Animalising the Islamic Green Revolution: zooarchaeology and socio-ecological change in the Islamic Far West

Abstract

The impact of the medieval Arab expansion on agriculture in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean was defined by Andrew M. Watson, 1974, Watson, 1983 as an “agricultural revolution,” although both the use of the term and the nature of this impact have been the subject of considerable debate. Archaeological research into this phenomenon has focused primarily on specific issues—such as the archaeobotanical identification of crop dispersals or the analysis of irrigation systems—while devoting far less attention to the role of animal husbandry in this process of historical and agrarian transformation. This paper pursues a twofold objective. First, drawing on ethnographic and agroecological data on the traditional functioning of pre-mechanised agrarian systems, it offers a reappraisal of the Islamic Green Revolution model that challenges one of its central postulates: the alleged structural disassociation between irrigated agriculture and livestock husbandry. Second, it presents a preliminary, macro-scale and essentially qualitative cross-cutting analysis of a set of zooarchaeological results—focusing primarily on evidence from al-Andalus—which are shedding new light on changes in the management and exploitation of animals as part of the processes of agrarian change associated with the medieval Arab expansion.