This volume returns to the established theme of ethnoarchaeology as an analytical and interpretative tool, but focusing on particular kinds of past and present interactions: those of humans and animals. In this resepect, it is reminiscent of the recent volume Ethnozooarchaeology: The Present and Past of Human-Animal Relationships (Albarella & Trentacoste, Reference Albarella and Trentacoste2011), which stemmed from a session on Ethnozooarchaeology at the 2006 International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) conference.
The present volume was also set in motion at a recent international conference: the 2010 European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting session, Ethnozooarchaeology: European Perspectives, organized by L. Broderick. Both volumes are testimony to a growing body of literature concerned with ethnozooarchaeology as a field in its own right. However, as Broderick stresses in the introductory chapter (Ch. 1), the ethnoarchaeological approach has relied heavily upon zooarchaeology ever since the establishment of both disciplines within the framework of processual archaeology (e.g. Binford, Reference Binford1978). Obviously, many questions arise from this history of disciplinary entanglement and development: why ethnozooarchaeology, why now, and what standpoint is taken on the use of analogy—one of the most debated issues in theoretical archaeology (e.g. Hodder, Reference Hodder1982; Tilley, Reference Tilley1999; Holtorf, Reference Holtorf and Gramsch2000; David & Kramer, Reference David and Kramer2001; Albarella, Reference Albarella, Albarella and Trentacoste2011; Gosselain, Reference Gosselain2016)? Ethnoarchaeology, and particularly its use of cross-cultural analogy, has often been criticized for tacit or explicit determinism, presumptions regarding unilinear cultural development, and the dichotomisation of ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ societies, the latter considered better suited for the reconstruction of the past (Tilley, Reference Tilley1999; Holtorf, Reference Holtorf and Gramsch2000; Gosselain, Reference Gosselain2016) as well as for its tendency to produce predictable models and general ‘laws’ (David & Kramer, Reference David and Kramer2001). On the other hand, as noted by Hodder (Reference Hodder1982), archaeology has never been devoid of analogy—the most basic source being the researcher's own experience. Albarella (Reference Albarella, Albarella and Trentacoste2011) rightly points out that the researcher's personal experience of studied phenomena, in particular that related to various forms of human-animal interaction, is often inadequate or completely lacking (but see Argent, Ch. 3!). Consequently, Broderick (Ch. 1) emphasizes that ‘ethnoarchaeology ought to expand our perceptions rather than restrict them’, and the present volume stems from this very effort.
The aim of the volume—consisting of eleven papers with vastly different themes and approaches, a multitude of voices, case-studies ranging from Middle Palaeolithic to contemporary contexts, and ‘scattered’ across four different continents—is to explore and contextualize various ways in which humans and animals interact, forms their interdependencies take, and traces they leave in the archaeological record. In other words, the analogies in this case are not used in order to produce a simplified, predictable, universal picture but, if anything, a more complex one.
The validity and limits of analogy are particularly problematized in the chapter by Collins (Ch. 2), who raises the important question of whether studies of modern foragers, often applied in reconstructions of early anatomically-modern human (AMH) behaviour, can extend to include other hominins such as the Neanderthals. The author contrasts Neanderthal and AMH lithic industries, subsistence strategies (based on faunal assemblages and isotopic signatures), indicators of symbolic behaviour (e.g. personal adornment and visual representation), and lastly biology and cognition. He further suggests that Neanderthal foraging patterns can be addressed by means of optimal foraging theory, whereas symbolic behaviour remains beyond the scope of such models, due to presumed differences in cognition. Whereas the paper recognizes that such differences might be cultural or contextual, it might be argued that the interpretation of AMH behaviour is no less problematic, nor can a greater degree of ‘relatedness’ be straightforwardly assumed.
The contribution by Argent (Ch. 3) on human-horse relationships in the context of Pazyryk Iron Age kurgans stands out in the author's use of ‘auto-ethnography’ and a ‘relational zooarchaeology’. Argent shifts away from anthropocentric interpretations of horse sacrifices accompanying human burials as markers of status rooted in animal exploitation, and instead brings ‘human-horse intersubjectivities’, empathy, and emotion (love, trust, fear, grief) to the fore. In doing so, she addresses the important issue of historical particularism versus essentialism, stressing that animals, while being culturally shaped and bestowed with meanings, exist and experience the world independently of human constructions of them. Obviously, as noted by O'Connor (Ch. 11), humans can interpret animal subjectivities solely on their own terms. Nonetheless, the anthrozoological approach taken by Argent bears important implications for zooarchaeology, namely in recognising that both humans and non-human animals shape and create each other through mutually impactful relationships.
