had a long gestation period and that has gone through almost 20 years of data
collection. It was one of those tasks that required the collection of data from a long range of time periods and over a
vast geographic scale. As a result, it has its origins in the PhD thesis research of Haskel Greenfield and it became
complete with the MA thesis research of Elizabeth Arnold. In 1977, Greenfield began to work in Serbia under the
supervision of H. Arthur Bankoff (Brooklyn College). This initial field season of survey and test excavations in the
central Balkans led to their return and the beginning of systematic excavation at the Post Neolithic site of Novačka
Ćuprija. The faunal data from this and other excavations by Bankoff were offered to Greenfield for analysis as part of
his developing PhD thesis on Post Neolithic subsistence practices. In preparation for the identification of
zooarchaeological specimens from the central Balkans, Greenfield received training in Budapest by the late Sandor
Bökönyi. The experiences at Novačka Ćuprija eventually led to the analyses of many other collections in the region
from both the Neolithic and Post Neolithic, many of which were reported in Greenfield (1986) and subsequent
publications. Greenfield’s thesis and early publications were primarily concerned with testing Andrew Sherratt’s
hypothesis on the advent of secondary products exploitation in Europe.
Early on in the analysis of the specimens for the testing of the secondary products hypothesis, Greenfield noticed an
apparent discrepancy between the patterns for highland and lowland Post Neolithic harvest profiles of ovicaprines and
cattle, which he interpreted as evidence for the advent of transhumant pastoralism (1988, 1991, 1999a, 2001a).
However, he felt that he only had sufficient data to point out the possible pattern rather than to comprehensively test this
hypothesis. One gap in his early research was the paucity of highland (alpine or subalpine assemblages). In order to
rectify this gap, he joined Blagoje Govedarica’s research project which was in the process of excavating Post Neolithic
settlements on the Glasinac Plateau (east Bosnia). The project eventually focused on the site at Kadica Brdo which was
excavated from 1986-1990. The excavations, as many others, were terminated by the Yugoslavian civil wars and have
never resumed. Only preliminary reports of the excavations were ever published. However, sufficient fauna were
recovered and analyzed to finally provide a test for transhumance from the highland zone for the EIA.
One of the major problems that Greenfield encountered in his initial analyses was that he included all fragments in his
ageing of specimens in order to maintain high sample sizes. The detailed tooth eruption and wear data were never
separately analysed because of problems with the early computer recording of the information. In the 1990’s, with the
appearance of easily accessible computer spreadsheets, Greenfield was able to recover all of his old data from the
region and make them comparable for reanalysis. This included the tooth wear and eruption data.
During the later years of Greenfield’s research in the region, new and exciting techniques in zooarchaeology were
beginning to appear and spread throughout the discipline – i.e. tooth cementum analysis. Influenced by its potential for
the study of transhumance, Greenfield began to collect what were then considered to be suitable specimens for such
analysis. These were brought back to the University of Manitoba for eventual study, and there they lay until Elizabeth
Arnold entered the picture.
Arnold worked with Greenfield on a variety of data sets from the region, upgrading them and putting them all into
compatible computer formats (Excel spreadsheets). From this database, the tooth wear and eruption data were extracted
by Arnold for a more complete analysis. Some of the archaeological faunal assemblages described herein were stored at
the University of Manitoba. These were sorted and all the teeth were separated for analysis by Arnold. Under the
guidance of Dr. Ariane Burke, Arnold gained the knowledge and experience of thin sectioning and cementum analysis.
A sample of the domestic Ovis/Capra material was selected for testing of the transhumance hypotheses using these
techniques. Comparative modern Ovis/Capra material was collected on monthly trips to local abattoirs and small-scale
farms over the course of a year and prepared in a similar manner. This work is a result of these combined efforts and
author order does not imply relative effort in completing this monograph.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are too many people to properly thank for access to data used in this work. They include all of Greenfield’s
various collaborators through the years in ex-Yugoslavia. In particular, we would like to thank the directors (or
codirectors) of the various projects or people who arranged access to the data from each of the sites used in the analyses
presented within this book, including Florin Draşovean (Foeni-Salaş), Željko Jež (Petnica), Mirjana Vukmanović and
Petar Popović (Livade), H. Arthur Bankoff (Novačka Ćuprija), Blagoje Govedarica (Kadica Brdo), Milenko
Bogdanović (Ljuljaci), Mihalis Fotiadis (Megalo Nisi Galanis), Ljubomir Bukvić (Opovo) and the late Svetozar
Stanković (Blagotin, Stragari-Šljivik), and the late Professors Milutin Garašanin and Dragoslav Srejović (Vinča-Belo
Brdo). Other individuals also played vital roles in the data collection from the region, including Vesna Jeremenko, Tina
Jongsma, Dimitrije Madas, Guilmine Eygun, Igor and Andrej Starović and the staff of the Istraživačka Stanica Petnica,
Alexandr Radoman, Bojana Vojković, Zev Greenfield, and the late Vladimir Leković. Without the help of each and
every one of the above, it would never have been possible to have accumulated such a wealth of comparative
information from the region.
Thanks to Clayton Robins (Manitoba Sheep Association) and Sharon Peddler (Manitoba Goat Association) for
providing contacts and direction; to Monica Griffiths, for supplying all the modern goat specimens as well as valued
information, and for continued interest; to Lee Perreault and the staff at Prairie Abattoir and Jim and Doris Holmes and
staff from Carmen Meats; and Randy and Solange Eros for having the interest and taking the time to provide sheep
specimens.
Thanks must go to our colleagues and graduate students at the University of Manitoba who helped at various stages in
the preparation of specimens, organization of data, and presentation of results. In particular, we would like to thank Val
McKinley and Ariane Burke for Elizabeth Arnold’s training and their assistance in the University of Manitoba’s thin
sectioning laboratory. Val’s support went far beyond simple technical advice. Special thanks must also be accorded to
Tina Jongsma who aided in the field collection and analysis of many of the specimens described here and has allowed
them to be incorporated into our analysis. In addition, we would like to Chris Meiklejohn and Karin Wittenberg for their
involvement, patience and advice during the various revisions of this work and Dennis Murphy (Statistical Assistance
Center, University of Manitoba) for his help with statistical issues. Figures 6.3, 8.4, 8.24, and 8.25 are reproduced with
the permission of Sebastian Payne.
Most of all, special thanks must be extended to our families for their constant support. None of this could have been
accomplished without them. They continuously sacrificed in order to ensure that this work would see the light of day.
This work is dedicated to the memory of Rita Fecher, Haskel’s mother, who passed away on June 13, 2003. This
research could not have been undertaken without her inspiration for Haskel to persevere in the face of insurmountable
odds during his studies and especially during the long periods of field work that were required to collect the body of
data. She would have been proud to have seen its completion before her untimely passing.
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