Thin End of the Wedge

76. Tina Greenfield: Zooarchaeology in Mesopotamia

Jon Taylor Episode 76

Tina explains what animal teeth and bones can tell us about life in ancient Iraq. What did people eat? And what did those animals eat? How were flocks and herds managed? What does this tell us about status and economy? We learn what new strands of evidence are provided by scientific analyses. 

3:12 about zooarchaeology
4:17 state of play
7:33 cow teeth and society
10:35 why the difference between texts and zooarchaeology?
14:43 feeding cattle
19:02 animal movement and management
26:13 how to get this information
32:06 stress in bones
37:15 how to learn

Tina's University page

Tina's laboratory page

Tina's Academia page

Music by Ruba Hillawi

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Jon Taylor:

Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge, the podcast where experts from around the world share new and interesting stories about life in the ancient Middle East. My name is Jon. Each episode, I talk to friends and colleagues and get them to explain their work in a way we can all understand. What we eat reveals a lot about who we are and how we live. That's the kind of information we can struggle to find. In Mesopotamian archeology, we have clues from the texts, the occasional piece of iconography, but only rarely, some physical remains. When animal bones survive, they haven't always been studied in depth. We might not have more than the proportions of animal species in the assemblage. For example, zooarchaeology has much more to offer. Carefully collected and recorded remains can answer bigger questions. We can determine how animals were fed and watered and how they moved across the landscape. How was the animal economy structured? Our guest is an expert zooarchaeologist with decades of experience on sites around the world, she explains what insights animal teeth and bones can offer, what scientific analyzes can now be brought to bear. So get yourself a cup of tea, make yourself comfortable, and let's meet today's guest. Before we start, I'd like to share some good news. Last year, I was joined by a co-host, Ellie. We only had her for a short time before more pressing matters took her attention. But I'm very happy to say that she is back now. In case you didn't catch those episodes, I've asked her to say a few words just to introduce herself. So here she is.

Ellie Bennett:

Hello. My name is Ellie Bennett, and I'm an assyriologist. I'm especially interested in gender and digital approaches to exploring the past. I'm back co-hosting with Jon after maternity leave, and I'm excited to continue exploring and sharing the latest research into ancient Mesopotamia.

Jon Taylor:

It's great to have you back. Alright, now on with the episode. Hello and welcome to Thin End of the Wedge. Thank you for joining us.

Tina Greenfield:

Hello, Jon and Ellie, thanks so much for inviting me to speak on your fabulous podcast.

Jon Taylor:

Can you tell us, please, who are you, and what do you do?

Tina Greenfield:

Yes, absolutely. My name is Tina Greenfield. I'm a professor of anthropology with a specialty in archaeology, and zooarchaeology. I teach at the University of Winnipeg, that's located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. And I also am a co-director of a zooarchaeological laboratory at the University of Manitoba.

Ellie Bennett:

Could you please explain what zooarchaeology is and how it can help us understand life ancient Iraq?

Tina Greenfield:

Absolutely, I can tell you that zooarchaeology is the secret that gets unlocked when we begin to analyse animal bones from archaeological sites. And in order to understand ancient societies, we can look at animal bones and find out patterns of consumption or what people like to eat. We can find out about the diet of ancient societies. And even more so, we can break it down to understand status or market economies. Or we can understand where people are moving across the landscape and how they're sharing their food with different parts or different sectors within a settlement, a city or an empire.

Jon Taylor:

So it's relatively new part of the field, I guess, in terms of ancient Iraq. What is the state of play so far and what are the current issues?

