Birds, animals and creatures—‘fantastic beasts’ and where to find them in the past
The role of animals in past societies is a long-standing topic in archaeological scholarship. Zooarchaeology has grown to be an independent research field and animal representations are studied extensively in archaeology as well as in art history. In the past 20 years, some research has taken an ‘animal turn’, whereby the animals are considered in their own right, not only perceived as part of the human story as food, transport or a category within the domestication process. Now, more and more research is investigating the relationship between humans and animals. Projects aim to go beyond the identification of species in bones and images with the goals of outlining the impact that animals had on human societies and challenging the anthropocentric view of history. The animals are now understood as agents rather than objects, and personal connections between humans and animals are explored. For instance, two recent book reviews in Antiquity describe this: ‘Animal encounters in the Near East’ (Collins Reference Collins2023); and, in this issue, the relationship between horse and human (Klontza-Jaklova Reference Klontza-Jaklova2025). Many recent projects can also be found, for instance the ongoing Dublin-based ERC project ‘Animals and Society in the Bronze Age’ (https://ansoc.net/).
The four books in this New Book Chronicle explore the relationships between humans and animals expressed in the representations and symbolism of animals. The first book Minoan zoomorphic culture: between bodies and things looks at examples of animals and fabricated creatures on different media from material known from Bronze Age Crete. Birds in Roman life and myth combines work by Roman writers with the archaeological material and delivers a vivid account of how Romans perceived and interacted with birds. Animals and animated objects in the Early Middle Ages is a compilation of works that centre on animal remains in burials and animal representations. The combined essays in Birds and beasts of ancient Mesoamerica: animal symbolism in the Postclassic period illuminate the backgrounds to many animal symbols through textual evidence and detailed studies of imagery.
The research presented looks, in most cases, at well-known material but illuminates it from new angles. Three of the volumes draw additionally on textual sources, showing how they help to explain some perspectives but not everything. The four books all deliver intrinsic studies of the details and apply a multidisciplinary research approach, which is needed to identify the often subtle and hidden meanings behind the images. Animal representations were widely used to describe or symbolise social, political or religious entities. Most animalistic symbols would have been easily understood by the contemporaneous living people but seem quite removed from our modern world view.
Yet, the four books show that across time and space people did not think so very differently—the animals and creatures of the various regions may vary, but they all have in common a deep intertwined relationship of humans and animals. The animals and their behaviour were familiar to people and were utilised as symbols whose meanings are often linked to character traces of the animals. Many past cultures also enjoyed a seemingly playful combination of animals into new creations: depictions of gods or mystical monsters and legendary creatures, all of which hold deeper meanings.
Some of these fantastic beasts survive into our time and have gained almost ‘real animal’ status, such as the unicorn, Pegasus, a phoenix or dragon. The telling of stories never stopped and these well-known beings were combined with new beasts, for example J.K. Rowling's magical world is filled with grindilows, thestrals, nifflers, bowtruckles and so on. A good story with fantastic beasts can have great impact and is well worth telling and, as the studies below show, can endure across the ages, sometimes though only as images on small artefacts.
In this book, Emily Anderson gives a new perspective on how to study and see the images and objects of living animals and creatures fabricated from parts of known animals in the Minoan world, predominantly during the late third millennium to mid-second millennium BC (Prepalatial to Neopalatial Periods). The Cretan art style at this time was incredibly naturalistic and some famous examples, such as the toreador fresco (bull and leaper) from Knossos, remain visually striking to this day.
The Introduction briefly weaves together the different approaches with which both animals and fantastic creatures have been studied in the past as well as different theoretical approaches. It seeks to highlight a new way of combining these methods and looking at the material from a fresh angle. Anderson investigates these ‘animalian things’ as real embodiments of actual or imagined animals and integrates them into their sociocultural context to explore fully their potential meaning for the Bronze Age people and their engagement with the objects. She seeks to go beyond the representational interpretation to reveal the human experience that the objects may have evoked and enacted.
