human-animal relations (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Full-Text Peter Whitridge.

Part of the attraction of relational ontology is its encouragement to discard conventional epistemological hierarchies. We needn’t frame our investigations with the usual weighty themes – economy, social relations, ideology – but can begin anywhere, with any sort of question, and tug on the thread until the archaeological fabric unravels. Here I begin with dogs, and their relations with humans and other animals in the Inuit past. Inuit had an exceptionally complex relationship with the dogs that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

I argue that, in contrast to other early animal domesticates, cattle domestication in the Near Eastern Neolithic was motivated largely by the symbolic value of wild cattle (aurochsen).  Already the centerpieces of feasts and ceremonies, subject to ritual treatment, and probably playing a key role in Neolithic religion, domestication brought these powerful animals under human control, and ensured a ready supply for ceremonies.  I suggest that this pre-existing symbolic and spiritual power shaped...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Pacheco.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Projects taking place in the state of Chihuahua have, in recent years, begun to expand the understanding of local lifeways. The analysis of human-animal relations is perceived to have contributed to a greater understanding of ways in which researchers can reconstruct the lifeways in the past. This paper examines prehistoric lifeway patterns indicated by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

Schematic harvesting scenes incised on tools are a stock variety of both precontact and historic Inuit graphic art. They sometimes seem to depict historically specific events, which they effectively commemorate, and have real (sometimes precise) informational content that must have been important for the dissemination of technical harvesting knowledge among a hunter’s peers, and its inter-generational transfer. However, the harvesting setups – such as a boatload of hunters on the verge of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Hill.

The use of personal amulets appears to have been a common practice among northern hunting peoples of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Many of these amulets were intended to facilitate individual human relations with sea mammals. Cooperative whaling, however, required the development of an amulet that mediated group relations with prey. This paper describes a set of Alaska Eskimo whaling "charms" dated to the late 19th century and identified in museum collections from across the United States. The...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

One of the classic ways the nature/culture dichotomy manifests itself in human interactions with the environment is through the categories of wild and domestic. Some have argued that this distinction is not helpful, and certainly the boundaries are complicated, but it seems most useful to start by asking whether it was meaningful to particular people in the past. Here I will explore whether wild and domestic were relevant concepts to the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük (Central Anatolia), and to some...