Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies : Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages

by Pluskowski, Aleksander

• ISBN13: 9781842172186
• ISBN10: 1842172182
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-30
• Publisher: David Brown Book Co

Summary

The utilisation of animal bodies for food and as raw materials for a diverse range of products in medieval European societies is widely acknowledged, even taken for granted. However, as other disciplines exploring the Middle Ages break new ground in understandings of the production, perception and consumption of written and artistic material, it is time for a fresh look at the archaeology of medieval animal use. How were animal bodies treated? What was the nature of their 'consumption'? What was their 'lifespan' and were they reused or modified further? Was the breaking and reshaping of their body parts guided by social as well as practical concerns? To what extent was the animal physically or conceptually visible in the finished product and what can this tell us about identity? How differently were human remains treated and does this reflect the relative value of animals in medieval societies? These questions - ranging from the ecological to the cosmological - are explored in this volume of sixteen papers. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Thinking About Beastly Bodies	p. 1
Medieval Bone Flutes in England	p. 11
The Middle Ages on the Block: Animals, Guilds and Meat in the Medieval Period	p. 18
Communicating through Skin and Bone: Appropriating Animal Bodies in Medieval Western European Seigneurial Culture	p. 32
Taphonomy or Transfiguration: Do we need to Change the Subject?	p. 52
Seeing is Believing: Animal Material Culture in Medieval England	p. 65
The Beast, the Book and the Belt: an Introduction to the Study of Girdle or Belt Books from the Medieval Period	p. 80
The Shifting use of Animal Carcasses in Medieval and Post-medieval London	p. 98
Hunting in the Byzantine Period in the Area between the Danube River and the Black Sea: Archaeozoological Data	p. 116
Chasing the Ideal? Ritualism, Pragmatism and the Later Medieval Hunt in England	p. 125
Taking Sides: the Social Life of Venison in Medieval England	p. 149
Animals as Material Culture in Middle Saxon England: The Zooarchaeological Evidence for Wool Production at Brandon	p. 161
Animal Bones: Synchronous and Diachronic Distribution as Patterns of Socially Determined Meat Consumption in the Early and High Middle Ages in Central and Northern Italy	p. 170
People and Animals in Northern Apulia from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: Some Considerations	p. 189
Animals and Economic Patterns in Medieval Apulia (South Italy): Preliminary Findings	p. 217
Breaking and Shaping Beastly Bodies: Animals as Material Culture in the Middle Ages: Final Discussion	p. 235
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