Themes in Old World Zooarchaeology: From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic

This new collection of papers from leading experts provides an overview of cutting-edge research in Old World zooarchaeology. The research presented here spans various areas across Europe, Western Asia and North Africa – from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Several chapters focus on Iberia, but the eastern Mediterranean and Britain are also featured.

Thematically, the book covers many of the research areas where zooarchaeology can provide a significant contribution. These include animal domestication, bone modifications, fishing, fowling, economic and social status, as well as adaptation and improvement. The investigation of these topics is carried out using a diversity of approaches, thus making the book also a useful compendium of traditional as well as more recently developed methodological applications. All contributions aim to present zooarchaeology as a discipline that studies animals to understand people, and their richly diversified past histories. This will be a valuable source of information not just for specialists, but also for general archaeologists and, potentially, also historians, palaeontologists and geographers, who have an interest for the research themes discussed in the book.

The book is dedicated to Simon Davis, who has been a genuine pioneer in the development of modern zooarchaeology. It presents hugely stimulating case studies from the core areas where Davis has worked in the course of his career.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
1. From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: Simon Davis’ exceptional contribution to the world of zooarchaeology (Umberto Albarella)

METHODS AND THEORY IN THE ZOOARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OLD WORLD
2. Taphonomy of carnivores: Understanding archaeological small prey accumulations (Luis Lloveras)
3. Fish Bone studies in Iberia: An overview of 40 years of research (Arturo Morales Muñiz, Laura Llorente Rodríguez & Eufrasia Roselló Izquierdo
4. On the use of micromammals for paleoenvironmental reconstruction: Qesem Cave as a case study (Orr Comay & Tamar Dayan)
5. Traditional sheep and goat husbandry in Cyprus: the effects of scale and its identification in archaeological assemblages (Angelos Hadjikoumis)

EARLY PREHISTORY
6. Among hyenas: Nery Delgado, Albert Gaudry, Edouard Harlé and the hyenas of Furninha cave (Portugal) (João Luís Cardoso)
7. Sheepish bones, sheepish dates, sheepish logic and the neolithization of Iberia (João Zilhão)

LATE PREHISTORY
8. Astragali and their archaeological contexts in the Iberian Peninsula. Significance, meanings and historical implications (Ana Margarida Arruda)
9. Origins of metallurgy in the southern Levant: microscopic examination of butchering marks on animal bones at Tell Yarmuth, Israel (Haskel Greenfield, Annie Brown & Pierre de Miroschedji)
10. The food chain at the palace of King Amenhotep III at Malqata (Egypt) (Salima Ikram)
11. Caprine husbandry at the Iron Age settlement of A Lanzada (Pontevedra, Spain) (Marta Moreno-García)

HISTORIC TIMES
12. Cattle from the East, cattle from the West: diversity of cattle morphotypes in the Iberian Peninsula during late prehistoric and Roman times (Ariadna Nieto-Espinet, Angela Trentacoste, Sílvia Guimarães & Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas)
13. Animal remains from 17th century Carnide, Lisbon, Portugal (Cleia Detry, Ana Beatriz Santos, Tânia Casimiro, Ana Caessa & Nuno Mota)
14. The contribution of Islamic culture to the medieval faunistic redefinition of the Iberian Peninsula (Marco Masseti)
15. Hovering over hawking in Early Medieval Iberia (Laura Llorente Rodríguez, Arturo Morales Muñiz, Leif Jonsson & Evelyne Browaeys)
16. Launceston Castle and Cornish zooarchaeology 25 years on (Polydora Baker)
17. Fodder in the city: rye for animals in the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon (João Tereso & Lídia Fernandes)