Ethnozooarchaeology: The Present and Past of Human-Animal Relationships

This book examines how the study of human-animal relations can help us interpret archaeological evidence. An international range of contributors examines fishing, hunting and husbandry, slaughtering and butchering, ceremonial and ritual practices and techniques of deposition and disposal in traditional societies. Topics covered include the theoretical potential of ethnographic research for zooarchaeology, the use of comparative analogies in the ethnographic and zooarchaeological records, the historical developments of ethnozooarchaeology and specific case studies selected from across the world. This broad geographic approach encompasses examples from different types of societies, ranging from hunter-gatherers to urban populations and from horticulturalists to traditional farmers and pastoralists. This book will be of interest to researchers in a range of fields, including anthropology, ethnohistory and zooarchaeology.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Methods
1. Ethnozooarchaeology and the power of analogy (Umberto Albarella)
2. A dog is for hunting (Karen D. Lupo)
3. Past and present strategies for draught exploitation of cattle (Niels Johannsen)
4. Animal dung: Rich ethnographic records, poor archaeozoological evidence (Marta Moreno-García and Carlos M. Pimenta)
5. Folk taxonomies and human-animal relations: The Early Neolithic in the Polish Lowlands (Arkadiusz Marciniak)

Fishing, Hunting and Foraging
6. The historical use of terrestrial vertebrates in the Selva Region (Chiapas, México) (Eduardo Corona and Patricia Enríquez Vázquez)
7. Pacific Ocean fishing traditions: Subsistence, beliefs, ecology, and households (Jean L. Hudson)
8. The ethnography of fishing in Scotland and its contribution to icthyoarchaeological analysis in this region (Ruby N. Cerón-Carrasco)
9. Contemporary subsistence and foodways in the Lau Islands of Fiji: An ethnoarchaeological study of non-optimal foraging and irrational economics (Sharyn Jones)
10. Ethnozooarchaeology of the Mani (Orang Asli) of Trang Province, Southern Thailand: A preliminary result of faunal analysis at Sakai Cave (Hitomi Hongo and Prasit Auetrakulvit)

Food Preparation and Consumption
11. An ethnoarchaeological study of marine coastal fish butchery in Pakistan (William R. Belcher)
12. Ethnozooarchaeology of butchering practices in the Mahas Region, Sudan (Elizabeth R. Arnold and Diane Lyons)

Husbandry
13. Social principles of Andean camelid pastoralism and archaeological interpretations (Penelope Dransart)
14. Incidence and causes of calf mortality in Maasai herds: Implications for zooarchaeological interpretation (Kathleen Ryan and Paul Nkuo Kunoni)
15. A week on the plateau: Pig husbandry, mobility and resource exploitation in central Sardinia (Umberto Albarella, Filippo Manconi and Angela Trentacoste)
16. A pig fed by hand is worth two in the bush: Ethnoarchaeology of pig husbandry in Greece and its archaeological implications (Paul Halstead and Valasia Isaakidou)