But topography (like cartography) also is a ‘practice’, knowledge put to use, knowledge in the service of power that is deeply intertwined in the cultural, social and political webs of a society (Duncan and Ley 1993, 1, emphasis added).

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.

One of the more admirable things about this collection of papers is how the authors resist the almost overwhelming temptation to employ food-related, lip-smacking puns. I noted, for example, only one coy ‘food for thought’. This resistance neatly symbolizes, to my mind, a growing sophistication in the archaeology of food, a development seen everywhere in this particular smorgasbord of essays.