Unfinished Business and Untold Stories: Digging into the Complexity of ‘Animal Domestication’

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Unfinished Business and Untold Stories: Digging into the Complexity of ‘Animal Domestication’" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Traditional discourse describes domestication as a complex and transformative process, widely recognized as one of the most significant shifts in human-animal relational dynamics. However, as with many foundational concepts, precise definitions of ‘domestication’ are complicated by multilayered and multigenerational insights and expectations (e.g., domestication as a state of being, as a biological process, as a lived/social experience). This 'palimpsest' of definitions can make it difficult to investigate and interpret human-animal interactions like domestication, particularly when the nature of these relationships is uncertain and multifaceted, as is often the case in the archaeological record. There is also understandable dissatisfaction about how domestication is often still conceptualized, as some ‘traditional’ models propose ‘universal’ (human-dominated) domestication narratives, which draw on intuition or expectations grounded in western scientific ontologies. While some domestication cases align with these traditional narratives, there are many ‘atypical’ species and relationships that do not follow ‘expected’ domestication trajectories but still provide needed insights into the variability of human-animal interactions. The purpose of this symposium is to showcase a range of theoretical perspectives, approaches, and case studies that challenge the universality of human-dominated domestication narratives and exemplify the variety of interactions that can and should be incorporated into ‘domestication research’.