Five case studies make up the backbone of the study and show examples of the enormous amount of material that is decorated or embodied with animalistic attributes. The case studies—including objects such as clay vessels, seals, polychrome wall paintings, boar-tusk-helmets, oxhide shields, ikrion (the ship's cabin or protected area on the ship made from oxhide)—were chosen to cover different species as well as diverse media, across the time span of the Early to Late Bronze Age, with the various contexts also being considered.
In Chapter 2, body-form vessels are the first group of objects to be introduced. Contrary to their usual interpretation as anthropomorphic forms, the author makes a case for identifying them rather as zoomorphic forms or mixed human and animal forms, though not of specific animals. Together with their function as containers for liquids and the contexts in tombs and settlements, a new integrated interpretation is put forward in which the vessels or ‘clay-bodies’ could have been perceived in the past as engaging agents themselves. The further development of body-shaped vessels is described as resulting in the change in vessel form towards the preferred rhytas (drinking vessels) in the shape of bovine heads during the Neopalatial Period. To understand this change in preference of the bovine theme the relationship between cattle and people during the Bronze Age is reflected upon, combining the social and economic status of, and interaction with, cattle.
The next case study is about very small lions beautifully engraved on seals. Although not native to Crete, lion images were frequently used on seals throughout the Bronze Age. According to the author, the lion can be seen as a human-like form (through comparison with human representations on seals) and is also evidence for foreign contacts. The lion becomes a more common image on seals across the Eastern Mediterranean and, from Protopalatial times, the animal appears in other media such as on weapons or wall paintings. Furthermore, when considering the oral culture, lions become more prominent in heroic tales.
In Chapter 4, fully imagined and hybrid creatures are studied, starting with the griffin. It is argued that the griffin for the Cretans was most likely an exotic ‘real’ but unknown animal. More creatures on different objects can be identified as ‘griffin-like’, without having the same mix of attributes. Tracing these elements on artwork reveals that often nature helped with the creation of the fantastic beasts, and the craftspeople, storytellers and imaginative minds of listeners all lent elements of known animals, such as the bearded vulture, to fabricate new ones.
Chapter 5 discusses the originals and images of the so-called three Aegean animalian entities, the boar-tusk helmet, oxhide shield and ikrion, as extreme composite objects in their meanings. The animal material from which they are made gives further meaning to these protective objects and embodies them with an animal character. The following chapter looks at the polychrome wall paintings of these three entities and other objects, including griffins, and explores further themes, such as the use of blue to illustrate Simians and young humans alike. The ‘Concluding thoughts’ chapter tries to summarise the many different strands of investigation together.
The writing style is often convoluted and meanders back and forth between arguments and sometimes, much like the fabricated creatures, is hard to decipher. Together with a heavy emphasis on diverse archaeological theories, it is hard to follow the authors’ actual arguments. The book appears to be aimed at a wider audience but is likely only to be accessible for specialised readers.
Notwithstanding, the volume brings together a huge amount of detailed information on these many beautiful objects and images. Anderson combines various perspectives to deliver new ideas on how one can study ‘animalian things’ in order to understand how the Minoans interacted, shaped and populated their own lives with animals and fantastic creatures alike. The discussed objects are remnants and reminders of the colourful, often mystical stories that were an integral part of Minoan culture.
Ashleigh Green's book Birds in Roman life and myth, does exactly what it says in the title. Written in a fluent and easily accessible style, the relationship between Romans and birds is discussed in detail, leaning heavily on the textual evidence but also incorporating representations of birds as well as faunal remains, and combining them with modern ornithological knowledge. This is the first time this multidisciplinary approach has been applied exclusively to the Roman period, with a focus here on the Late Republic and Early Empire (c. 100 BC to AD 100) mainly drawing on evidence from Rome and the Italian Peninsula. Green puts the central focus on the birds, and judges them not solely as accessories of famous auspices rituals.
A short Introduction highlights the research history of birds in antiquity and beyond and explains the pitfalls of each discipline, such as the rare survival or retrieval of bird bones during archaeological excavations or the subjective artistic and symbolic interpretations of artwork. The main part is divided into five chapters, and concentrates on four topics: the first two deal with the birds used in augury (rituals for omen reading), and the rise of the ‘sacred chicken’ as the main auspicious bird; the third chapter studies birds in agricultural terms; the fourth looks at wildfowling and bird-catching; and the fifth collects evidence for birds used for pleasure, such as pets or songbirds.
