ABSTRACT
Recent research in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia, suggests that mobile pastoralism remained an important component of Late Bronze Age life, despite the significant transformations in political organization. This chapter assesses the evidence for the presence of mobile pastoralists and the provisioning of pastoralist products to Late Bronze Age fortresses in the South Caucasus, using previous analyses of the zooarchaeological data from the Tsaghakhovit Plain. It presents the results of a pilot isotopic analysis of faunal remains from the Tsaghkahovit Plain, which expands the outline of pastoralist organization developed from the zooarchaeological data. The chapter addresses the potential for further zooarchaeological and isotopic analyses to respond to the provocation of the growing body of nonfaunal archaeological evidence for mobile pastoralism, and outlines the basic organization of pastoralist production in the Late Bronze Age Tsaghkahovit Plain. Currently, well-established baselines or isoscapes for the region are lacking, which limits the potential for fine-grained analysis of isotopic results.
