The Archaeology of Pastoralism, Mobility, and Society: Beyond the Grass Paradigm

By: Emily Hammer

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Synopsis: Though mobile pastoralists were long a significant component of many societies in Eurasia and Africa, scholars have long considered them to be materially and documentarily 'invisible.' The archaeological study of pastoralism across these regions has relied on ethnographic analogies and environmentally deterministic models, often with little or no data on historically specific herding communities. This approach has yielded a static picture of pastoralism through time that has only recently been challenged. In this book, Emily Hammer articulates a new framework for investigating variability in past pastoral practices. She proposes ways to develop a more rigorous relationship with pastoralist ethnographies and illustrates new archaeological and scientific methodologies for collecting direct data on herding, mobility, and social complexity in the past. Hammer's approach to the archaeology of pastoralism promotes efforts to dismantle the legacy of evolutionary classifications of human societies, which have drawn sharp distinctions between farmers and herders, and to investigate how diverse non-agricultural and mobile groups have shaped complex society and environment.