Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London)., Jul 28, 2018
This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical impli... more This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical implications of early systematic working-animal use in prehistoric contexts, on which only fragmentary evidence is otherwise available. I explore the potential of this tool – modern development studies – through an extended case study: the use of working animals in Mesopotamia, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC. The aim throughout is to broaden substantially the range of archaeological and historical inference, rather than to propose new high-level models. For achieving this aim, I use close qualitative analysis of the large body of published official and NGO studies of working-animal use today, particularly in regions where working cattle and donkeys are recent adoptions and mechanisation is minimal. These data, little-used as yet in archaeology, shed light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, supply, and maintenance. They further provide significant new bottom-up insights into common community-level social and economic levelling mechanisms such as hiring and lending of working animals, suggesting a revision to established models of social inequality relating to their adoption. One major outcome of this analysis is the argument for greater recognition of the donkey – multi-function, low-maintenance – as a significant working force in late prehistoric Mesopotamia, challenging the established ox-focused models upon which many current reconstructions rely. The scarcity of donkey remains in food-middens has contributed to this neglect. Donkeys – and female cows – are widely employed in many modern developing regions for tilling light soils, and ploughing is often a minority element of working-animal use. Here the case is made for a similar range of roles in early Mesopotamia, for example in the myriad short-distance transportation tasks that form a central element of their use today, and in the rural ‘private sector’ now recognised as present outside the purview of elite, urban texts.
(Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge) Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotam... more (Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge) Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotamia: Insights from Modern Development Studies is a reassessment of the role and impact of working-animal adoption in antiquity, focusing on 4th-3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia but applicable to other periods and regions. This book is driven by a novel interdisciplinary process of analogy with modern use of working donkeys and cattle, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The author uses close qualitative analysis of nearly 400 published official and NGO development studies of the complex practicalities of adoption of working animals in developing regions worldwide, in particular of the invisible and under-appreciated donkey. This material, little-used as yet in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, sheds light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, training, husbandry, hiring and lending. While archaeology will always have need of large-scale anthropological models, the author argues for a parallel bottom-up ethological approach, envisaging the 4th and 3rd millennia BC in Mesopotamia from a viewpoint explicitly acknowledging the major presence of working animals and their daily impact on human activity and the consequent archaeological record. This innovatory investigation of the role and impact of the donkey in the Ancient Near East and today is an essential handbook for Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and zooarchaeology researchers and students, as well as historians, anthropologists and ethnographers examining the impact of working animals on past and present societies. Wider audiences include the growing sector of human-animal relationship studies, and NGOs concerned with the use of working donkeys worldwide.
This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical impli... more This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical implications of early systematic working-animal use in prehistoric contexts, on which only fragmentary evidence is otherwise available. I explore the potential of this tool – modern development studies – through an extended case study: the use of working animals in Mesopotamia, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC. The aim throughout is to broaden substantially the range of archaeological and historical inference, rather than to propose new high-level models. For achieving this aim, I use close qualitative analysis of the large body of published official and NGO studies of working-animal use today, particularly in regions where working cattle and donkeys are recent adoptions and mechanisation is minimal. These data, little-used as yet in archaeology, shed light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, supply, and maintenance. They further provide sign...
Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London)., Jul 28, 2018
This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical impli... more This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical implications of early systematic working-animal use in prehistoric contexts, on which only fragmentary evidence is otherwise available. I explore the potential of this tool – modern development studies – through an extended case study: the use of working animals in Mesopotamia, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC. The aim throughout is to broaden substantially the range of archaeological and historical inference, rather than to propose new high-level models. For achieving this aim, I use close qualitative analysis of the large body of published official and NGO studies of working-animal use today, particularly in regions where working cattle and donkeys are recent adoptions and mechanisation is minimal. These data, little-used as yet in archaeology, shed light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, supply, and maintenance. They further provide significant new bottom-up insights into common community-level social and economic levelling mechanisms such as hiring and lending of working animals, suggesting a revision to established models of social inequality relating to their adoption. One major outcome of this analysis is the argument for greater recognition of the donkey – multi-function, low-maintenance – as a significant working force in late prehistoric Mesopotamia, challenging the established ox-focused models upon which many current reconstructions rely. The scarcity of donkey remains in food-middens has contributed to this neglect. Donkeys – and female cows – are widely employed in many modern developing regions for tilling light soils, and ploughing is often a minority element of working-animal use. Here the case is made for a similar range of roles in early Mesopotamia, for example in the myriad short-distance transportation tasks that form a central element of their use today, and in the rural ‘private sector’ now recognised as present outside the purview of elite, urban texts.
(Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge) Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotam... more (Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge) Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotamia: Insights from Modern Development Studies is a reassessment of the role and impact of working-animal adoption in antiquity, focusing on 4th-3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia but applicable to other periods and regions. This book is driven by a novel interdisciplinary process of analogy with modern use of working donkeys and cattle, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The author uses close qualitative analysis of nearly 400 published official and NGO development studies of the complex practicalities of adoption of working animals in developing regions worldwide, in particular of the invisible and under-appreciated donkey. This material, little-used as yet in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, sheds light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, training, husbandry, hiring and lending. While archaeology will always have need of large-scale anthropological models, the author argues for a parallel bottom-up ethological approach, envisaging the 4th and 3rd millennia BC in Mesopotamia from a viewpoint explicitly acknowledging the major presence of working animals and their daily impact on human activity and the consequent archaeological record. This innovatory investigation of the role and impact of the donkey in the Ancient Near East and today is an essential handbook for Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and zooarchaeology researchers and students, as well as historians, anthropologists and ethnographers examining the impact of working animals on past and present societies. Wider audiences include the growing sector of human-animal relationship studies, and NGOs concerned with the use of working donkeys worldwide.
