Measuring Complexity in Early Bronze Age Greece: The Pig as a Proxy Indicator of Socio-Economic Structures

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This study combines traditional zooarchaeology and biological theory to address pig utilization in Bronze Age Greece, applying this ultimately to the study of spatio-temporal aspects of social complexity. It offers a comparative analysis of faunal pig data from both large and small settlements, using differences in percentages of fauna, skeletal part frequencies, and evidence of utilization of different animal products such as skin, meat and bone; comparison across domesticates of life history variables and other behavioral ecological data to understand the unique relationships between pigs and humans; and analysis of the social and economic role of pigs in small-scale Bronze Age settlements. Focusing initially on the faunal data from four Early Helladic assemblages in the Peloponnese, the author derives from these data analyses and hypotheses as to the nature of social complexity in Early Bronze Age Greece - and the vital role of pigs in the reconstruction of socio-economic aspects of social complexity.