The Living Harvest: A Narrative Review of the Secondary Products Revolution, from Sherratt's Plough to Ancient Lipids and the Origins of Lactase Persistence
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: The Secondary Products Revolution is archaeology's name for the fourth millennium BC's quiet revolution: animals harvested repeatedly while alive---for milk, wool, and traction---rather than slaughtered once for meat. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature of that revolution. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the concept's founding and testing, in which Sherratt's plough-and-pastoralism paper, its World Archaeology sequel, Greenfield's retrospective, and Isaakidou's Cretan reading fixed the model and its regional exceptions; the milk evidence, in which Vigne and Helmer's critique, Evershed's ancient lipids, Salque's cheese strainers, and the genetics of Itan, Gerbault and colleagues on lactase persistence dated dairying and its coevolution; and the traction and wool economy, in which Bogucki's household economics, Outram's horse harness and milking, and Anthony's horse-wheel-language synthesis reconstructed the revolution's economy and its speakers. It is concluded that the SPR's literature has matured from a model into a measured process---diachronic, regional, biomolecular---whose deepest result is coevolutionary: the animals' living harvest remade human diet, labor, and even genomes.
Authors: Revista, Zen, HISTORY, 10
Institution: Faculdades Guarulhos
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204754656