Where the Wild Things Are Not: Human-Animal Interaction in the Space between Wild and Domestic
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)
Western tradition has tended to view animals in a binary opposition of wild versus domestic, with limited appreciation for forms of cultural engagement with animals in the space between these poles and little recognition that these liminally-placed relationships do not inevitably lead to animal domestication. Archaeologists no longer treat the wild-domestic transition as a threshold. Instead they have come to view domestication as a continuum or a range of possible pathways that may be followed. With this shift in perspective, growing attention has been devoted to the diversity of human-animal interactions that occur between the fully wild and fully domestic states, the cultural underpinnings of such relationships, and their zooarchaeological correlates. Significant questions in this area of scholarship are many. What social, political, and economic functions do non-wild, non-domestic animals fill? Under what conditions do such roles arise? What circumstances initiate a trajectory toward domestication, and, where this does not ultimately occur, why not? This symposium will explore these questions and related topics through examination of practices such as taming, pet keeping, wild management, captive management, animal translocations, commensal relations, and other forms of human interaction with animals that are neither wholly domestic, nor truly wild.
Other Keywords
Zooarchaeology •
Domestication •
Maya •
Birds •
Hunter-Gatherer •
Turkeys •
Origins Of Agriculture •
Islands •
Prehistoric Art •
Faunal Analysis
Geographic Keywords
Republic of El Salvador (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
United States of America (Country) •
Republic of Honduras (Country) •
Jamaica (Country) •
Republic of Nicaragua (Country) •
Republic of Turkey (Country) •
Republic of Panama (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-16 of 16)
- Documents (16)
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4,000 years of animal translocations: Mocha Island and its zooarchaeological record (2017)
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Islands are territories that allow us to assess phenomena and processes in a way that is impossible to do in the mainland. One of these concerns the human interaction with animals that are usually considered as wild. The case of Mocha Island (Chile; South Pacific, 38,36°S) is remarkable because of its small size (50 km2), proximity to the mainland (30 km), three different and independent human occupation events, and an endemic terrestrial fauna constituted only by small reptiles, amphibians,...
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Assessing Human-Animal Interactions in Mesoamerica: Ancient Maya Use of the Black-Throated Bobwhite (Colinus nigrogularis) (2017)
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This paper examines human-animal interaction between the ancient Maya and the black-throated bobwhite (Colinus nigrogularis), a small quail resident to Central America. We provide a literature review of the occurrence of bobwhite remains in Maya faunal assemblages. Unpublished faunal analyses by the primary author, in conjunction with the published literature, suggest that the bobwhite, like many animals in Mesoamerica, was of greater importance to the Maya than as a mere dietary food. We...
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Bears and people: from the wilderness to dancing (2017)
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There has been a very strong relationship between human societies and the brown bear (Ursus arctos) in many different places and cultures. The bear has had multiple roles in European societies, from the ancient (and modern) epitome of the wild, through religious symbol to the arenas of the Roman Empire, and their later use as entertainment. At what point does the bear’s position change in society from an animal to be feared, to one to be mocked? In terms of captive management, a fully grown bear...
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Between farming and hunting: animal explotation in the Zacapu Basin, Michoacán, Mexico (100-1450 AD) (2017)
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If the questions of herding or management of wild species have been regularly addressed in Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, cultural development is assumed to be essentially directed by agriculture. Indeed, the presence of only two widely recognised domesticated animals, the dog (Canis familiaris) and the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), would have limited the growth of a more complex agro-pastoralism. However, the importance of non-domesticated animals and their interactions with the agricultural...
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The Commensal animals in the Pacific – What might DNA results suggest about the animal-human relationships through time? (2017)
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For the last twenty years we have been studying modern and ancient DNA of the various commensal animals in the Pacific. Different patterns of distribution and genetic variation exist and may provide information regarding the animal-human relationships and the role these animals played in the various Pacific cultures through time.
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Constructed Spaces and Managed Species: Niche Construction Theory and "Wild" Turkey Management during the Mississippian Period in the Southeastern United States (2017)
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Pre-Columbian peoples of the Southeastern United States systematically altered their environment through forest clearing, gardening, terraforming, and urban planning. The end result of these activities encouraged certain native animals like the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) to occupy these constructed and managed environments, especially forest-edges and agricultural fields. The sustained daily interactions between species resulted in a special and complex human-turkey...
