It is disconcerting to read a book that starts with a declaration of how bored the author is with her discipline. But this is the rather unconventional introduction to what becomes a powerful argument as to how much more valuable zooarchaeology could be if its proponents did more to interpret the datasets they produce. Zooarchaeologists are in a position to shed much more light on human–animal interactions, and these, Sykes argues, are a key source of information for understanding human societies and cultural ideology.
Sykes weaves common themes through her work: how limited the modern western viewpoint can be when it comes to thinking about human/animal relationships, how such relationships are often interpreted purely in economic terms, and the emphasis that has hitherto been placed on the role of dead animals (rather than on the significance that living ones might have had). The author goes on to describe areas of research that could benefit from revisiting with a new interpretation of the role of zooarchaeology.
The author dedicates a chapter each to the subject of human relationships with domesticated animals, with wild animals and with ‘exotic’ animals (a label that applies to all animals with which humans were previously unfamiliar). Further chapters are concerned with the subjects of animals and landscape, animals and ritual and the sometimes sensitive topic of humankind’s affective relationships with animals. She finally addresses the subject of animals and meat. Sykes provides us with a very full review of the work already carried out in these areas, and the literature available, as well as suggesting where the scope of these could be widened.
Sykes, unsurprisingly, draws on her own research to provide case studies for the book. These deal principally with English material, and often involve her own speciality: the history and cultural significance of the fallow deer. But her investigations do bring in material from outside her own researches. The book contains much information that, while it might be common knowledge to archaeologists and zooarchaeologists, can be surprising to non-specialists. For example, the absence of marine protein from English diets from the Neolithic to the arrival of the Romans, the early role of the chicken (which, apparently, was not as a supplier of meat or eggs), and the possible impact of early dairying on human mortality.
In conclusion, Sykes informs us that she is now once more excited by her discipline. She is sure that an integrated analysis of archaeological animals, as physical remains, in artefacts, images and textual representation, as well as in the landscape, has much to offer in terms of the study of humanity and of the human mind. Such a combined study might have been impossible twenty years ago, but advances in the accessibility of data thanks to the internet, combined with ground-breaking scientific techniques (isotope, lipid and DNA analysis) make it feasible to synthesise the output of other disciplines with zooarchaeological data sets. A summary of the surprising, and not so surprising, features of human/animal relations from the Mesolithic to the modern that Sykes’s work has explored leads her to confess to a horror of how far such relations have now been transformed into a ‘one-sided exploitation of animals and the environment’. She finds it incumbent on zooarchaeologists to ‘step up to the mark’ and shout forcefully about the lessons the discipline can have for modern society. This reviewer, for one, will be shouting alongside them.
