Significant Others: Understanding Animal Lives in the Archaeological Record

Zooarchaeological analyses of animal remains recovered from archaeological sites have been, and continue to be, largely focused on reconstructing the circumstances under which animals came to die and become incorporated into the archaeological record. In this paper, I argue that if our goal in zooarchaeological research is to better understand human-animal and human-environment interactions, we must shift our focus away from animal deaths and towards animal lives. This is especially true within the context of animal husbandry, where the restricted spatial and extended temporal conditions under which humans and animals interact facilitates a high degree of mutual familiarity. I detail some of the methodological techniques that would allow for an examination of lived, interspecies entanglements in the archaeological record, with a focus on stable isotope analysis of archaeofaunal material.