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Eating money

A study in the ethnoarchaeology of food1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Mike Parker Pearson
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Abstract

This paper develops a case study of animal exploitation in Androy, in southern Madagascar, to demonstrate the exchange and depositional processes by which animal bones can eventually end up in the ground. It examines the central role of cattle as symbol, currency and foodstuff in Tandroy life and explores some of the contexts and complexities of livestock exchange and slaughter. The results of this case study are used to suggest that standard archaeological calculations of minimum numbers (MNI) from individual sites may not always provide reliable information about livestock numbers in subsistence economies, and that the nutritional value of certain species might be the least important of their attributes. The complex exchange patterns of animals at Tandroy funerals, and the ways that their gifting and sacrifice define and reinforce social roles, identity and position, are key aspects of the social changes by which the powerful can become poor and the enslaved wealthy.

Keywords

cattleanimal bonesethnoarchaeologyformation processesTandroyMadagascar
Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 217 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000

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