The first chapter begins by placing birds near to the gods and as their messengers, and it presents many examples. Leading to the Roman auspices, auspicium, which literally means watching birds. Auspices were closely connected to the centre of power and decision making, as the birds were believed to convey the gods’ messages, and hence influenced the people in power because they were seen to be fulfilling the will of the gods. These auspices were strictly organised, and a whole apparatus of people and processes were involved. The birds were observed from a temple, flying or singing in a certain part of the sky at a specific time of the day (place of the sun) and from Imperial time the feeding of chickens was observed. These observations were interpreted according to set rules and used to reveal omens. Private auspices were also accessible for people in their everyday lives. The position of the augurs, those who interpreted these omina, was an important one and came with much influence. Many examples of auspices as well as images and results from temple excavations vividly fill the narrative. The augural birds are detailed individually and placed in the Roman world together with their meanings in auspices. These birds were vultures, eagles, raven, crows, owls and woodpeckers.
The second chapter moves to Imperial times, where the domestic chicken took over from wild birds as the main augural bird and was used especially in military decisions. Green investigates why they chose the chicken, of all birds, to help understand this specific auspicium better. The origin, rise and rather extensive use of chicken augury under Augustus (ruled from 27 BC to AD 14) is discussed. The domesticated chicken may have gained preference as it was easier to rely on—or even to be manipulated—as being tame and living on the premises, rather than waiting for signs of wild birds, especially when a battle was to be decided.
Chapter 3 on the farming of birds, details the keeping of chickens, geese, ducks, pigeons, peafowl, pheasants and guineafowl, and looks into the meaning of farmed birds as a social indicator. Richer people could afford more and fatter birds and poorer people fewer and smaller birds, while exotic birds such as pheasants showed another level of luxury. An overview of precuring wild birds, through hunting and catching, is given in Chapter 4, with many diverse strategies and purposes, such as: the catching of birds as a resource when food was sparse; hunting them for sport; or catching special migrations of birds, feeding them up and selling them for higher prices in the ‘off’ season.
The final chapter combines sources to illuminate the relationship between birds and humans, where birds were kept for pleasure and as pets. Birds, especially exotic birds, and beautiful singing and talking birds were kept despite the great costs, or perhaps because of these costs to show off prosperity. The lower social ranks also kept birds as pets. Women and girls seem to have had an affectionate bond with their feathered friends, one example is Lesbia's famous passer (sparrow or thrush) immortalised by Catullus’ poem. The chapter ‘Concluding thoughts’ brings the main points of observation together.
The book is enriched with many original text quotes and delivers a vibrant and colourful narrative, filled with information. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can fully recommend it as it is engagingly written and brings to life the birds and how the Romans encountered and enacted with them. The different angles of literature, archaeology and ornithology are brought into context with each other and deliver new perspectives on the relationships between Romans and birds from a ‘bird's eye perspective’, such as on divine communications, social status and personal experiences. Together, these give a deeper understanding of Roman life.
This book brings together research on the archaeological evidence for the presence of animals in the living world of the Early Middle Ages (the focus is from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries). Animals, animal parts, objects used on/with animals and animal representations on diverse material and objects are all part of the discussion. This reflects the importance animals had and, together with the textual sources, shows them as active actors and part of a shared world, rather than separate from humans and only as commodities for food, clothing or transport. Animals were also part of the human world as companions, protectors or as feared enemies and integrated in the belief system.
The first chapter is an introduction to the topic that has been debated largely in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon medieval scholarship but not much beyond. It explains the wish to bring further regions of Central and Eastern Europe into the discussion, which is reflected in the geographic scope of the book. The following eight chapters are all case studies based on animal remains or animal related objects, evaluating different levels of animal-human relationships, mainly with horses, but also birds and bears. The book is well illustrated throughout and especially notable are the vivid reconstructions, such as of the grave assemblages.
