The agropastoral debate in context: the relationship between the consumption and management of animals at Azoria on Crete

Dibble, Flint, Nederbragt, Alexandra J., Martini, Jonida, Haggis, Donald, Ruberti, Noemi and Madgwick, Richard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4396-3566 2026. The agropastoral debate in context: the relationship between the consumption and management of animals at Azoria on Crete. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 18 (7) , 158. 10.1007/s12520-026-02512-7

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Abstract

Historians and archaeologists of the ancient Greek economy have argued for decades over the form (transhumance vs. mixed farming) and scale (largescale specialist herds vs. small herds) of ancient Greek animal management without consensus. The development of isotope analyses that directly examine the lifeways of ancient animals, enables the production of new datasets to address this so-called “agropastoral debate”. This paper presents the results of zooarchaeological and isotope analyses from faunal specimens excavated from occupation contexts at the site of Azoria on Crete (ca. 800 − 100 BCE), comparing the ways that animals were raised and slaughtered across both public feasting and residential dining. A multi-isotope approach (δ13Ccoll, δ15N, δ18O and δ13Ccarb) to 50 animal teeth and the associated mandibular bone of 40 of these individuals provides the first large-scale intrasite dataset from the ancient Greek world. The results indicate that “both sides” of the agropastoral debate were correct: small-scale herds supplied the houses of Azoria while semi-specialist managed communal herds contributed to public feasting contexts. Semi-specialist management included regular foddering or seasonal mobility, while household herds were managed with local grazing or with various diverse contingent strategies adapted to local conditions.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Earth and Environmental Sciences Schools > History, Archaeology and Religion
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Type: open-access
Publisher:	Springer
ISSN:	1866-9557
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	25 June 2026
Date of Acceptance:	20 May 2026
Last Modified:	20 Aug 2026 21:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187743

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