Anatolian-Assyrian Exchange and Bronze Age Animal Economies at Kaman-Kalehöyük, 2000-1700 BC

Cross-cultural contact is a recurring phenomenon of hierarchical societies that has significant political, economic, and social impacts on all involved. In the first three centuries of the 2nd millennium BC two distinctly different groups of people intensified their participation in a long-distance exchange network that covered more than 1500 kilometers, from northern Mesopotamia to central Anatolia. To date, understanding of this period has relied primarily upon philological study of some 20,000 cuneiform texts, mostly recovered from the Anatolian site of Kültepe-Kanesh, though written in Mesopotamian script. In this zooarchaeological study, fauna drawn from local contexts at Kaman-Kalehöyük were evaluated to determine whether intensified interactions between Anatolians and Mesopotamians in the 2nd millennium BC coincided with changes in the degrees of economic specialization and social inequality exhibited at the site. While a comparison of Kaman-Kalehöyük’s Early and Middle Bronze Age faunal data hinted at some differences between the periods, a more holistic evaluation of archaeological remains suggested rising degrees of economic specialization and social inequality at the site over time.