The first case study is delivered by Sebastian Beermann exploring and describing the so-called bearskin graves, which contain remnants of bear fur or more often only the claws and finger bones (phalanges). The chapter gives an overview of the several hundred of these graves from across Northern Europe from the late Iron Age through the first millennium AD. There is no overarching single explanation across time that can be determined, apart from that the bear pelt was used simply as a valuable cover of the body, maybe sometimes as well for ritual protective reasons and/or for marking an esteemed warrior. Sarah Croix also investigates the role of animals in burials, focusing on the cemetery of Viking Age Ribe (Denmark). She finds nuances in the different settings of animals in graves and demonstrates that some may have had a different meaning, other than just grave goods for prestige or food. In some cases, birds, and especially ducks and waterfowls, were meant to help transport the dead from one sphere to the next. The research into waterfowls and their role in Viking Age funerary practices is taken up by Klaudia Karpińska. This thorough approach looks through legacy collections and new finds to reveal the special role of certain waterfowl. Only greylag/domestic geese, ducks and swans were included in the Viking ritual sphere—often seen in connection with liminal spaces and having roles in magic beliefs—though only swans are known from texts in connection with the otherworld; however, curiously, these have not (yet) been found in graves.
The next chapter concentrates on the horse-human relationship in Iceland and Scandinavia and is explored by Harriet Evans Tang and Keith Ruiter through the rich textual and archaeological evidence. A close and collaborative relationship is revealed between both species, that is even blurred in some cases to a cross-species being, for example the human that rides a horse becomes more than a human, as does the horse with its rider, both having learned from each other. The horse's role is more than an object and should be studied from the perspective of agency. The horse features prominently in Matthias Topak's chapter, which looks at horses and horse equipment in burials (approximately 60 graves) on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. After discussing the diverse reasons for the inclusion of horses in the graves, Topak concludes that in this case the ritual killing of the horses can be seen as an important cultic rite as well as a social unifier for the community of the deceased.
The next two chapters continue to investigate horses but towards the north-east German and Polish shores of the Baltic in Pomerania, both at the time of the Early Piast State (tenth to twelfth centuries). Jerzy Sikora combines the evidence from textual sources about horses in burials and finds that despite the important role horses had they are rarely found alongside buried humans. Horse gear and further grave goods were added to the graves more often from Christian times onwards, but more likely used to identify the buried individual as part of a certain group rather than as items for the afterlife. The chapter by the editors, Leszek Gardeła and Kamil Kajkowski, takes a closer look at certain horse equipment: beautifully decorated bridles and associated pieces of the head gear. This is the first ever compilation of the bridles of the Western Slavs and it concludes that these rare objects were most likely owned by an elite warrior group, possibly surrounding the first Piast leader Mieszko I.
The final chapter takes us to Iron Age Estonia, where Tõnno Jonuks and Tuuli Kurisoo investigate a group of 21 small quadruped figurines and their meanings. Some aspects of the figurines suggest they are horses or dogs, and the authors argue for a general interpretation of aggression and dominance.
The case studies are all of specific assemblages but are well researched and presented. Together they offer new ideas on how to study and interpret animals and animal-linked objects and how to connect the diverse materials across regions. This volume will find an interested readership beyond the Medieval specialists and is for anyone who likes to consider a deeper understanding of how past people interacted and coexisted with other animals.
This volume is a compilation of essays on animal symbolism in postclassical Mesoamerica (c. AD 800–1521), with 13 contributions by 16 scholars mainly from the USA and Mexico. The work is dedicated to Cecilia Klein, Emeritus Professor and specialist in Pre-Columbian art history at University of Los Angeles, who also authored a chapter and receives a reflection on her work on animal symbolism by Elizabeth Boone with an extended bibliography in Chapter 2.
The Introduction by the editors Susan Milbrath and Elizabeth Baquedano guides the reader into the topic, through past works that inspired this volume leading to a brief history of research into Mesoamerican animal imagery. Some scholarship combined faunal remains with animal behaviour studies, and art history and natural history often seem intertwined. The historical background is outlined and sets the stage for the following chapters. The realistic animal representations— such as frogs, serpents, jaguars, wolves, pumas, eagles and quails—are predominant, but mythical hybrid creatures, composed from diverse animals, sometimes including humans, are also discussed. An overview of the available resources is provided, including the dominant textual sources of the Colonial writers and iconographic evidence in painted manuscripts, mural paintings, sculptures as well as animal remains unearthed in excavations but also animalistic character traits that can be found in the use and in expressions in the Nahuatl-language. The research focus of the chapters is split into two areas with rich and diverse animal iconography: the Aztecs and Toltecs in the highlands of central Mexico; and the Mayas in the Yucatan region, where finds from the archaeological site of Chichen Itza are discussed in several contributions.