Tina Greenfield:

That's a really great question, Jon. It is relatively new in terms of doing a systematic study of animal bones within Iraq. Now that's not to say that gentlemen archaeologists such as Sir Leonard Woolley didn't collect animal bones, because he very much did in the early 20th century excavations. But they were not analysed or identified to answer the larger questions that we now investigate when we look at animal bones in Iraq. And so I would say that for sure, in Iraq, the process of analysing animal bones, or zooarchaeology, is in its golden stage. We refer to the analysis of inorganic remains. However, we know that specifically when we look at animal bones, there is a very clear aim that we are trying to get at. We are trying to answer the bigger questions. And so it has now gone beyond just the simple identification of ... of animals such as sheep or goat or cattle or wild deer. We've gone beyond that, and we've started introducing archaeological sciences. So I try and squeeze out as much information as I possibly can from animal bone. So what does that mean? I like to do scientific studies on animal teeth, for example, to look at where they've moved across the landscape. Or what animals have eaten during their lives and while they are managed. We do this by scientific studies in isotopes or stable isotope studies. We look at oxygen and carbon. Carbon is what they ate, oxygen is what they drank. And we do strontium studies to see where animals have moved across the landscape. And perhaps the newest innovative technique that I've started doing with my colleagues on many different projects in a rough is paleo-proteomics, and that is further understanding what animals ate. All of these bits of information can then be put together into a puzzle, if you will, with many, many pieces that can now be part of a larger picture on how people in Iraq, ancient societies, ancient communities, how they lived, how they ate and how they managed their animals in antiquity.

Ellie Bennett:

Can you give an example of how you can find out that kind of stuff. Like, if you found, say, a cow bone or a cow tooth, what could that tell you about its life and the society that it was part of?

Tina Greenfield:

That's a great question, Ellie. And I like the specific example you gave of a cow too. I recently did a study with some colleagues in Cambridge and other renowned universities where we examined the royal cattle from the elite cemetery, or the royal cemetery of Ur. Now, what we wanted to examine was how they were managed. Why? Well, for many reasons, but one of the reasons was that we have ancient cuneiform tablets that speak about the treatment of cattle for the Royal Cemeteries, and that they were managed differently than the rest of the cattle at the site of Ur. And this is during the Early Dynastic Period. So this is a time period where there is a lot of movement of animals and people across the landscape. And we wanted to test whether or not, through stable isotopes, could we see animals from the regular private graves at the cemetery of Ur against the cattle from the royal enclosures of the kings and queens. And what we found by examining where they drank the water, for example, along the rivers or in canals or from wells, was that different from the animals that were buried in the Royal Cemetery, from the regular people. And we found that not only did they drink, but also ate in the same manner as the rest of the animals found within the cemetery. This was a big surprise, because it went contra to what the cuneiform texts were saying. And so it was a good experiment in trying to see if this state narrative of elite versus non-elite diets was similar to what the actual archaeological data was showing. And we saw that this was actually the earliest example of if you want to call it "fake news", because the animals did not get managed in the way that the tablets, or the state was stating in their texts.

Jon Taylor:

I'm tempted to ask, what you think happened there? Well, I guess, why they're writing something down. Are they paying people who just don't do what they're supposed to do, or...?

Tina Greenfield:

Well, what we can see in the study of animal bones from archaeological sites is that there is a very large distinction in society. They are socially stratified in most cases, and we can see what they consume and have a pattern of understanding, therefore, of status. Now, what do I mean by that? In each complex society, there's a level of political economy, meaning the state or the governing body can control access to food or other resources. And so we can see when we analyse animal bones from different contexts. So for example, elite grave goods versus non-elite grave goods. And by grave goods I mean animal parts or whole animals that are placed within these grades, we can see what types of animals, but also we can see what body portions were used as grave goods. Now, as we all know, food defines us, and so we are basically what we eat. And it's no different in antiquity. I have worked on many different sites where we can see very clearly that the lower stratum of society is provided with less high valued animal portions or animal species, high value animals, such as whole cattle, as in the case of the Royal Tombs at Ur is a very expensive animal. It is conspicuous, and we call that conspicuous consumption. It's a feast for the eyes to have in the afterlife. And so when we see that there actually is a difference in what people ate or differences in what people are given to use as grave goods, we can see that sometimes there's a huge difference and sometimes there's not. So when we look at this state narrative, part of power and propaganda during this period is the separation of elite. They are different than the lower stratum, and therefore will have access to much more expensive animals during their funerals and in death. And so at the Royal Cemetery, we can see that whole cattle were sacrificed in the Royal Tombs, where, as only portions of smaller animals were sacrificed or given as grave goods, it was too expensive for the lower stratum to sacrifice an entire cow or cat oxen to put into the grave. And so it truly does show a separation, even though they might all be eating sheep and goat and cows and pigs, what is left in the graves can be scientifically analysed to see if actually the same portions or the same managed animals were combined in these two very different contexts.

