Animals and Society in Bronze Age Europe

ongoing

This project will create a new vision of Bronze Age ontologies by exploring the role of animals as active participants in Bronze Age social worlds. The impact of contemporary Capitalist ideology on archaeological understanding of the European Bronze Age has been profound. Dominant narratives describe a world in which economic intensification, the accumulation of wealth and the emergence of chiefly hierarchies were predicated on the objectification of the ‘other’. This project will critically re-evaluate models that view animals as objects of exploitation. Drawing on work in animal studies that highlights how living with animals involves intimate interaction and interdependency, it will investigate the intertwining of human and animal identities, and will consider how the social and cultural significance of animals affected how they were farmed, managed and consumed. The appearance of field-systems and houses incorporating byres for cattle indicates major changes in animal management in the Bronze Age. Yet, animal iconography and the presence of animal remains in graves and votive deposits suggest that animals had cultural significance. The project will bring together contextual, zooarchaeological, isotope, organic residue and aDNA analysis to investigate human-animal sociality, examining herd management; patterns of human-animal interaction; animal mobility and exchange; the role of animals in feasting and ritual; and their location in cultural taxonomies. By examining the ontological position of animals not as passive objects but as active subjects, this project will radically reframe the theoretical basis on which wider interpretations of the Bronze Age are based, including how political authority, gender relations and economic activities were structured. By illuminating alternate modalities of power and agency, and different ways of living with non-human others, it will also contribute to current debates around issues such as sustainability in the present.