The article by Overton and Hamilakis challenges so-called traditional zooarchaeology and works as a manifesto for a new social zooarchaeology, as the authors call it. This new social zooarchaeology moves beyond the thinking of animals as (purely) resources and instead reinstates their position as sentient and autonomous agents. The approach is fresh and evidence-based (e.g. Robb Reference Robb2010). The sites and bone materials used as examples come from Late Mesolithic Denmark: the Ertebølle site Aggersund in Jutland and Ertebølle Grave 8 at Vedbæk, Sjælland. Both sites were excavated and analysed many years ago, but the bone material has been reanalysed and interpreted for this study.
It is easy to agree with some of the main ideas proposed by the authors, but there are some problematic areas of their new social-zooarchaeological interpretations and arguments. The need to turn aside economic thinking and the consideration of animals as a resource for humans seems to be a rhetorical trick to highlight a new way of thinking. Another somewhat ambiguous idea is the discussion of wild animals (swans) as autonomous agents in Mesolithic human–animal relations. I also find some fragility in their argument for rejecting the earlier interpretation of the swan bone in Vedbæk Grave 8. In the next paragraphs, I will contemplate the reasons for my dissatisfaction.
Overton and Hamilakis denote an inclusive, non-anthropocentric framework for performing social zooarchaeology, where ‘sociality conveys interspecies engagement, an engagement that is mediated, of course, by the totality of the material world and its agency’ (p. 117). The article provides a deep analysis of swan flock behaviour and a human–swan relationship in a lived-experience scale based on the Late Mesolithic Aggersund site. I think that human life is composed of numerous aspects of being in the world and environment; this certainly includes economic aspects (subsistence), religions, rituals, thoughts of how the world is constructed (cosmology) and the system of engaging with nature. A new social-zooarchaeological theory may risk replicating the same flaw it is criticizing; that is, bringing to the forefront only a narrow part of the entity that represents a special relationship between humans and animals. I like the authors’ idea about the sensorious, corporeal, sentimental encounter between swans and humans. I also agree that such aspects should be regularly integrated in archaeological discussion. However, I disagree with Overton and Hamilakis's attitude in underestimating the ‘resource-based’ approach in zooarchaeology. To a certain degree, all human behaviour is and has always been exploitation-oriented. When people estimate and validate the behaviour of an animal individual and include these substances in their world view, this is also utilization. The word ‘resource’ has negative associations for modern, capitalized people because the attitude to nature in our own society is highly biased due to the overexploitation of many natural resources.
One central point in Overton and Hamilakis's article is the idea of individualizing swans. As far as I understand, this includes the idea that it was significant for people to be able to recognize individuals in a flock of swans. People would have known some personal characteristics and taken this into account when hunting them or consuming the meat of these individuals. This may well have been possible, but I would like to go further and try to rationalize why this individualization would have been important. Ethnographic studies of animal totemism stress the tendency to construct totemic bounds between humans and animal species (e.g. Lévi-Strauss Reference Lévi-Srauss1964). Nerissa Russell (Reference Russell2012, 25, 169) remarks that in totemic ideologies, the animal species are treated as unitary entities rather than as groups of individuals and that hunters usually relate to humans as individuals and animals as species.
People using the Aggersund site may have identified and personalized swans, but this must be separated from the idea that a swan would have individualized or personalized humans. The mutual relationship between humans and wild animals is mutual in a sense that there are two species involved. The value of this relationship and its social, economic and ritual implications are, however, dictated and created by humans. As long as swans were hunted by people, they remained timid and tried to be as distant or unapproachable as possible. We are limited to a principally human perspective in archaeology: what animals meant for humans and what humans ‘knew’ about the emotional, behavioural or social life of wild animals, or how humans experienced voices, smells, landscapes, ecosystems and so on. Humans had assumptions, but this did not necessarily have anything to do with what a swan heard, felt, thought or smelt.
Zooarchaeology can research the ways humans have used, understood and experienced animals, as well as how they lived together. All these aspects are intertwined and included in the web of significances and functions that create the relationship between human and specific animal species.