Jon Taylor:

One question I have is that in the cemetery area. I'm still stuck on this idea of the cattle being fed in the same way I have this romantic picture in my head of the royal flocks being fed on the highest quality goods you should imagine. You know, you feed your cattle with different things, and you let them roam, and the meat tastes better. So I can imagine that your ordinary person might not have access to that kind of thing. They're eating less and lower quality material, and the meat is not quite as tasty. But is what we're seeing here, the fact that all of these graves are elite, and it's just relative within that you have royal elite and non-royal elite. So what you're really looking at is it's only that level who can afford to eat beef, say, and ordinary people who might be feeding different cows, that meat isn't going to them in their graves, or at least that's not what was found. Is that what's happening?

Tina Greenfield:

So that's a great question, and it plays into, like you said, these ideologies of the royal cattle or the royal herds, which is what we read about in the cuneiform texts, being managed and fattened specifically for sacrifice to only the kings and queens. And so what we have tried to compare, essentially, is cattle to cattle in each of the private graves that we found at the Royal Cemetery. So what we did was make sure that, first of all, the study included cattle from several different non-royal now that, like you said, that doesn't mean that they're not elite, but they're not Royal Cemetery plots or graves all the way down to absolutely the lowest commoner that was buried, really, without any grave goods, except for maybe one piece of cattle bone, and we have evidence of very little structure in terms of the burial with no proper coffin, etc. So we have the spectrum from the lowest, lowest commoner at the site all the way up to probably elite, just not royal. And what we ended up seeing was that there were two patterns of animal management. And one of the patterns included some of the private graves, the animals, the cattle, and one of the royal graves now they clustered together and ate and drank at the same places. Then we found a second group where two of the cattle from the royal grave clustered with another group of private grave cattle. So it's not like we saw they were all together, moving as one great herd across the landscape, around or but rather, there were two management styles now also within that, one of the specimens from the Royal Cemetery tombs came from further afield, probably somewhere in northern Mesopotamia, or potentially to the east in modern day Iran. So that animal was specifically brought in during its lifetime, and then was managed with one of the groups, and then was eventually slaughtered and put into the tomb. And so while we have this idea of this separation, we see it also with the cuneiform tablets from the Neo-Assyrian empire, where we have royal herds that are managed. We haven't quite gotten to the isotopes. I have the data, but we haven't quite analysed the isotopes for that yet, but it does show that there are very clear management patterns. They're just not what we expected.

Jon Taylor:

Oh, that's super interesting. I wanted to ask a bit more as well about animal movement.

Tina Greenfield:

Yes.

Jon Taylor:

And I was wondering what level of detail you can achieve in terms of where the animals from, because if you're taking your data from the water that they're drinking, you know, famously, you have these two rivers that are feeding all of the cities, and the two rivers are mingling to a fair extent. How possible is it to pull that apart and figure out where along the course of the rivers these animals might have been drinking?

