Human-animal relationships : mutual becomings in Scandinavian and Sicilian households 900-500 BC.

Omtale

Human-animal relationships are examined in household contexts, the starting point being a belief that animals and humans together engage in mutual becomings. These are explored in depth by investigations of households in case studies in Scandinavia and on Sicily covering the period 900-500 BC, late Bronze Age Scandinavia and early Iron Age Sicily. Wider Bronze Age discourses are addressed from an animal perspective. These include a 'grand narrative' of cosmology, elites, and trade networks, and economy and subsistence studied in zooarchaeology. A need to reconfigure these with regard to social practices taking place in the household is accentuated. Such a reconfiguration takes into account a social field of practice between humans and living animals, and also animal materials and animal associated artefacts. The human-animal relationship is examined by studying faunal remains and animal associated artefacts through spatial distribution in houses and wider settlement areas. Spatial distribution is two-fold: a number of physical meeting points between humans and animals that have metaphorical import, and flow of animal materials and objects that connect the meeting points and simultaneously transforms animals and their materiality. On the basis of these investigations a middle ground is created between the cosmological and economical perspective of human-animal relations - which incorporates a social practice perspective that sees this relationship as a social contract.