Animals and Society in Bronze Age Europe

Project Information

ANSOC

Grant agreement ID: 101055195

DOI

10.3030/101055195

EC signature date 1 September 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 499 998,50

EU contribution

€ 2 499 998,50

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ANSOC (Animals and Society in Bronze Age Europe)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project explores 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 simply as objects of economic exploitation. Drawing on work in animal studies that highlights how living with animals involves intimate interaction and interdependency, it will investigate animals as social agents, the intertwining of human and animal identities, and how the social and cultural significance of animals affected how they were farmed, managed and consumed.

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. It will combine cutting-edge scientific analysis with a novel and transformative theoretical framework that calls into question the imposition of the disembedded instrumental rationality of the modern world onto the past. The primary focus will be on the main domesticates – cattle and sheep. Three study areas, which provide evidence for different ways of living with animals, have been selected: southern Britain; the Low Countries and southern Scandinavia; and southern Poland.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over months 1-30 of the project, we have identified case study sites in England, the Netherlands and Poland for high-resolution scientific analysis. Focusing primarily on cattle and sheep, we have collected samples of animal bones and teeth, and we have carried out strontium, sulphur, oxygen, nitrogen and calcium isotope analysis on this material to illuminate animal diets and weaning; birthing seasonality; and patterns of seasonal and lifecourse mobility. Ancient DNA analysis has been conducted to examine population dynamics; selection for specific morphological and behavioural traits; relatedness; wild introgression (inter-breeding between wild and domestic populations); and disease. We have set the results of this work in context by collating the extensive existing zooarchaeological datasets from these regions to explore demography, mortality profiles and sex distribution of different species (including other domesticates and wild species).

In addition to scientific analysis of the animal remains, we are also working with a wide variety of other datasets. Organic residue analysis of ceramics has been carried out to explore variability in the consumption of animal products. Microwear and residue analysis on bone tools is helping us to understand the manufacture, use and deposition of artefacts made from animal materials, and the social and cultural values ascribed to them. Data on depositional practices has been collected to address, for example, similarities and differences in the treatment of human and animal bodies, and how animals were incorporated into cultural taxonomies. We have examined ‘animal architectures’ in the Bronze Age landscape, exploring how an animal lens can provide novel insights into the fieldsystems that appear at this time, allowing us to identify features relating to animal management such as byres, pens, sorting gates, waterholes and droveways. We have examined different genres of animal iconography, including rock art and zoomorphic figurines to explore how animal agency and behaviour were taken into account.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our first scientific analyses are yielding important results demonstrating, for example, changes in cattle birthing seasonality, regional variation in levels of wild introgression (inter-breeding of domesticated cattle with wild aurochs), and the appearance of new populations of sheep - factors which have significant implications in terms of changing forms of animal management. Methodological innovations have also been made, for example in the combination of calcium and nitrogen isotope analysis to understand age-at-weaning. We have explored how everyday intimate interactions between people and animals (based on zooarchaeological and biomolecular evidence for milking and traction, for example) requires us to reconsider the character and significance of human-animal interdependnecy and co-operation. We have developed novel ways of exploring spatial patterns of human-animal encounter, interaction and sociality, allowing us to consider how animals were co-creators of the Bronze Age landscape. We have explored evidence for sensitivity to animal agency and animal ethology in Bronze Age iconography, demonstrating that animals are not simply depicted for their value as food, wealth or symbols of human power.

In order to interpret our data, and drawing on animal studies and posthumanist perspectives, we have developed a novel theoretical approach that positions animals not as passive objects but as active subjects. This has allowed us to foreground animals as key social actors. Our research is demonstrating how animal needs and behaviours shaped human labour, relationships and landscapes, and how collaboration and negotiation between people and animals was a central component of Bronze Age sociality. These insights have significant implications, for they call into question evolutionist models of the period in which the objectification of animals is thought to have underpinned economic intensification; as such, the project is also contributing to broader discussions in archaeology and beyond on non-human agency and on different ways of living with animals in a time of climate and biodiversity crisis today.

Sampling cattle bone from the Middle Bronze Age settlement at Clay Farm in Cambridgeshire