A Multi-Body Dobrushin-Sokal Criterion -- Part I

We derive a sufficient condition for zero-freeness of partition functions applicable to lattice gases with possibly complex-valued multi-body interactions. This includes the case of hard-core interactions and, in particular, generalises recent results by Galvin et al.\ (2024) and Bencs-Buys (2025) on zero-free polydiscs of hypergraph independence polynomials. We provide two proofs: the first generalises the inductive approach of Bencs and Buys; the second employs the Kirkwood-Salsburg hierarchy. Notably, the central argument of the second proof uses of a certain partition scheme for coverings and, as a by-product, we obtain a direct improvement of Gallavotti and Miracle-Solé's (1968) bounds for the Kirkwood-Salsburg operator.