Beastly Questions

Reviews / Votes

A typically sideways, very personal, look at the study of animal remains from archaeological deposits, offering a new approach centred upon understanding the full, complex relations between people and the animals around them. Students will appreciate this as a source of information and ideas, academics will welcome a gust of fresh air through a dusty subject, and the general reader will enjoy a lively, often irreverent, book on a fascinating topic. -- Terry O'Connor, Professor of Archaeological Science, University of York, UK This volume provides an important and provocative contribution to the zooarchaeological literature. Naomi Sykes demonstrates that zooarchaeology can do much more than simply provide appendices to archaeological site reports. She shows that faunal remains can answer a range of interesting questions about human-animal relationships in the past. -- Pam J. Crabtree, Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York University, USA Naomi Sykes begins Beastly Questions thus, 'Zooarchaeology has begun to bore me.' That is not really true. What troubles her greatly is the sterility of a certain kind of zooearchaeology which identifies, measures, orders and quantifies animal remains but fails to interrogate them as traces of the co-constituted social and cultural relations between humans and other animals in the past. Beastly Questions is a feisty, imaginative, academically thorough and extremely readable exploration of the potentials and possibilities of a new social zooarchaeology. From mere bones Sykes fleshes out the animals and reconnects them to human worlds. Bored? Not at all! This is a powerful reanimation. -- Garry Marvin, Professor of Human-Animal Studies, University of Roehampton, UK Anybody who cares for animals will enjoy this book just as much as specialists involved in the study of the past. It will be a great companion volume for scholars and students in archaeology and history as well as those who would like to understand why we need animals around us not only for meat and milk, but also for company and as metaphors for life and living even in the most modernized urban society. The 770 scholarly works listed in the book's reference list lend weight to the author's educated arguments on these exciting questions. -- Laszlo Bartosiewicz, Professor of Archaeozoology, Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Eoetvoes Lorand University, Hungary