Themes in Archaeology

Seminar Two:Plants, Animals and Food

Plants and Animals Top Trumps

• Each card shows a plant or animal, and a points ‘score’ in four categories

• These points reflect a ‘value’ for that plant or animal

• Starting player: looks at their card, and announces the subject and the category and score that rates the highest.

• Player to their left: responds by naming their card and score for that category. The player with the highest score takes the loser’s card.

• If the first player wins, he/she challenges the third player. If the second player has won, he/she asks the third player. Use the card that was won, not the original card.

• Play continues until one player has won all cards.• Discussion: How were these values chosen? How much do they reflect biases/assumptions of the creators?

Totemism, Animism and Shamanism

• Totemism: The belief that certain animals or objects hold a specific spiritual significance, and can protect or act in the interests of a group or individual. Culture modelled on nature.

• Animism: The belief that there is no divide between the physical and spiritual realms; that every person, animal, plant, object, and even concepts have individual spirits or souls. Nature modelled on culture.

• Shaman/Medicine man: an intermediary between spiritual and human world.

• These concepts have been used in analogies by anthropologists in study of contemporary ethnic groups, and their interpretations projected back onto the past.

• Tim Ingold, 2000. ‘Totemism, animism and the depiction of animals’, in The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge, 111-131.

Case study one: Star Carr• Mesolithic site (9000-8500 BC) in North Yorkshire. • Used by hunter-gatherers for a range of activities.• Excavated between 1949 and 1951 by Grahame Clark. Site

recently investigated by Barry Taylor and Chantal Conneller of UoM.

• Site is on the edge of a lake; waterlogged conditions have enabled the preservation of animal remains.

• How was this site used, and what can we tell about how people used animals at this site?

http://www.starcarr.com/

Case study two: Domuztepe

• Late Neolithic (6000-5200BC) site in SE Turkey.

• Name means ‘Pig Hill’ in Turkish

• Excavated between 1995 and 2006, and since 2008 by University of Manchester

• Key discovery: ‘death pit’ containing fragmentary remains of some 40 humans, along with cattle, sheep, goat, pig, and dog remains.

What did Roman fish sauce taste like?

Surströmming – Swedish fermented herring Nam pla: Thai fish sauce

British ‘fish sauce’…

• Alongside many other ingredients, contains fermented anchovies…