Zooarchaeology of the Nuragic Bronze Age

ended

ZANBA will combine cutting-edge, multi-scalar isotope analyses with morphological analysis of zooarchaeological remains to understand the relationships among developing elite identities, landscape use, and power consolidation in the Nuragic Culture of Bronze Age Sardinia (c. 1700-1100 BCE). Assemblages of archaeofauanas from two sites that represent the full development of the Nuragic Culture will be analysed for evidence of feasting, hunting, collection of tribute, intensification of the animal economy, and other behaviours that are used by incipient elites to promote an elite group identity and consolidate power. Specimens from these archaeofaunas representing raised, managed, and hunted animal species will then be analysed using multiple isotopes for evidence of economic intensification and expanding territorial control. The combined results of both studies will be used to construct a new narrative of internal social development within the Nuragic Culture. Such a multi-disciplinary study is unique in Nuragic Sardinia, where isotope studies have never been applied to archaeofaunas and where morphological studies have often addressed the animal economy of the Nuragic Culture as a undifferentiated whole with few attempts to understand its internal social dynamics during the Culture's 600-year development. The detailed study and reassessment of Nuragic social dynamics provided by ZANBA is necessary and timely as new archaeological discoveries are indicating that the Nuragic Culture played a larger role in European Bronze Age exchange networks than has previously been recognized.