Andrew Sherratt

Andrew Sherratt proposed in the early 1980s that prehistoric societies underwent a major economic transformation when they began using animals for secondary products—milk, wool, and traction power—rather than just slaughtering them for meat. He argued this shift occurred during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age and fundamentally changed the productivity and social complexity of early farming communities across Europe and the Near East.

Andrew Sherratt was associated with the University of Oxford, where he served as a professor of archaeology. He was affiliated with the Ashmolean Museum and was a prominent figure in European prehistoric archaeology throughout his career.

Sherratt was also known for his work on prehistoric trade and exchange networks, and for his interest in the role of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, opium, and cannabis in ancient cultures. He applied a "world systems" perspective to prehistory, arguing that long-distance interactions shaped the development of early civilizations.

Andrew Sherratt lived from 1946 to 2006. He published his seminal paper on the secondary products revolution in 1981 (in the collection "Pattern of the Past"), and it became one of the most widely cited works in economic prehistory.