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  4. Fields of Care: Placing Animal-Human Communities in the early Neolithic of the Sofia Basin, Bulgaria

Fields of Care: Placing Animal-Human Communities in the early Neolithic of the Sofia Basin, Bulgaria

File(s)
Gorczyk_cornellgrad_0058F_12341.pdf (20.25 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/16ww-tj48
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/103422
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Cornell Theses and Dissertations
Author
Gorczyk, John
Abstract

This dissertation sits at the confluence of social zooarchaeology and multispecies studies. It is a reexamination of Neolithic society that attempts to move past the technocratic and anthropocentric narratives that have come to dominate Neolithic research, by affording animals subjective agency in one of the most important mechanisms of social reproduction—place making. Neolithic places, which I argue emerge through the interaction between humans, animals, and the environment, are the constituent elements in a social landscape that changed dynamically as Neolithic communities spread throughout southeastern Europe. This process, typically referred to as neolithization, has recently been cast in purely adaptive terms, with animal communities regarded as tools to cope with novel environmental niches. This dissertation argues that neolithization is driven at least in part by the need and or desires of both humans and animals to respond to one another’s unique physiologies and intentionalities. Thus, it does not deny the critical role played by environment in the spread of a farming lifestyle throughout Europe, but rather considers it one variable in a complex web of interorganismal entanglements that made the Neolithic a highly contingent phenomenon. To accomplish this goal, this dissertation draws upon bodies of thought in anthropology, geography, and landscape archaeology to lay out the datasets relevant to an understanding of mutually produced places. Separated into two broad groupings that I label “spatial” and “social”, these data include the faunal remains themselves and their derived taxonomic, element, and demographic profiles as well as isotopic data from bone collagen and dental enamel from domestic herbivores. Taken together, these data allow for an investigation of animal places—in the physical sense of their locations in the landscape at various times of the year—and their places in the social and symbolic order of the Neolithic. As a result of the analysis provided in this dissertation, several things can be said about animal places during the Neolithic in the Sofia Basin. The frequency, intensity, timing, and location of human encounters with different species, both domestic and wild, are laid out using these data and the implications for human-animal interaction are explored.

Description
434 pages
Date Issued
2020-12
Committee Chair
Russell, Nerissa
Committee Member
Smith, Adam Thomas
Manning, Sturt
Degree Discipline
Anthropology
Degree Name
Ph. D., Anthropology
Degree Level
Doctor of Philosophy
Type
dissertation or thesis
Link(s) to Catalog Record
https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/13312149

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