In Grave 8 at Vedbæk, a fragmented proximal part of the right carpometacarpus of a swan was found in a baby burial (Albrethsen and Brinch Petersen Reference Albrethsen and Brinch Petersen1976). According to Overton and Hamilakis, the baby had not been buried on a wing; rather, it was placed on the wingtip. According to them, the validity of the wing as representing transport to the afterlife would be less important because the wing was not complete. However, fragments and partial objects may have been put in graves, and their function was as valid as for complete ones. In fact, this question whether a fragment of the wing bone or several bones were placed in the grave is irrelevant. Fragmenting artefacts and bones before placing them in the grave is a universally construed practice in prehistory (Chapman Reference Chapman2000; Larsson Reference Larsson2009). Among the Saami of north Scandinavia, a piece of a bone of an important animal is sufficient to symbolize the animal and supply the desired function (Schanche Reference Schanche2000). In this sense, even one feather in a grave would be enough to carry out the task.
In rejecting the idea of the swan bone serving as a transporter between different worlds, the authors ignore the larger context of the Vedbæk find. They also ignore the fact that many anthropological and archaeological studies support the idea that burial practices are deeply connected with rituals of transformation (rites of passage) (e.g. Karsten Reference Karsten1955; Bell Reference Bell1997; Nilsson Stutz Reference Nilsson Stutz2003; Fowler Reference Fowler2004, 130–54; Mannermaa Reference Mannermaa2008; Garwood Reference Garwood and Insoll2011). Ethnographic literature from circumpolar areas is full of this kind of reference (e.g. Karsten Reference Karsten1955; Napolskikh Reference Napolskikh, Hoppal and Pentikäinen1992; Ingold Reference Ingold1986). There is even archaeological and anthropological evidence that points to the long-lived existence of such beliefs (e.g. Zvelebil Reference Zvelebil1993; Lahelma Reference Lahelma, Cochrane and Jones2012; Kristensen and Holly Reference Kristensen and Holly2013). Good archaeological examples are waterbird remains in hunter-gatherer graves in Baltic countries (Mannermaa Reference Mannermaa2008) and the swan motifs in Lake Onega, Russian Karelia (Lahelma Reference Lahelma, Cochrane and Jones2012). Overton and Hamilakis interpret the Vedbæk swan find as a loose example, or a single action without connection to the broader cultural context of the North European Stone Age. A connection is sought from the Aggersund site, but the larger significance, as well as the specific quality of swans for the Ertebølle people, is not discussed. I think that this kind of local perspective is not sufficient to properly describe the relationship between swans and humans.
Context is everything in archaeology, and taphonomy is all-important in zooarchaeology. However, animal remains also need to be researched and understood in their broader cultural context. In animal studies in archaeology, it would be relevant to compare animal finds from contexts of different kinds (graves, settlements, hunting camps, ceremonial centres, etc.). It is important to try to identify what makes certain species different from others. For example, what made the whooper swan so important for the people at Aggersund? Migration cycle and a close connection to water might well have been key sources for inspiration for the central role of swans in Ertebølle culture. Observations of annual migrations and daily bird movements may have provided the raw material for the basis of cosmological journeys (Kristensen and Holly Reference Kristensen and Holly2013, 50). Feathers and skins were probably the most considerable material gain; similar products could not be acquired from any other species. Swan bones from Aggersund had clear marks of meat separation, which indicates that meat was also consumed. However, it is impossible to say on what kind of occasion swan meat was eaten.
A holistic approach would be valuable in researching the relationship between humans and animals. This approach would call for research of the roles and significances that people placed on swans in material culture, economy, cosmology, etc. on a broader scale. Overton and Hamilakis's article succeeds in describing an alternative approach for a deeper understanding of a human–animal interaction on a local scale. However, their analysis fails in linking this interpretation and approach within the broader discussion of the meanings of swans for hunter-gatherers. For example, Antti Lahelma (Reference Lahelma, Cochrane and Jones2012) approaches the swan petroglyphs in Lake Onega, Russia via Finno-Ugric folklore. He finds evidence of a longue durée cultural tradition which considers swans symbols of the soul or messengers between the worlds of humans and spirits.
Finally, I have to admit that I do not agree with the authors’ critique of the ‘traditional zooarchaeology’. In fact, I do not think that ‘a dominant, monolithic zooarchaeological paradigm’ (p. 135) exists. No matter how many guesses we are able to make using different archaeological methods, we will always achieve only an echo of understanding of the diversity of past people's attitudes towards animals. This is why it is so interesting and important to look at the same materials from different perspectives, using different methods, and through various theoretical approaches.
