The Deer Turn: A Zooarchaeological Case Study Approach to Reimagining Dualistic Ontologies of Human-Red Deer Relationships in Scottish Prehistory
Author(s): Kath Page
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Unfinished Business and Untold Stories: Digging into the Complexity of ‘Animal Domestication’" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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Certain species defy traditional narratives of domestication, seemingly occupying the space between wild and domesticates. One such animal is the Scottish red deer (Cervus elaphus Scoticus). Contemporary red deer ontologies appear to have developed from 18<sup>th</sup> century romanticism, resulting in their embodiment of the very essence of the Scottish Highlands. However, red deer and the landscape they inhabit have been intensively managed for centuries, if not millennia, leading us to question whether red deer are, or ever have been, truly “wild”.
My PhD utilizes an innovative deep-time approach to analysing depositional data that has identified spatial and temporal trends across Scottish prehistory. Closer scrutiny using a case study approach, has suggested that red deer were “managed” from at least the early Neolithic. Societal, agricultural and industrial intensification during later prehistory appears to have created paradoxical relationships between people and red deer, laying the foundations for our complex contemporary attitudes towards this species. This fresh understanding of the relationships between red deer and people in the past can be used to develop new ways of living with these animals in the present, helping to inform the debate on how to manage Scotland’s current deer population.
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Cite this Record
The Deer Turn: A Zooarchaeological Case Study Approach to Reimagining Dualistic Ontologies of Human-Red Deer Relationships in Scottish Prehistory. Kath Page. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 510038)
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Abstract Id(s): 51302