The fundamental goal of this research is to understand the interactions between the governing and the governed in traditional state level societies. The central question focuses on the strategies taken by the latter to maintain economic independence during periods in which centralized authority increases.
Under the direction of Dr. Richard Meadow Max Price will study how relations between different segments of society affected agricultural decision-making in early complex societies. He will do this by examining changes in pig husbandry practices in northern Mesopotamia (modern day Syria, southern Turkey, and northern Iraq) over the period during which the first states emerged (6500-2100 BC). This research will shed light on how the actions of state and bureaucratic elites influenced the economic decisions of non-elite urban residents and vice-versa.
Ancient northern Mesopotamian leaders and their bureaucrats maintained control over many aspects of the economy in order to fund state expenses. In the case of the animal economy, they controlled sheep, goat, and cattle herds in an attempt to corner the market on meat and other animal products. However, it is apparent from ancient Mesopotamian texts that they did not control pig husbandry. In addition, pigs grow and reproduce rapidly, making pork a particularly useful food source for non-elite citizens, especially in urban centers, where the control over meat distribution was at that time greatest. Pork would have been particularly important in periods during which leaders increasingly used their control over agricultural production to increase their power at the expense of the non-elite. In these cases, pigs would have acted as insurance against the unreliability of bureaucrat-controlled meat sources. The hypothesis of this research, therefore, is that pig husbandry intensified when and where centralized political power was at its greatest.
In order to investigate how non-elite agriculturalists altered pig husbandry practices in response to changing political circumstances, Price will employ a range of archaeological analytical techniques. He will study collections of animal bones and teeth from 15 archaeological sites, which are currently curated in museums in the United States and Turkey. The methods he will employ are designed to reconstruct ancient husbandry practices by looking at changes in pig feeding, breeding, and penning practices over time. In addition, he will conduct archaeological excavations at the site of Tell Surezha in northern Iraq (Kurdistan region), where a long history of human habitation will provide important data on changes in husbandry practices early on in the process of state formation.
This research has broader impacts beyond those relating to improving the archaeological and anthropological understanding of the impact of early states on the non-elite majority. It will include public outreach at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Price has presented and will continue to present his research to museum patrons of all ages, helping to educate the public about daily life in ancient societies. Additionally, the excavation component of this research, which takes place in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, will provide training to local archaeology students in modern recovery and analytical techniques. Training the new generation of Iraqi archaeologists is imperative in order to help prevent looting and the destruction of archaeological sites and cultural heritage.
