Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:13:15.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Animals and humans in complex societies

Review products

NaomiSykes. Beastly questions: animal answers to archaeological issues. 2014. xvi+221 pages, 34 b&w illustrations, 3 tables. London: Bloomsbury; 978-1-4725-0675-7 hardback £70.
Benjamin S.Arbuckle & Sue AnnMcCarty (ed.). Animals and inequality in the ancient world. 2014. xviii+388 pages, 87 b&w illustrations, 19 tables. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; 978-1-60732-285-6 hardback $70.
Gordon LindsayCampbell (ed.). The Oxford handbook of animals in Classical thought and life. 2014. xix+633 pages, 35 b&w illustrations. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-958942-5 hardback £95.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2015

Nerissa Russell
Nerissa Russell*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, 261 McGraw Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA (Email: nr29@cornell.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Zooarchaeology, once largely confined to questions of subsistence and production strategies, has recently devoted much more attention to the social roles of animals in the past. Responding (belatedly) to trends in archaeological theory, on the one hand, and the growth of interdisciplinary animal studies, on the other, zooarchaeologists are now using animal remains to address a broader range of questions that are of interest to archaeologists and others (e.g. Gifford-Gonzalez 2007; Oma 2010; Hill 2013). The three books here exemplify this development, all using zooarchaeological data to explore the varied roles of animals in (mainly) complex societies. Each ranges widely and demonstrates the centrality of animals in the human world, and, therefore, their great potential to illuminate the workings of ancient societies. Each also integrates zooarchaeological data with many other sources of information to create a whole much greater than any of the parts. There is a little overlap in authorship, with a chapter by Sykes in Animals and inequality in the ancient world and contributions by Michael MacKinnon in both edited volumes. These common threads aside, they are quite different books, with different goals and audiences.

Type
Review
Information
Antiquity , Volume 89 , Issue 348 , December 2015 , pp. 1494 - 1496
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2015 

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.)

References

Gifford-Gonzalez, D.P. 2007. Thoughts on a method for zooarchaeological study of quotidian life. Treballs d’Arqueologia 13: 5–27.Google Scholar
Hesse, B.C. 1986. Buffer resources and animal domestication in prehistoric northern Chile. ArchaeoZoologia 1: 73–85.Google Scholar
Hill, E. 2013. Archaeology and animal persons: toward a prehistory of human-animal relations. Environment and Society: Advances in Research 4: 117–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, H.E. & Scott, S.L.. 2003. Patterns of elite faunal utilization at Moundville, Alabama. American Antiquity 68: 552–72.Google Scholar
Oma, K.A. 2010. Between trust and domination: social contracts between humans and animals. World Archaeology 42: 175–87.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. 1991. Gender theory and the archaeological record: why is there no archaeology of gender? in Gero, J.M. & Conkey, M.W. (ed.) Engendering archaeology: women and prehistory: 31–54. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar