Sharyn Jones O’Day - Behaviour Behind Bones

Behaviour Behind Bones

The zooarchaeology of ritual, religion, status and identity

Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Council of Archaeozoology, Durham, August 2002

Series Editors: Peter Rowley-Conwy, Umberto Albarella and Keith Dobney

The zooarchaeology of ritual, religion, status and identity

Edited by

Sharyn Jones ODay, Wim Van Neer and Anton Ervynck

Oxbow Books

First published in the United Kingdom in 2004. Reprinted in 201 by

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and in the United States by

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Oxbow Books and the individual authors 2004

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-571-7

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-911-1

Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-912-8

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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This book is one of several volumes which form the published proceedings of the 9th meeting of the International Council of Archaeozoology (ICAZ), which was held in Durham (UK) 23rd28th August 2002. ICAZ was founded in the early 70s and has ever since acted as the main international organisation for the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. The main international conferences are held every four years, and the Durham meeting the largest ever follows those in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, England (London), France, USA, Germany and Canada. The next meeting will be held in Mexico in 2006. The Durham conference which was attended by about 500 delegates from 46 countries was organised in 23 thematic sessions, which attracted, in addition to zooarchaeologists, scholars from related disciplines such as palaeoanthropology, archaeobotany, bone chemistry, genetics, mainstream archaeology etc.

The publication structure reflects that of the conference, each volume dealing with a different topic, be it methodological, ecological, palaeoeconomic, sociological, historical or anthropological (or a combination of these). This organisation by theme rather than by chronology or region, was chosen for two main reasons. The first is that we wanted to take the opportunity presented by such a large gathering of researchers from across the world to encourage international communication, and we thought that this could more easily be achieved through themes with world-wide relevance. The second is that we thought that, by tackling broad questions, zooarchaeologists would be more inclined to take a holistic approach and integrate their information with other sources of evidence. This also had the potential of attracting other specialists who shared an interest in that particular topic. We believe that our choice turned out to be correct for the conference, and helped substantially towards its success. For the publication there is the added benefit of having a series of volumes that will be of interest far beyond the restricted circle of specialists on faunal remains. Readers from many different backgrounds, ranging from history to zoology, will certainly be interested in many of the fourteen volumes that will be published.

Due to the large number of sessions it would have been impractical to publish each as a separate volume, so some that had a common theme have been combined. Far from losing their main thematic focus, these volumes have the potential to attract a particularly wide and diverse readership. Because of these combinations (and because two other sessions will be published outside this series) it was therefore possible to reduce the original 24 sessions to 14 volumes. Publication of such a series is a remarkable undertaking, and we are very grateful to David Brown and Oxbow Books for agreeing to produce the volumes.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the University of Durham and the ICAZ Executive Committee for their support during the preparation of the conference, and all session organisers now book editors for all their hard work. Some of the conference administrative costs were covered by a generous grant provided by the British Academy. Further financial help came from the following sources: English Heritage, Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek (ROB), County Durham Development Office, University College Durham, Palaeoecology Research Services, Northern Archaeological Associates, Archaeological Services University of Durham (ASUD), and NYS Corporate Travel. Finally we are extremely grateful for the continued support of the Wellcome Trust and Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) who, through their provision of Research Fellowships for Keith Dobney and Umberto Albarella, enabled us to undertake such a challenge.

Two of the 24 sessions organised included the themes of Ritual and Religion and Status and Identity. Since these broad study areas (as aspects of human behaviour that clearly go beyond sheer economic and ecological frameworks) cover much common ground, it was obvious that these sessions should be conjoined for the purposes of publication.

Behaviour behind bones

Amongst those who study animal bones from archaeological sites, there exists a smouldering debate regarding whether this scientific discipline should be called archaeozoology or zooarchaeology. The first name suggests zoological research based on material derived from archaeological sites and indicates a close link with fields such as palaeontology, natural history, ecology or even veterinary medicine. In the Old World, the study of animal bones from archaeological sites indeed grew as archaeozoology and focused upon the quaternary evolution of the animal realm, the history of domestic animals, the economy of former human settlements and the ecology of the landscape around it. In the New World, however, juggling with bones has been called zooarchaeology, the study of past human life through the animal remains found at their sites. Through a close link with anthropology and sociology, the emphasis is on the reconstruction and understanding of human behaviour. Of course, both the archaeozoological and zooarchaeological viewpoints are equally valuable, but the dichotomy may yield the unfortunate effect of dividing schools of researchers and inhibiting communication between each other.

Over the last decades in the Old World, more and more published animal bone reports deal with sites from historical periods ( e.g ., from Roman, medieval or postmedieval times). In this temporal frame, the evolution of the animal world or domestication history are no longer the main research themes, being replaced by more compelling issues such as urbanisation, colonialism, industrialisation, social uprise. Through the development towards the analysis of historical contexts, it also became clear that economy and ecology alone were not sufficient to explain what had happened at these sites. Historians had, long ago, already provided the data and insights to indicate that peoples behaviour in the past was not only directed by economic and ecological constraints but was equally influenced by social mechanisms, including religion and ideology in general. Taking this historical approach back to pre-historical periods, Old World archaeozoologists are now increasingly coming into the influence spheres of anthropology, the four field discipline of most New World archaeologists. On the other hand, New World zooarchaeologists, even those working within the field of the New World Historical Archaeology, have a growing interest in the synergy between the rich corpus of written sources and the animal remains studies in the Old World. In this way, anthropology, history, zooarchaeology and archaeozoology are now coming together.