Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T11:43:07.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Eating money

A study in the ethnoarchaeology of food1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Mike Parker Pearson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper develops a case study of animal exploitation in Androy, in southern Madagascar, to demonstrate the exchange and depositional processes by which animal bones can eventually end up in the ground. It examines the central role of cattle as symbol, currency and foodstuff in Tandroy life and explores some of the contexts and complexities of livestock exchange and slaughter. The results of this case study are used to suggest that standard archaeological calculations of minimum numbers (MNI) from individual sites may not always provide reliable information about livestock numbers in subsistence economies, and that the nutritional value of certain species might be the least important of their attributes. The complex exchange patterns of animals at Tandroy funerals, and the ways that their gifting and sacrifice define and reinforce social roles, identity and position, are key aspects of the social changes by which the powerful can become poor and the enslaved wealthy.

Keywords

cattleanimal bonesethnoarchaeologyformation processesTandroyMadagascar

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 217 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arnott, M.L. (ed.), 1975: Gastronomy. The anthropology of food and food habits, The Hague.Google Scholar
Battaglia, D., 1990: On the bones of the serpent. Person, memory, and mortality in Sabarl Island society, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., 1977: Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., 1984: Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste, London.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., 1990: The logic of practice, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Danforth, L.P., 1982: The death rituals of rural Greece, Princeton.Google Scholar
Decary, R., 1930: L'Androy (extrême sud de Madagascar). Essai de monographie regionale 1, Paris.Google Scholar
Decary, R., 1933: L'Androy (extrême sud de Madagascar). Essai de monographie regionale 2, Paris.Google Scholar
Defoort, E., 1913: L'Androy, Bulletin economique de Madagascar 2, 127–246.Google Scholar
Deschamps, H., 1960: Histoire de Madagascar, Paris.Google Scholar
Douglas, M. and Nicod, M., 1974: Taking the biscuit. The structure of British meals, New society 19,744–747.Google Scholar
Drury, R., 1729: Madagascar, or Robert Drury's journal during fifteen years captivity on that island, London.Google Scholar
Farb, P. and Armelagos, G., 1980: Consuming passions. The anthropology of eating, Boston.Google Scholar
Fenton, A. and Owen, T.M. (eds), 1981: Food in perspective. Proceedings of the third international conference on ethnological food research, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Fiddes, N., 1991: Meat. A natural symbol, London.Google Scholar
Goody, J., 1982: Cooking, cuisine and class, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Heurtebize, G., 1986a: Histoire des Afomarolahy (extrême-sud de Madagascar), Paris.Google Scholar
Heurtebize, G., 1986b: Quelques aspects de la vie dans l'Androy, Antananarivo, Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie.Google Scholar
Heurtebize, G., 1997: Mariage et deuil dans l'extrême-sud de Madagascar, Paris.Google Scholar
Hugh-Jones, C., 1979: From the Milk river. Spatial and temporal processes in northwest Amazonia, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kahn, M., 1986: Always hungry, never greedy. Food and the expression of gender in a Melanesian society, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C., 1969: The raw and the cooked. Introduction to a science of mythology 1, London.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C., 1978: The origin of table manners. Introduction to a science of mythology 3, London.Google Scholar
Lienhardt, G., 1961: Divinity and experience, Oxford.Google Scholar
MacClancy, J., 1992: Consuming culture, London.Google Scholar
Mack, J., 1986: Madagascar. Island of the ancestors, London.Google Scholar
Meigs, A.S., 1984: Food, sex, and pollution. A New Guinea religion, New Brunswick N.J.Google Scholar
Miller, D., 1985: Artefacts as categories, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Moore, H., 1986: Space, text and gender, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Okely, J., 1983: The traveller-gypsies, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Parker Pearson, M., 1996: Re-appraising Robert Drury's journal as a historical source, History in Africa 23, 1–23.Google Scholar
Parker Pearson, M., 1997: Close encounters of the worst kind. Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters in southern Madagascar, World archaeology 28, 393–417.Google Scholar
Parker Pearson, M., 1999: The archaeology of death and burial, Stroud.Google Scholar
Richards, A., 1939: Land, labour and diet in northern Rhodesia, Oxford.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M., 1976: Culture and practical reason, Chicago.Google Scholar