Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:56:47.005Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On whooper swans, social zooarchaeology and traditional zooarchaeologyʼs weight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Extract

The article by Overton and Hamilakis challenges so-called traditional zooarchaeology and works as a manifesto for a new social zooarchaeology, as the authors call it. This new social zooarchaeology moves beyond the thinking of animals as (purely) resources and instead reinstates their position as sentient and autonomous agents. The approach is fresh and evidence-based (e.g. Robb 2010). The sites and bone materials used as examples come from Late Mesolithic Denmark: the Ertebølle site Aggersund in Jutland and Ertebølle Grave 8 at Vedbæk, Sjælland. Both sites were excavated and analysed many years ago, but the bone material has been reanalysed and interpreted for this study.

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albrethsen, S.E., and Brinch Petersen, E., 1976: Excavation of a Mesolithic cemetery at Vedbæk, Denmark, Acta archaeologica 47, 128.Google Scholar
Bell, C., 1997: Ritual. Perspectives and dimensions, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, J., 2000: Fragmentation in archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Fowler, C., 2004: The archaeology of personhood, LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garwood, P., 2011: Rites of passage, in Insoll, T. (ed.), Oxford handbook of the archaeology of ritual and religion, Oxford, 261–84.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1986: Appropriation of nature. Essays on human ecology and social relations, Manchester.Google Scholar
Karsten, R., 1955: The religion of the Samek. Ancient beliefs and cults of the Scandinavian and Finnish Lapps, Leiden.Google Scholar
Kristensen, T., and Holly, D.H., 2013: Birds, burials and sacred cosmology of the indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland, Canada, Cambridge archaeological journal 23 (1), 4153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lahelma, A., 2012: Strange swans and odd ducks. Interpreting the ambiguous waterfowl imagery of Lake Onega, in Cochrane, A. and Jones, A. (eds), Visualising the Neolithic. Abstraction, figuration, performance, representation, Oxford, 1533.Google Scholar
Larsson, Å.M., 2009: Breaking and making bodies and pots. Material and ritual practices in Sweden in the third millennium BC, Uppsala.Google Scholar
Lévi-Srauss, C., 1991 (1964): Totemism, London.Google Scholar
Mannermaa, K., 2008: Birds and burials at Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Zvejnieki (Latvia) about 8000–3900 BP, Journal of anthropological archaeology 27, 201–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Napolskikh, V., 1992: Proto-Uralic world picture. A reconstruction, in Hoppal, M. and Pentikäinen, J. (eds), Northern religions and shamanism, Budapest, 320.Google Scholar
Nilsson Stutz, L., 2003: Ritualized bodies and embodied rituals. Tracing ritual practices in Late Mesolithic burials, Lund.Google Scholar
Robb, J., 2010: Beyond agency, World archaeology 43 (4), 493520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, N., 2012: Social zooarchaeology. Humans and animals in prehistory, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Schanche, A., 2000: Graver i ur og berg. Samisk gravskikk og religion fra forhistorisk til nyere tid, Karasjok.Google Scholar
Zvelebil, M., 1993: Concepts of time and ‘presenting’ the Mesolithic, Archaeological review from Cambridge 12, 5170.Google Scholar