Human-Animal relationships (Other Keyword)
1-17 (17 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Mortuary Monuments and Archaeology: Current Research" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The 19th century is considered a watershed for changing human-animal relationships in North America and Europe. During this time, pets occupied increasingly central roles within households, animal welfare institutions became more widespread and animal breeding practices were standardized. In Victorian Britain, public pet...
Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? How Pet Cemeteries Document Changing Human-Animal Relationships (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Public pet cemeteries represent a relatively recent phenomenon in western European/North American societies. First appearing in the late 19th century in England, France and the United States, their numbers quickly expanded across these and other countries as people commemorated their non-human friends in new ways. The locations and organisation of these...
Dog Burials and Healed Cranial Lesions: Exploring the Human-Dog Bond in the American Southwest (2016)
Since the initial domestication of the dog, humans and their canid companions have maintained a close connection. Dogs have been employed as hunters, beasts of burden, mousers, refuse disposers, ritual guardians, and emotional support. Also, given their physical size and profile, dogs have often been considered an animal underfoot. Despite dogs’ myriad working conditions, zooarchaeological research illustrates a non-random pattern of cranial lesions to prehistoric domesticated dogs from many...
Domesticated Animals as a Source of Cultural Change during the Contact Period on the Northwestern Plains (2017)
Despite functioning as pack animals, guards, religious figures, and even companions, dogs were never as integral to Blackfoot culture as the horse became. To date, researchers have most often characterized the relationship of Blackfoot people and their horses by framing the horse as an "upgraded model"—a "new and improved" dog. While prior experience with domesticated dogs did facilitate the incorporation of horses into the daily lives of Blackfoot people, this paper argues that the fundamental...
Extreme Tooth Wear: Understanding Dog Diets in the American Southwest (2016)
Dogs have been described as a refuse management system in prehistoric villages across the world; in fact, much of their domestication has been attributed to their ability to adapt to consume human garbage/waste. Recent research on prehistoric dog burials housed in the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collections illustrates unusual tooth wear patterns on both the upper and lower carnassials in a large number of the canids. The wear does not appear to represent excessive gnawing on...
From Pests to Pets: social and cultural perceptions of animals in post-medieval urban centres (2013)
Cats, dogs, pigs and other animals lived in close proximity to people in post-medieval cities and were probably viewed in terms of their respective functions. For example, cats were kept to deter rodents and exploited for their fur, dogs were protectors of the home and pigs were not only food, but helped to reduce the amount of rubbish where they were kept. However, perceptions and treatment of urban animals were far from static. The emergent animal welfare movement and legislation heralded a...
Identifying Animal Management Strategies in Pre-domestication Contexts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "From the Altai to the Arctic: New Results and New Directions in the Archaeology of North and Inner Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of domestication highlights a form of human intervention in animal reproduction that is at the extreme in a continuum of human-animal relations. Despite the extreme nature of this category of interaction, domestication remains difficult to distinguish archaeologically and...
Is the Anthropocene a Beastly Problem? Thoughts on Human-Animal Relationships and Contemporary Narratives of Change (2017)
Pizzly bears and coywolves have been making headlines over the past few years. Offspring of illicit pairings between species of charismatic and aggressive megafauna, these hybrid monsters are presented as signs and portents of a troubled future. This paper explores the relationship between contemporary discourses about unruly and uncanny hybrid species and academic efforts to define and engage with the Anthropocene. It questions the relationships between tacit understandings of the animal as a...
Long time – long house. Dwelling with animals in Scandinavia in prehistory (2017)
The three-aisled longhouse is one of the most long-lived forms of dwelling-place known from prehistory, with its span from the Early Bronze Age (1500 BCE) until the Viking period (1000C CE). During some 2500 years, the architectural outline and form remained surprisingly similar. The three-aisled longhouse is, in terms of human culture (albeit not in geological terms), a longue durée institution, a materialisation of a particular lived space, where humans and domestic animals lived under the...
The Many Lives of Wari Dogs: A Summary of Zooarchaeological and Isotopic Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The widespread perception of the dog as humans’ closest companion species allows their remains to be used as proxies for human diet and mobility patterns. But these highly social animals held their own variable social and economic roles. Therefore, dog remains can provide information on the organization of animal management systems in past complex...
Something Other – Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia (2017)
Human-bird relationships in Early Iron Age Slovenia are marked by apparent contradictions – birds are extremely rare in the zooarchaeological record as a whole, and completely absent from mortuary contexts that are otherwise notable for the deposition of animal remains. Yet birds are the most frequently represented animal in Early Iron Age art. Experience of birds would have been relatively constant – birds are almost always present, yet human relationships with them were likely based more on...
Stable Isotopes and the Dynamics of Human-Animal Relationships (2016)
A central focus of stable isotope analysis in archaeology has always been to reconstruct human diet, with faunal samples examined primarily to better understand the human data. This paper will challenge this precept and highlight that important information about human-animal relationships can be obtained from isotope studies if the animals are viewed as individuals in their own right, as opposed to mere background data. Using several species as case-studies, this paper will examine how stable...
Sámi animal offering rituals in Fennoscandia: Religious change and local responses to colonial contact (2017)
The paper focuses on the archaeology of religious ritual of the Sámi, an indigenous group populating the northern parts of Fennoscandia. I will discuss how religious ritual, especially animal offerings, transformed in response to colonial contact with the Swedish and Norwegian settlers. The animal offerings, given to negotiate success in hunting, fishing, and reindeer husbandry among other things, reflected the shifting economic and religious importance of various animal species. I will argue...
Tame, Feral, and Pest Species: Plants and Animals at the edges of Domestication and Human Control (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We love to think that we are firmly in charge of our domestic spaces, and we love sharply delineated definitions. The designations of “wild” and “domestic” species speak to this; we define domestic species as those who have changed irrevocably under the reproductive control of humans. However, there are still species who exist in the spaces in-between:...
"The World is a Garden": Human-Animal Relations and Sustainability Comparative Studies of Classic Maya and Early China (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interactions among organisms along with environmental factors in non-Western cultures, require to be re-examined since Western humanity-nature binary explanations fail to take into account indigenous ontologies. In the title, I prioritize environment among these three objects because I want to demonstrate that it is a prerequisite, helping shape the...
Zooarchaeological Analysis of Dog Pathology in the American Southwest: A Case for Interpreting Dogs as Companions as Opposed to Beasts of Burden (2017)
This presentation provides an update on prehistoric Southwest dog pathologies from the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collections. Our zooarchaeological analysis of healed cranial lesions and tooth wear has not only expanded on earlier research accomplished in previous years but it has redefined the prehistoric dog’s role in the agricultural Southwest. Typically, domesticated dogs are identified as beasts of burden, which has inhibited sufficient and further analysis of the...
Zooarchaeology and the Study of Human-Animal Relationships in Pre and Early Historic South India (2017)
The study of animal remains from archaeological sites has proven to be an invaluable approach to understanding past social, economic, and political practices. Despite the diverse behaviors and sets of relationships animal remains can index, faunal analysis has been an underutilized approach to studying Indian history and prehistory. In this paper, I present new research and zooarchaeological data to demonstrate how human-animal engagements changed throughout the Neolithic (3000-1200 BCE), Iron...