This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical impli... more This thesis develops and employs a novel interdisciplinary tool for examining the practical implications of early systematic working-animal use in prehistoric contexts, on which only fragmentary evidence is otherwise available. I explore the potential of this tool – modern development studies – through an extended case study: the use of working animals in Mesopotamia, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC. The aim throughout is to broaden substantially the range of archaeological and historical inference, rather than to propose new high-level models. For achieving this aim, I use close qualitative analysis of the large body of published official and NGO studies of working-animal use today, particularly in regions where working cattle and donkeys are recent adoptions and mechanisation is minimal. These data, little-used as yet in archaeology, shed light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, supply, and maintenance. They further provide sign...
(Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge)
Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopota... more (Abstract of book published 2020 by Routledge)
Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotamia: Insights from Modern Development Studies is a reassessment of the role and impact of working-animal adoption in antiquity, focusing on 4th-3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia but applicable to other periods and regions.
This book is driven by a novel interdisciplinary process of analogy with modern use of working donkeys and cattle, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The author uses close qualitative analysis of nearly 400 published official and NGO development studies of the complex practicalities of adoption of working animals in developing regions worldwide, in particular of the invisible and under-appreciated donkey. This material, little-used as yet in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, sheds light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, training, husbandry, hiring and lending. While archaeology will always have need of large-scale anthropological models, the author argues for a parallel bottom-up ethological approach, envisaging the 4th and 3rd millennia BC in Mesopotamia from a viewpoint explicitly acknowledging the major presence of working animals and their daily impact on human activity and the consequent archaeological record.
This innovatory investigation of the role and impact of the donkey in the Ancient Near East and today is an essential handbook for Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and zooarchaeology researchers and students, as well as historians, anthropologists and ethnographers examining the impact of working animals on past and present societies. Wider audiences include the growing sector of human-animal relationship studies, and NGOs concerned with the use of working donkeys worldwide.
Bevel-rim bowls (BRBs) – the coarse, thick-walled, ceramic artefact that became the type-fossil o... more Bevel-rim bowls (BRBs) – the coarse, thick-walled, ceramic artefact that became the type-fossil of the Late Uruk – first appear in southern Mesopotamia in the early fourth millennium (Table 1), and by the mid-fourth millennium cluster in their thousands throughout Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions, declining to extinction in most areas by 3000 BC. Their function and cultural implications have frequently been debated, but interpretation has often been clouded by tenuous analogical links and circular arguments. In order to gain a better understanding of the function and significance of BRBs, and so of their possible role in the Uruk system of central control, distribution and bureaucracy in the late Uruk period, in 2007/8 I manufactured a total of 28 replica BRBs (Fig. 1) and employed them in various experiments to test some of the functional theories advanced over the years by commentators, including the making of bread, yoghurt, cheese and salt. My practical experiments provided useful new insights into the likely manufacturing process and mode of use of the BRB, but more importantly they reinforced a novel and – if correct – critical theory about the end-use and cultural importance of the BRB’s contents.
Modern sub-Saharan African studies on the recent adoption and impact of working-animal use provid... more Modern sub-Saharan African studies on the recent adoption and impact of working-animal use provide valuable ethnographic insights for archaeologists into early exploitation of this new resource in antiquity. The systematic use of working cattle and (often forgotten in models) of donkeys constituted a key factor in the burgeoning of complex societies in fourth- and third-millennium BC Mesopotamia. Modern analogy indicates that models should include the economic importance of year-round utilisation of working animals and strategies for achieving this, including user training and animal hiring and lending. Another key finding is that the situation of women, commonly culturally constrained worldwide from handling cattle, is greatly ameliorated by the availability of donkeys, which can empower them in terms of income and status.
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Papers by Jill Goulder
Working Donkeys in 4th-3rd Millennium BC Mesopotamia: Insights from Modern Development Studies is a reassessment of the role and impact of working-animal adoption in antiquity, focusing on 4th-3rd millennium BC Mesopotamia but applicable to other periods and regions.
This book is driven by a novel interdisciplinary process of analogy with modern use of working donkeys and cattle, in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. The author uses close qualitative analysis of nearly 400 published official and NGO development studies of the complex practicalities of adoption of working animals in developing regions worldwide, in particular of the invisible and under-appreciated donkey. This material, little-used as yet in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, sheds light on the day-to-day practicalities of working-animal adoption and management – breeding, training, husbandry, hiring and lending. While archaeology will always have need of large-scale anthropological models, the author argues for a parallel bottom-up ethological approach, envisaging the 4th and 3rd millennia BC in Mesopotamia from a viewpoint explicitly acknowledging the major presence of working animals and their daily impact on human activity and the consequent archaeological record.
This innovatory investigation of the role and impact of the donkey in the Ancient Near East and today is an essential handbook for Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and zooarchaeology researchers and students, as well as historians, anthropologists and ethnographers examining the impact of working animals on past and present societies. Wider audiences include the growing sector of human-animal relationship studies, and NGOs concerned with the use of working donkeys worldwide.
Their function and cultural implications have frequently been debated, but interpretation has often been clouded by tenuous analogical links and circular arguments. In order to gain a better understanding of the function and significance of BRBs, and so of their possible role in the Uruk system of central control, distribution and bureaucracy in the late Uruk period, in 2007/8 I manufactured a total of 28 replica BRBs (Fig. 1) and employed them in various experiments to test some of the functional theories advanced over the years by commentators, including the making of bread, yoghurt, cheese and salt. My practical experiments provided useful new insights into the likely manufacturing process and mode of use of the BRB, but more importantly they reinforced a novel and – if correct – critical theory about the end-use and cultural importance of the BRB’s contents.