Researchers recognize that food provisioning freed some people from subsistence activities so that they could engage in other pursuits or be given other duties. To provide food animals, did political entities exert control over animal resources and supply them directly, or did independent specialists rear food animals for societal needs? In cultures that lacked domesticated animals, how was hunting practiced and controlled to provide meat? With a focus on food animals, this edited volume by Levent Atici and Benjamin S. Arbuckle addresses food provisioning using information from zooarchaeology, isotopes, ceramic iconography, and historical sources to identify distinct scenarios of animal production, distribution, display, and consumption in the past. As Atici and Arbuckle note in their well-crafted introduction, contributing authors successfully demonstrate the diversity of strategies people used to obtain food animals, as well as the recurring role of status in dictating access to specific animals. These studies also show that, even though elites often implemented and oversaw the economics of provisioning systems, they continued to engage with live animals, animal food, and animal products for either display or performative rituals. The eight case studies presenting research from Southwest Asia, China, Europe, Africa, North America, and Mesoamerica provide novel insights regarding animals and food.
In Chapter 2, Arbuckle addresses the poorly studied topic of wild animal provisioning at the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3000–1750 BC) site of Acemhöyük, Turkey. Combining zooarchaeology and iconography, Arbuckle shows that elites managed a complex system to hunt and capture wild animals, including deer, aurochs, foxes, and bears. Some wild animals complemented the diet; however, iconography also depicts several species, particularly carnivores, as live animals in living menageries. Arbuckle creatively argues that possessing and displaying wild animals reified social position and power.
Jacqueline S. Meier, Gypsy C. Price, and Kim S. Shelton in Chapter 3 examine evidence for meat provisioning at the Late Helladic (1400–1075 BC) Mycenaean Petsas House in Greece. Using taxonomic composition, age at death, and light stable isotopes, the coauthors suggest that craft producers obtained pigs and pork directly from local, independent specialists who apparently were able to circumvent government regulation. Pork was complemented by directly provisioned meat from caprines, especially sheep. The authors interpret this mixed provisioning strategy as one designed for reducing food risk.
Fiona Beglane in Chapter 4 combines zooarchaeology and documentary sources to examine animal rearing and meat and dairy production at three medieval sites in Ireland (AD 400–1600). Faunal remains from a rural farm, a manorial estate, and an abbey show that cattle rearing, dairying, and meat consumption were dependent on status, religious proscriptions, and economics. Beglane effectively uses cattle demographics along with a reevaluation of documentary sources to counter previous interpretations that people consumed mostly pork in medieval Ireland.
In Chapter 5, Roderick Campbell addresses how people living in the massive Great Settlement Shang, dating to the Anyang period (1250–1050 BC) in China, acquired animals for rituals, meat, and the manufacture of their unique bone products. Campbell uses faunal remains and craft products from the outlying village of Guandimiao to argue that a network of interdependent lineages operated with markets and trade specialists to link rural outposts to the urban core. Campbell's critical analysis highlights the role of markets and decentralized provisioning chains for redistribution.
In Chapter 6, Helina S. Woldekiros examines the roles of animals in the political economy of the Aksum kingdom in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea (50 BC–AD 800). Woldekiros uses faunal remains, historical texts, and the ethnoarchaeology of modern caravans to propose that the Aksumite state relied on multiple and varied methods of food provisioning, including markets, indirect provisioning, direct provisioning by local specialists, and specialized provisioning directed by the state. This excellent analysis shows how a state political economy can foster multiple forms of animal production and provide for the nonfood-producing elites in urban centers.
Patricia Martínez-Lira, Marcus Winter, Terry O'Conner, and Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales in Chapter 7 explore animal use at the Zapotec site of Monte Albán, Mexico (500 BC–AD 850). These researchers found that Monte Albán was provisioned with deer through a complex system, presumably by hunting specialists. Elite contexts and a public space contained more diverse taxa than did non-elite contexts, but many other site contexts show little intrasite variability in meat consumption. As the authors note, the role of government and the social mechanisms related to animal procurement and distribution are topics for future study.
In Chapter 8, Sarah E. Newman combines ceramic imagery, ethnohistory, and faunal remains to interpret deer hunting through time, particularly during the Classic Maya period in Mesoamerica (AD 250–800). Newman uses zooarchaeological data from El Zotz, Guatemala—along with imagery of hunting scenes, human-deer interactions, and anthropomorphic deer depicted on Maya polychrome vessels—to skillfully show that when El Zotz was a royal dynastic kingdom, deer provisioning was not focused on managing meat scarcity; instead, it was a symbolically charged activity related to courtly prescriptions of sexualized royal performative behavior.
Tanya M. Peres in Chapter 9 examines garden hunting and meat redistribution at two Mississippian sites in Tennessee, dating to the early second millennium AD. Comparisons of faunal composition along with diversity and equitability values from the rural farmstead site of Brandywine Pointe to those from the village and mound site of Rutherford-Lizer show that, in contrast to rural farmers, the village inhabitants hunted primarily in “disturbed” garden habitats to acquire white-tailed deer, wild turkey, box turtles, and more exotic taxa. Both Peres and Newman highlight the significant roles of garden hunting in societies without domesticated mammals.
As shown in these case studies, there is much opportunity for future research to elucidate the multiple social and economic processes, behaviors, and cognitive meanings that complex societies used to feed themselves. This book will be of interest to anyone working on topics related to animal foods, animal economies, or provisioning.
