“COWPACITY” COMBINING ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA TO REASSESS ANIMAL CARRYING CAPACITIES
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 09/01/2021

Historians traditionally assumed that husbandry had a limited role in the agrarian economy of Roman Italy. They identified a lack of qualitative agricultural land because of environmental constraints as the prime cause. This scarce land was needed for foods (for people) and not so much for feeds (as pasture or fodder crops). In recent years archaeobotanical research showed that there is a rich diversity of cultivated plants that could be used as fodder and more importantly archaeozoological research showed that just about every site held mixed herds of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats. A renewed debate emerged in which a number of revisionist historians and archaeologists tried to explain how most farmers in Roman Italy (including smallholders) could maintain more livestock than previously thought. They proposed the integration of animal husbandry and arable cultivation via ley farming and the introduction of legumes as explanations. Their arguments are valuable but they only mitigate the lack of feed in a seasonal boom and bust fodder cycle and they do not fully account for the diffusion of farm animals –and their archaeological attestations- throughout the geographically highly diverse area that was Roman Italy. Considering that the productivity of ley farming and legumes would probably still be limited in the more liminal and marginal areas. To further the debate on Roman animal husbandry practices we will need to search for more nuanced explanations. To find those, and identify hitherto overlooked opportunities and restraints, we propose to build a GIS-model constructing a layered GIS-model. Which combines a range of datasets from geology, geography, history, palaeobotany and archaeozoology.


Author(s): Brusseel, Aaron (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)