Tina Greenfield:

So that's a great question, Jon. There's so many aspects of that, but one of the larger projects that I have been funded for is to examine the movement during the Early Dynastic Period of people and animals across the landscape. We are in a time period of extreme trade within city states and beyond. So I wanted to take a look and see how far these animals are actually moving. And so I chose five different sites, all from the Early Dynastic period, some located on the Tigris, some located on the Euphrates river. Now, oxygen isotopes are notoriously difficult. We can tell if they are from a canal that has been highly evaporated the water. We can tell if animals have grazed and drank the water from flooded fallow fields. We can also tell if animals have drunk from wells. But there's a cautionary tale here, because sometimes, as you say, depending on where the site is, is there's tributaries or there's linked channels that are between the two rivers. So that makes it a little bit more difficult to see or determine with full clarity what they're drinking. In contrast, when we look at the carbon isotopes, we can determine whether or not they're drinking wet based plants or dried based plant. So, for example, cultivated plants and reads that are found along a channel. And so we originally used carbon isotopes to try and see how the animals moved across the landscape. Meaning, were they eating in the fields? Were they eating the reeds along the canals? Were they eating in the gardens? Were they roaming free? And that was good to a point, because we could see what type of management practices were in place. But in order to understand even better the movement and management of animals, my colleagues and myself and my former grad student switched to paleo-proteomics, and those are the proteins that are inherent in each one of us has dental calculus on our teeth. So again, we began testing teeth from animals. And just like when we look at human diet, when we look at animal diet, and we look at paleo-proteomics and the data with a SEM machine, we were able to determine exactly the plant for the specific grain or fruit, etc, that the animal was consuming. Now this is a game changer, because now we can clearly see that animals were eating in a very clear style of management within each specific site that we studied. I can go on and on about this please do why is this significant? Why do we want to know what every single species, sheep, goat, cattle, pig, what they're eating, because it tells the story of the life of that animal. And even more so it can tell you, for example, oh, this animal, early on in its life, was consuming wheat, and then all of a sudden, at some point during its life cycle, it switched to barley, or perhaps it was roaming free and eating through all of the vegetable gardens. That's amazing. Now part of that tells us that the animals are being managed in a specific way, but there's a much bigger underlying theme that we can begin to research. And part of what I like to do when I'm analysing animal bones or doing any scientific analyses is to answer the big ideas. For example, can we see who has access to particular types of meat or food, or can we see resilience and adaptability in feeding strategies within cities in the face of climate change. Now this one's a very timely theme, as we can all see, that once again, our world is going through a global climate change crisis. So either we adapt and we become resilient to new feeding strategies, so too did they in antiquity, and we know very clearly that in the third millennium, there are periods of drought for at least 200 years. And we know that there were changes in diet for humans and also for animals, and so when we look specifically at what types of food they're eating, we can see if particular cities or cultures were able to adapt. Now, one of the particular ones that we know from the cuneiform texts that is specifically related to climate change is the shift from wheat to barley. The canals are getting more salinised and they are too salty to sustain, and so there is a shift to cultivating barley, and we can actually see that shift in our zooarchaeological assemblages during these time periods.

Ellie Bennett:

That's a huge amount of information you can extrapolate from what could be seen as quite trivial bits of animal bone.

Tina Greenfield:

Correct.

Ellie Bennett:

So I think my question is, what needs to happen at excavations in order to get that data?

Tina Greenfield:

So I love this question, and I think every zooarchaeologist loves this question. I would love, for every single director I've ever worked with to ask this question, because bones are not like ceramics, right? Ceramics you can pick up you immediately know what time period they're from. Bones inherently do not have context, and so would be deposit around them dates the bones. So for example, if you find a bone that is within a wall that's been constructed that has no time period associated to it, because we don't know where they picked up that bone from. Conversely, we love when the collection of animal bones is consistent and systematic. So for example, if we have a huge courtyard, our best case scenario is that it gets gridded and we collect the bones within each of these smaller grids within the entire courtyard. Why? Because then we can tell not only what activities were taking place in relation to Another important aspect is to understand the protocol for not bones, but we can also begin to understand the use of space. And only identifying but also collecting animal bones. So if there are primary or very good, secure contexts, we would like so one of the biggest things we try to push on every single those contexts to be sieved. Now we understand it's always a balance between trying to excavate as much dirt as you possibly can and trying to be specific enough to certain excavation is for very clear, discrete deposits or horizons contexts to sieve them. The reason for this is that we would like to capture every type of organic remains, in terms of for each time period, if it's mixed between, for example, the animals, shells, molluscs and so forth, fish, birds and many times, if you're just doing hand collection archaeology, the Early Dynastic and the Akkadian period, we can't tell you tiniest elements will get lost, and that biases the interpretation of what is there. And so it really is important to anything except for these animals were there during these make whoever you work with on a dig, understand that we can give them a wealth of information as long as the material is two time periods. collected very carefully.

