Social zooarchaeology stresses that animals’ role in social and political life is not limited to the merely “economic”. Recent studies of cattle and caprines’ role in the development of inequality, hierarchy, and political authority in Southwest Asia have begun to productively incorporate the “symbolic” or “social” value of animals. Taking an action-oriented anthropological approach to theorizing value offers the possibility of investigating how herd animals’ value(s) shape political life, without making an a priori categorical division between the symbolic and economic. This article examines the zooarchaeological data from two Late Bronze Age sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain. The analysis reveals diversity in herding practices and an unusual circulation of isolated mandibles and tarsals. Building from previous zooarchaeological engagements with the value of cattle in African pastoralist societies, it argues that the material affordances of living and dead animals make different kinds of spatiotemporal transformations within social life possible. The data indicate that cattle and caprines lived different pre- and post-mortem lives, but that both were valued as sources of reproductive futurity and sources of commensal and mnemonic potentiality, highlighting the multispecies nature of political action in the Late Bronze Age South Caucasus.

中文翻译：

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动物的力量：重新思考牛和山羊在青铜时代晚期南高加索政治生活中的作用


社会动物考古学强调，动物在社会和政治生活中的作用不仅限于“经济”。最近关于牛和山羊在西南亚不平等、等级制度和政治权威发展中的作用的研究已经开始有效地纳入动物的“象征”或“社会”价值。采取以行动为导向的人类学方法将价值理论化，为研究群居动物的价值如何塑造政治生活提供了可能性，而无需在象征和经济之间进行先验的分类划分。本文研究了 Tsaghkahovit 平原两个青铜时代晚期遗址的动物考古数据。分析揭示了放牧方式的多样性以及孤立的下颌骨和跗骨的不寻常循环。基于以往动物考古学对非洲牧民社会中牛的价值的研究，它认为活着和死去的动物的物质能力使社会生活中不同种类的时空转换成为可能。数据表明，牛和山羊在死前和死后过着不同的生活，但两者都被视为生殖未来的来源以及共生和助记潜力的来源，突出了青铜时代晚期南高加索地区政治行动的多物种性质。