The first example of that site is in Chapter 3 in which Klein investigates the so-called Venus platform and a central composite figure consisting of bird, snake and crocodile parts, researching each detail to find its origin and possible meaning for the Maya community. At the same site, Cynthia Kristan-Graham tries to recapture the today lost animal imagery around, and connected with, the Sacred Cenote, a sinkhole, where animals were carved in rock, but in the sixteenth century most of them were deposited in the water (and retrieved in the 1960s). Frogs and toads are carved into the rock at the rim of the waterhole, and carvings of jaguars and feathered snakes (today dispersed in museums), and animals on pottery in a nearby temple give a wide array of the animal world, representing ideas of fertility, rain, night-time and rulership. Baquedano expands on the symbolism of frogs and toads but this time in the Aztec world and combines iconography and rare remains in the archaeological record. She traces the images of frogs and toads far back to Olmec times and connects them with the rainy season and certain deities.
Realistic predator images such as wolves, eagles and pumas are the topic of Keith Jordan's contributions. The studied sculptures are from Tula, the Toltec capital, where they were used in public spaces. Jordan traces the ideas for these sculptures back to Classic Period ones from Teotihuacan murals in private settings. He argues that the later ones from Tula represent not only animals but stand for ancestral (stemming from Teotihuacan) families. The quail and its important place within the mythical world of the ancient Nahua is at the centre of Elena Mazzetto's contribution. It was an integral part of many rituals and was often sacrificed. The quail held a complex symbolism, that is not yet fully understood. The author links the spotted feathers on the bird's chest to the stars in the night sky, and this possibly explains the link to nocturnal rituals and images.
Leonardo López Luján, Alejandra Molina and Israel Elizalde Mendez concentrate mainly on the analyses and interpretation of the context of animal bones from the Templo Mayor Project. Excavations of the Aztec Great Temple in Tenochtitlan (under today's Mexico City) ran for over four decades, and more than 200 offerings were discovered, of human remains but also a vast number of animals, plants and other objects, dating to the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. More than 500 faunal species were discovered, most of them sacrificed in rituals and buried under temples and plaza floors. Thirty-two of them, all predators—golden eagles, peregrine falcons, hawks, wolves, pumas and jaguars— were found adorned with decorative ornaments and insignias such as belts, necklaces, etc., which leads to interpretations of them being dressed as warriors.
Further topics investigate the symbolic meanings of the scorpion through sources from after the Spanish conquest (Gillespie); of certain serpent sculptures in the city of Tenochtitlan and further snake images in terms of gender, political or godly representations (Umberger & Aguilera); of the animals illustrated in Calendar Almanacs and their links to postclassical imagery (Milbrath); of the connections between opossum representations from Yucatan and the ‘unlucky’ (as perceived by the Mayans) days before New Year (Paxton); of different animals and their relationship to Maya creator deities (Vail & Christenson).
Milbrath delivers a concluding chapter and teases out the main strands of animal symbolism from the diverse research projects and case studies and highlights the close connection of Aztec, Toltec and Maya people with the world of animals. The contributions in this volume deliver a fascinating menagerie of Mesoamerican animals and beasts. Though most of the cases studies are aimed at a specialised audience, as they are rather specific, they all offer new perspectives into researching animal symbolism, all following Klein's lead and studying the details with a keen eye. This reveals the multiple ways in which animals were part of human culture—for example, the jaguar as a symbol of strength, rulership and warriors, toads for the rain season and gods having their animal alter egos. The authors deliver a great introduction to Mesoamerican animal symbolism and revive this mystical world.
This list includes all books received between 1 September 2024 and 31 October 2024. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle, however, have not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book here does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.