Jon Taylor:

Super. Thank you.

Tina Greenfield:

So I just wanted to add one further point when we are talking about excavating animal bones. Animal bones are really a incredibly versatile data set, and the reason for this is that animal bones are essentially the residue of human behaviour. Now, what do I mean by that? When we look at animal bones, we can determine specific behaviours from the analysis and scientific analysis of the animal bones, we can see, were they butchered, and if so, were they butchered in very unique ways? And can we determine butchering patterns based on the context that they can be part of ritual spaces or domestic spaces or open public spaces? Is, were they used for festivals? Were they used for utilitarian consumption? And so by examining all of the different aspects on every single one of the animal bones that we excavate, we can begin to see patterns in everyday, regular human behaviour.

Ellie Bennett:

I really love that phrase of residue of human behaviour. That's beautiful.

Tina Greenfield:

Thank you. It truly is. When I teach my students zooarchaeology, and they're actually looking at assemblages that I give them from the Near East. I say it's not enough to just give me what we call a laundry list, 15 sheep, two cattle, six goats, four pigs, two deer. That in itself is the basic minimum task. What we need to move beyond is to look at the big ideas and ask the big questions about human society and allow the bones to speak as the data set to answer the questions we have about human behaviour.

Jon Taylor:

Can you also tell physical stress and disease, something like that, if the drinking water from the rivers maybe pick up a nasty parasite that gets passed to the person who eats them? Or, you know, can you see that kind of information? Or is that a different topic of study?

Tina Greenfield:

We certainly can see the teeth are an incredible data set. And so we have something called hypoplasia. So we can see it in human and animals when they go through periods of stress, whether it's dietary or some sort of other disease or parasite, anything like that. We can actually see that there will be markers on the teeth for

Ellie Bennett:

Out of curiosity, have you found any so far? these.

Tina Greenfield:

Any animals that have gone through stress and disease? I've found human and animals, 100% that have gone through these and coming back to the cattle from the Royal Cemetery. One of the reasons why I got into investigating about the cattle from the Royal Cemetery was I was asked by a colleague if I could determine the nature of the cattle death. How were they killed? Some believe that they were bludgeoned. Some believe that their throats were slit and these animals were placed into these big tombs and staged. They wanted to know how were they killed? And one of the ideas was that they were poisoned. And so we know that the humans that were the attendants, were sacrificed and placed into the tomb. And so we know they also took arsenic as part of the ritual to have them eventually become sacrificed. And so what we tried to look for was any evidence at all from the cattle, in their bones, in their teeth, that they had been, for example, gradually poisoned. And we didn't find anything, because there would have had to have been a massive, massive amount of arsenic in their system that had been absorbed into their bones with their teeth, and we didn't find evidence of that. What we did find, however, was that one of the cattle had a big goblet, ceramic goblet that was placed inside of its mouth. And so we believe that this was some sort of a sedative that perhaps the cattle were given before they were killed and sacrificed. And so here's the really interesting part. I'm going back at the end of this month to those royal cattle to do the new paleo-proteomic analyses that I did for some other sites in southern Mesopotamia. And so we hope that we will find evidence not only of exactly what they ate, but potentially also a what they drink, and so who knows, maybe we will be able to answer the question of diet and disease and nutritional stress moving forward with these new scientific techniques.

