Session: #39

Content:

Animals are essential to humans in providing food, traction, companionship, and secondary products such as dairy products, wool, hides and craft materials, as well as being significant indicators of status and identity. This session aims to demonstrate how multi-proxy approaches can be used to investigate different approaches to animal husbandry and/or the use of animal products.
The study of animal remains from archaeological contexts allows us to determine such factors as the species present in the ecosystem at the time, variances in livestock quantities, exploitation of wild species, as well as symbolic and socio-economic value to humans. Animal remains can also be utilised in scientific techniques to indicate dietary and mobility patterns that can provide comparative data for humans and can also inform on changes in husbandry methods and animal movements across landscapes and through time.
The session will bring together current research on human-animal interactions and provide an opportunity to gather a range of perspectives from various European countries and chronological periods. Papers are invited that utilise a multiproxy approach to answering zooarchaeological questions. This may include but is not limited to palaeoenvironmental, artefactual, isotopic, proteomic, and aDNA studies. It is hoped that these will demonstrate how zooarchaeology can shed light on the diversity of past human societies and the varying roles of animals within these.

Session: #39

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