Re-Thinking Ecological Relationships in the British Early Mesolithic#
Nick Overton#
(University of Manchester) #
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, my research focuses on rethinking ‘human-animal’ relations in the Early Mesolithic, concentrating specifically on sites within Southern Britain. Previous narratives of these relationships have been predicated on the assumption that modern attitudes towards animals, which consider them as a homogenous and inanimate source of calories or raw materials, are suitable to be projected back onto Mesolithic humans. My research questions the validity of imposing this strict modernist division between humans and animals in the Mesolithic, in which human and nonhuman individuals existing in separate realms of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.
What is offered instead is an account of humans and nonhumans co-existing together in a single, shared environment. In such narratives, human understandings of different species and nonhuman individuals can be though of as evolving through mutual interactions in daily life. These interactions can be characterised through a rigorous exploration of the faunal remains recovered from sites. Different nonhuman individuals will have behaved differently depending on their species, age, sex, environment and the time of year. This information is readily accessible through zooarchaeological analysis and can be used to characterise the behaviour and appearance of specific individuals in an assemblage, those very individuals that humans in the past engaged with. Therefore, these characterisations can be used to outline specific interactions and to explore relationships and understandings that subsequently form and develop.
Through a detailed zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal remains recovered from five sites in Southern Britain (Thatcham, Greenham Dairy Farm and Faraday Road, all located in the Kennet Valley, and Three Ways Wharf and The Sanderson Site, located in the Colne Valley), this research aims to explore the specific relationships that were formed between humans and nonhuman animals at each site, through daily embodied interactions. Furthermore, analysis of species and skeletal element frequencies, spatial and contextual distributions, butchery, consumption and deposition practices will trace how these specific relationships and understandings impacted on humans’ actions upon nonhuman remains, how these relationships were continually negotiated and developed through bodily and sensuous experiences, and how these relationships were intimately bound to specific people, places and times.