Browsing by Subject "political economies"

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    Cattle, Food, and the Rise of Early Ireland
    (2022-08) Crowley-Champoux, Erin
    In Ireland, at the end of the Developed Iron Age, the large regional centers that had come to significance were closed and communities that had coalesced during this period, dispersed. The Late Iron Age (1-431 AD) lacks the hallmarks of a highly stratified society. In the centuries that followed (432-1179 AD), social and political relationships were mediated through cattle and dairy products in a system referred to as a ‘dairying economy’. The mechanisms for the development of this system, however, are not well understood. This project examines the role of agricultural economies in the development of social organization and political economies across the 1st millennium AD. I address these questions using zooarchaeological methods, comparing taxonomic diversity and evenness across faunal assemblages and the analysis of the faunal remains from Ninch, Co. Meath. The comparative analysis demonstrates a greater diversity of animal husbandry practices during this broad period, including beef herding, mixed strategies, and provisioning, in addition to dairy herding. The analysis of the faunal assemblage from Ninch also demonstrates the wide variety of animal species exploited during this period and how one community negotiated social and economic change. These data reveal the valorization of cattle and the development of a system of cattle wealth in the Late Iron Age and the shift to dairy wealth in the early medieval period as a wealth management strategy.