Live Stock and Dead Things

"In Live Stock and Dead Things, Hannah Chazin combines zooarchaeology and anthropology to challenge familiar narratives about the role of non-human animals in the rise of modern societies. Conventional views of this process tend to see a mostly linear development from hunter-gatherer societies to horticultural and pastoral ones to large-scale agricultural ones and then industrial ones. Along the way, traditional accounts argue, the custom of inheriting land, livestock, and other sources of value introduced social inequality and stratification. Against this, Chazin raises a provocative question: What if pastoral domestication wasn't just about instrumentalizing non-human animals after all? Chazin argues that these conventional narratives are inherited from conjectural histories and are based on misinterpretations of archaeological data. In her view, the category of "domestication" flattens the more complex dimensions of humans' relationship to herd animals. In the book's first half, Chazin offers a new understanding of the political possibilities of pastoralism, one that recognizes the powerful role herd animals have played in shaping human notions of power and authority. In the second half, she takes readers into her archaeological fieldwork in the South Caucuses, which sheds further light into herd animals' transformative effect on the economy, social life, and ritual. Appealing to anthropologists and archaeologists alike, this daring book offers a reconceptualization of human-animal relationships and their political significance"--