If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A fundamental component to the presence of animal remains within anthropogenic contexts is the underlying potential evidence for interactions and experiences. While there are many methods to examine and reconstruct human-animal interactions, foundationally there are equally as many relational dynamics to consider. The diverse methodological approaches of twenty-first-century archaeology further provide profuse opportunities for us, as scholars, to theorize and explore many contextual, discursive, and dialectic dynamics of humans and animals from antiquity to the modern day. What cultural meanings were attached to wild animals in antiquity? How can one better evaluate the importance of domestic animals to ancient societies? How can we dialogue with our own anthropocentric biases when we set out to understand ancient pet keeping or transhumance? Are there ways in which we can expand our interpretations to be inclusive of these relational dynamics while recognizing the value of traditional zooarchaeological hypotheses? In this session, a range of spatially and temporally variable research about human-animal relationships—from ancient to modern—is presented, highlighting exciting paradigms, approaches, and examples of how we can thoughtfully, thoroughly, and holistically reconstruct human-animal dynamics within the archaeological record.