Milk Culture in Eurasia

Beschreibung

The invention of milking and milk use created a new mode of subsistence called pastoralism. On rangelands across Eurasia, pastoralists subsist by extensive animal husbandry and by processing their animals’ milk. Based on the author’s fieldwork over more than two decades, this book details the processing systems and uses of milk observed in pastoralist and farm households in West Asia, South Asia, North Asia, Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau, and Europe and the Caucasus. Milk culture in each region is characterized by its processing technology and use of milk, and characteristics common to wider geographical spheres are identified. Inclusion of case studies from the literature expands the continent-wide perspective and provides further indications of how milk culture developed and diffused historically. The inferences drawn are expressed in the author’s monogenesis–bipolarization hypothesis of Eurasian milk culture, that milking and milk processing had a single center of origin in West Asia, and that the technology involved the spread from there across the continent, developing distinct characteristics in northern and southern spheres. Finally, because milk culture underpins pastoralism as a mode of subsistence, the typology and theory of pastoralism are re-examined from the standpoint of milk culture.
The invention of milking and milk use created a new mode of subsistence called pastoralism. On rangelands across Eurasia, pastoralists subsist by extensive animal husbandry and by processing their animals’ milk. Based on the author’s fieldwork over more than two decades, this book details the processing systems and uses of milk observed in pastoralist and farm households in West Asia, South Asia, North Asia, Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau, and Europe and the Caucasus. Milk culture in each region is characterized by its processing technology and use of milk, and characteristics common to wider geographical spheres are identified. Inclusion of case studies from the literature expands the continent-wide perspective and provides further indications of how milk culture developed and diffused historically. The inferences drawn are expressed in the author’s monogenesis–bipolarization hypothesis of Eurasian milk culture, that milking and milk processing had a single center of origin in West Asia, and that the technology involved the spread from there across the continent, developing distinct characteristics in northern and southern spheres. Finally, because milk culture underpins pastoralism as a mode of subsistence, the typology and theory of pastoralism are re-examined from the standpoint of milk culture.
Includes photographs that illustrate many of the milk processing techniques and products discussed from various regions of the Eurasian continent Employs diagrams that clarify complicated milk processing systems to facilitate comparative analysis Presents the monogenesis–bipolarization hypothesis to describe the history of milk culture in the Eurasian continent Identifies cultural filters that regulate the adoption and change of milk processing technology Re-examines the typology and theory of pastoralism from the standpoint of milk culture

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Masahiro Hirata

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Milk processing Pastoralism theory Milk culture in Eurasia Origin and spread of Eurasian milk culture Regional characteristics of milk culture

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