Ellie Bennett:

As an aside, I do think it's rather sweet that they decided that the cattle needed sedating before the great sacrifice, but the people did not. I think that's oddly and morbidly animal welfare-forward for the time.

Tina Greenfield:

Well, we do believe that, because we found little silver cups in stacks by the attendant. So we do believe that they were sedated. So that is something that we think is lovely, and that's why we thought perhaps maybe the cattle had the same thing. Because to be honest with you, if you are staging this elaborate funeral for a king or a queen, and you have all your attendance and your warriors and your oxen in the carts, the last thing you want to do is slit the throats of the cattle, or, though maybe they did want that and to have all of the blood all over, perhaps that was part of it. But it would be nice to think that, yes, they did sedate the cattle before they killed them in whatever way they did kill them. Now we didn't find any cut marks, which you sometimes find on any of the vertebra from the cattle. So it's not conclusive that they killed them by slitting their throat, but we also didn't find any conclusive evidence that they were bludgeoned, and that was also one of the ideas that had been proposed. So watch this space. Hopefully we'll find out more.

Jon Taylor:

Yeah, look forward to that. You mentioned training your students. So I imagine I'm a budding student, and I want to go into this part of the field. What background would I need and what would I have to study?

Tina Greenfield:

That's a great question. And I teach students that are in the Faculty of Science. I have taught students that were in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences. So there really is a wide range of students that I teach, and it really also depends the kind of research you would like to do. I have students that love the classics and classical archaeology, and have come and want to learn about analysing animal bones, so they already have the historical background, but they want to learn the more social science background. I have students that have come from the hard sciences, several students from biochemistry, and they understand the high science aspect of zooarchaeology. And so they are really excited about learning about proteomics or isotopes or using the SEM machines. What I try and have the students that are interested in doing archaeology and potentially zooarchaeology, is to have some background in anthropology. Because, again, in order to understand human society and behaviour, it's necessary to understand or study about cultures, modern and ancient, how we behave, how we eat, how we act, how we interact, how we trade. For example, in North America, generally, archaeology, except for a few instances, are embedded within anthropology departments. The second thing I tell my students is to determine what they would like to do in terms of a geographical region, because I have done so archaeology in the Near East. I have done it in Canada. I have done it in South Africa. And while some of the animals might be relatively the same, there is a huge learning curve. So if you're interested in doing North American or new world archaeology, I will set them up learning the types of animals that come from these geographical regions, versus students that are perhaps interested in the Old World, so Europe and the Middle East in this valley, for example, Asia. And so it is a very different way of learning which animals are part of the landscape, because in order to be able to interpret why the animals are there, you need to know how animals are used in those particular places, environments and landscapes. So you can come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some students come because they love history. Some students come like I said, they love science, they love evolutionary biology and other. Students simply come because they're interested in osteology, whether it's human or animal. So there's a very large opportunity to be in this world and experience it in the field, in the lab, I've had students that have gone on archaeological projects with me, and they adored physically digging and then analyzing animal bones in the afternoons. I've also had other students that categorically have decided that they are lab people, and that's okay, too.

Jon Taylor:

Superb. You've mentioned a few of the studies you've been working on. Whereabouts can we read more about the work you've done so far?

Tina Greenfield:

I have an academia.edu page, and so you can find a lot of my publications on there, as well as I have as part of our biblical and zooarchaeological Ancient Near East Laboratory at the University of Manitoba. You can see which sites I work on currently and where I go in the world to do my research. Or you can be in contact with myself. Some things are on open access, so you just need to google my name and you'll see some open access publications as well.

Jon Taylor:

Yeah, brilliant. Well, thank you very much indeed.

Ellie Bennett:

Thank you so much. I learned so much.

Tina Greenfield:

It's been my pleasure.

Jon Taylor:

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