Pre-Contact Hawaiian Animal Burials: Interspecies Interactions and Embodied Experiences

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Zooarchaeological analyses of pre-contact Hawaiian midden deposits have yielded significant information on subsistence practices and, to a lesser extent, associated foodways practices. Archaeologists have also occasionally excavated burials of non-human domesticated animals, including dog, pig, and chicken. These ritual deposits provide unparalleled opportunities to reveal osteobiographical information about animal husbandry practices and taphonomic information about cause of death and mortuary treatment. At the time of European contact, humans and non-human domesticated animals in the Hawaiian Islands led imbricated lives and shared household living spaces, as well as food resources. This multi-species ontological similarity may have contributed to the maintenance of Hawaiian epistemologies, which blur distinctions between humans and non-human animals. Thus, analyses of non-human domesticated animal burials may also potentially provide important proxy information about the lived experiences of humans. Macroscopic analyses of a sample of pre-contact non-human domesticated animal burials are presented in osteobiographical format, and contextualized with ethnohistorical information, to shed light on interspecies social interactions and embodied experiences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25457