Broderick and Wallace (Ch. 4) remind us that some of the reasons for keeping animals may leave little or no traces in the archaeological record, and are consequently often overlooked in (zoo)archaeological research. Their paper focuses on the use of manure as a soil fertilizer in present-day Ethiopia, but with important implications for the study of agricultural economies in general. Apart from discussing means to identify manuring practices (e.g. geochemical soil analysis, grass, and other plant remains), the authors call for a reconsideration and re-assessment of animal exploitation strategies, which may be oriented towards animal products other than those which are archaeologically ‘visible’.
The chapter by Bendrey et al. (Ch. 5) results from an ethnoarchaeological study of seasonal variations in animal husbandry in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. The authors establish several points of relatedness between the studied area in the present and in the (Neolithic) past: the reliance on herd animals, landscape, climate, and spatial patterning of locales. Their approach therefore includes an ethnographic analogy sensu stricto, but they do acknowledge that recent and archaeological contexts cannot be directly compared, although the former may be used for a better understanding of the latter. In addition, their account of seasonal and spatial ‘rhythms’ of human and animal movement provides a valuable contribution to the understanding of the complexity and diversity of human residential practices. The contribution by Houle (Ch. 7) also addresses the issue of seasonality and residential mobility, in the context of Late Bronze Age pastoral communities in North-Central Mongolia. The author points out that hypotheses about their highly mobile lifeways stemmed primarily from an overemphasis on burials, and the paucity of data on habitation sites. Drawing on comparisons in environmental conditions, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and zooarchaeological data, Houle suggests that residential practices were much more varied than previously assumed, and involved seasonal movements of people and animals (and most likely habitations) within a restricted territory, which is a welcome use of analogy in deconstructing the mobility versus sedentism polarisation.
Love (Ch. 6) combines ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and zooarchaeological evidence in order to draw parallels between ancient and modern livestock guardian dogs. The paper also addresses the possibility of tracing the origin of particular dog breeds to ancient Roman times or even earlier. Apart from emphasizing the potential of DNA research in this enterprise, the author makes a compelling case for selective canine breeding in a particular ‘pre-Roman’ context by looking at recurrent dental pathologies. Linking zooarchaeological remains and descriptions of guardian dogs in ancient texts to modern breeds remains much more problematic, although the author sets the path of possible directions in future research—genetic and zooarchaeological studies, as well as looking into the use of dogs in the development of large-scale pastoralism.
Perhaps closest to the ethnoarchaeological tradition, the paper by Arnold and Lyons (Ch. 8) seeks to identify an ‘archaeological signature’ of butchering in a modern Sudanese village setting. By observing professional butchery activities and examining butchery waste, the authors make inferences regarding the age of slaughtered animals, butchery and discard practices, and taphonomic processes, consequently identifying the patterns that would signal such activities in the archaeological record.
In contrast, Russ (Ch. 9) questions whether fishing activities leave recognisable and ‘predictable’ archaeological traces. Her paper looks into historical and recent fishing practices (the choice of species, fishing methods, seasonality, processing, preservation, disposal, ritual, and taboo) in various hunter-gatherer societies in North America and northern Europe, in order to make inferences about such activities in the Late Pleistocene. The variety of ethnographic data regarding fish exploitation lead her to conclude that no universal patterns can be assumed, but various patterns should be considered in archaeological interpretation. Consequently, Russ’ paper is another testimony to the use of analogy as a means to demonstrate the diversity, rather than uniformity, of human experience.
The paper by Peres and Deter-Wolf (Ch. 10) considers ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts on the use of garfish in the south-eastern United States, in order to explore possible meanings attributted to the species beyond its dietary significance. The authors draw on the variety of alternative ways garfish remains were used and percieved by Native Americans (as weapons, tools, personal decoration, artefacts used in skin scratching and tattooing, apotropaiac and ritual objects, votive deposits), which open new possibilities for interpreting their occurrence in the archaeological record. Perhaps more importantly, analogies in this case are employed in order to emphasize the complexity of human-animal relationships, which may take a variety of forms even in particular and singular contexts.
The concluding chapter by O'Connor (Ch. 11) summarizes the issues addressed in the volume, rightly pointing out that the diversity of topics, approaches, and even vocabularies employed in the papers makes the ‘common theme elusive’ (p. 116). What binds them is the recognition that the human experience of the world was always interlinked with those of various animals, and the case-studies (or mental exercises) presented in the volume broaden our perspectives on the variety of forms these interdependencies take. In that sense, People with Animals represents a welcome contribution to the problematization of the use of analogy, which remains inseparable (either explicitly or implicitly) from archaeological interpretation. The volume, however, does not treat analogies, when made explicit, either as hindrances or as tools for producing general laws; rather, they are used to enrich interpretation or even in the deconstruction of deep-rooted concepts surrounding human-animal relationships.