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Early Human Control over Ungulate Taxa in the southern Levant (2017)
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An expanding catalog of faunal assemblages spanning the Late Epipaleolithic through Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) periods in the southern Levant points to growing human control over taxa that eventually become domesticated (wild goat, wild pig and wild cattle). This change in human-animal relationships occurs several centuries if not millennia before evidence for full-fledged management and domestication are visible in the archaeo-zoological record. We explore this shift by referencing data from...
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Fox Overabundance and Human Response in the Earliest Villages of the Near East (2017)
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Ethological and ecological studies point to the proliferation of small mammalian carnivores, most notably red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in human-modified environments. Foxes prey on human trash and consequently their populations in and around settlements are denser, their survival rate is improved and their foraging territories contract, centering on refuse dumps. This carnivore overabundance leads to a series of effects on the local ecosystems. The foxes’ strong commensal relationship with humans...
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Let’s Talk Turkey: Turkey Use and Management at Postclassic Mayapán (2017)
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The ancient Maya utilized two species of turkeys: the Ocellated Turkey (Meleagris ocellata) native to the Yucatán Peninsula, northern Guatemala, and northern Belize and the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) from Central Mexico. The exact timing of Wild Turkey domestication and its introduction to the Maya area is unknown, although evidence as early as the Preclassic exists. The Ocellated Turkey was never fully domesticated but many scholars have proposed the Maya may have managed the species. To...
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Living with Reindeer in Arctic Siberia: the View from Arctic Yamal, Russia (2017)
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Reindeer are an essential part of daily life and special events across a broad stretch of northern Eurasia, but their long term history with people has remained elusive. Ethnographers have characterized reindeer as living in ‘intermittent co-existence’ with humans, or as ‘semi-domesticates’, ‘pastoral herd animals’, and even ‘slaves’. Archaeology has struggled to characterize human-reindeer relationships, with even the geographical origins of modern domesticated deer remaining unclear. The Yamal...
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Methods for the identification of dog and dog/wolf hybrids from wild canids in the Northern Plains (2017)
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In Native North America, dogs (Canis familiaris) were an important resource, used for traction, food, security, and ritual. Given their ubiquity in settlements and their tendency to consume human food waste, dogs remains can provide significant information about past human diet. Stable carbon isotope (δ13C) ratios may be used to reconstruct maize consumption, while nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios increase by trophic level, and can be used to differentiate between marine, freshwater, and...
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On Manitou and Consanguineal Respect between Human and Animal Societies in Southern New England (2017)
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By definition, hunter-gatherer societies rely upon few, if any, domesticated animals. Domestication is counter to many hunter-gatherer worldviews, where human and non-human animals are seen as sharing a literal biological connection. From here, in essence, domestication is akin to slavery. Examples from the ethnohistoric and archaeological records will be used to illustrate how local Native groups in southern New England treated wild and domestic animals and animal remains in culturally...
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Raptor Management and Whistle/Flute Production in Pueblo IV New Mexico (2017)
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The Pueblo IV period (ca. AD 1300–1600) in New Mexico was a time of great societal change, and the religious significance of birds is thought to have flourished during this time period. In particular, whistles and flutes, commonly made from the ulnae of birds of prey, become ubiquitous in the Pueblo IV Middle and Northern Rio Grande. The importance of birds to Puebloan society has been well-documented ethnographically: raptors (primarily eagles) held captive by modern Puebloan groups are...
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Something Other – Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia (2017)
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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...
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Using Multi-Proxy Evidence to Evaluate Captive Animal Management in the Prehistoric Caribbean (2017)
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For some time archaeologists have speculated that non-native mammals introduced to the prehistoric Caribbean may have been managed in captivity, but direct evidence for this practice has been wanting. The question of management is complicated by ambiguous and conflicting data from ethnohistory, animal behaviour, and archaeology, as well as potentially unwarranted assumptions about human interaction with synanthropic animals. I examine this issue for introduced agouti (Dasyprocta sp.) and opossum...
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Were Hutia Domesticated in the Caribbean? (2017)
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The Caribbean islands had limited endemic terrestrial fauna and they lacked any of the New World domesticated animals until fairly late in prehistory. Given the depauperate terrestrial fauna of these islands the early Native American inhabitants relied on marine resources and endemic rodents for a significant proportion of the animals in their diet. It has been argued that rodents from the family Capromyidae, various species of hutia, were managed and perhaps domesticated in the Caribbean. In...