Secondary products revolution

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Andrew Sherratt's (1981) model of a secondary products revolution involved a widespread and broadly contemporaneous set of innovations in Old World farming: early use of domestic animals for primary carcass products (meat) was broadened from the 4th-3rd millennia BC to include exploitation for renewable 'secondary' products (milk, wool, traction, and riding/pack transport). These innovations became available in Europe due to the westwards diffusion of new species (horse, donkey), breeds (e.g. woolly sheep), technology (wheel, ard) and know-how (e.g. miling, ploughing). Their adoption was to be understood in terms of pastoralism, plough agriculture and animal-based transport in facilitating marginal agricultural colonisation and settlement nucleation. Ultimately it was revolutionary in terms of both origins and consequences (Isaakidou, 2006).

The SPR model incorporates two key elements:

1. the discovery and diffusion of secondary products innovations
2. their systematic application, leading to a transformation of European economy and society

(Isaakidou, 2006).

However, both the dating and significance of the archaeological evidence cited by Sherratt (and thus the validity of the model) have been questioned by several archaeologists. The dangers of dating the innovations on the basis of evidence such as iconography and waterlogged organic remains with restricted chronological and geographical availability have been underlined by writers such as Chapman. Sherratt has himself acknowledged that such dates provide a terminus ante quem for the invention of milking and ploughing (Isaakidou, 2006).

Direct evidence for how domestic animals were exploited in later prehistoric Europe has grown substantially, in quantity and diversity, since 1981. For example, the detection of milk residues in ceramic vessels is gradually pushing back the terminus ante quem for milking and is considered the most promising means of detecting the origins of milking. More uniquitous are faunal assemblages, through which mortality patterns, herd management and traction-related arthropathies offer expanding opportunities to confirm, deny or reject the SPR model (Isaakidou, 2006).

[edit] References

• Isaakidou, V. 2006. Ploughing with cows: Knossos and the Secondary Products Revolution, pp 95-112. In Animals in the Neolithic of Britain and Europe, edited by D Serjeantson and D Field. Oxbow Books: Oxford.
• Sherratt, A. 1981. Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products revolution, pp 261-305. In Pattern of the Past: Studies in honour of David Clarke, edited by I Hodder, G Isaac and N Hammond. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.