Animal Matters: Ethics in Zooarchaeology from Discovery to Display

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Animal Matters: Ethics in Zooarchaeology from Discovery to Display" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Increasingly, ethics are at the forefront of conversations in archaeology; however, the discussion of ethics in zooarchaeology has been comparatively limited, especially in larger, communal spaces like the SAAs. This symposium aims to bring these conversations into focus through the discussion of practical and theoretical ethics in the discipline. Possible topics include the ethics of destructive sampling, live animal actualistic studies, obtaining and curating collections, pets as comparative materials, the emotional experience of the analyst, relational ontologies, anthropocentric versus animal-centric viewpoints, and the broader comparison of animal versus human remains. This session seeks to incorporate diverse and intersectional perspectives to open a dialogue on the current status of ethics in zooarchaeology as well as directions for the future.