Traditional pig butchery by the Yali people of West Papua (Irian Jaya) : an ethnographic and archaeozoological example

Studies of traditional methods of animal slaughter, food preparation, and consumption offer archaeozoologists an excellent opportunity to study the link between human behaviour and the resulting bone assemblage. Numerous actualistic studies of butchery have been carried out by archaeologists using stone tools, often especially manufactured by the researchers (e.g. Schick & Toth 1993; Laroulandie 2000). In other instances, traditional butchery practices have been documented, but in most cases the artefacts used were metal. Examples come from the Nunamiut of Alaska (Binford 1981), the Bedouin herders of Israel (Klenck 1995), the Peul cattle herders of Mali (Chenal- Velardé 1996), the !Kung hunter-gatherers of Botswana (Yellen 1977), and semi-urban, urban and village communities from Algeria, France, and Sudan respectively (Chaix & Sidi Maamar 1992). Similarly, for a range of different communities, traditional food preparation and consumption practices have been documented and in many instances the resulting food residues examined (e.g. Brain 1969; Yellen 1977; Binford 1981; Gifford-Gonzalez 1989; Oliver J. 1993). In 1989, the opportunity was taken to document traditional butchery, cooking and consumption of a domestic pig by the Yali people of West Papua (or Irian Jaya). Since this community continues to use traditional artefacts made of stone and organic materials, it may offer a good analogue for the study of prehistoric butchery practices. According to the most recent suvrey available, the Yali population comprises c.30,000 people (Silzer & Clouse 1991) who inhabit the eastern part of the well-known Baliem valley of west Papua. They primarily inhabit the Jayawijaya mountains of the central highlands at an altitude of between 1000 and 2000 m (Koch 1968: 85) although some Yali villages can be found at lower altitudes, down to 200 m, in the southern part of the distribution of the group (Boissière 1999: 55). Like many populations living in the mountainous regions of the island, the Yali are subsistence farmers who cultivate sweet potatoes, yam, taro, plantains, manioc, and sugarcane, and raise pigs, the latter serving a central function in their religious and social life (Koch 1968; Zöllner 1977; Boissière 1999). The men hunt small mammals and birds in the surrounding rainforests, while children and women complete their protein requirements by gathering invertebrates, fruits, mushrooms, and other plants.

Wild boar and domestic pigs in Mesolithic and Neolithic southern Scandinavia

In Mesolithic and Neolithic southern Scandinavia, Sus is often the animal found most commonly on archaeological sites, and it undoubtedly formed a major part of the meat diet throughout the prehistoric period. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain whether this meat comes from wild boar (Sus scrofa) or domestic pigs (Sus scrofa f. domestica), as archaeologists have only the bones to go on when seeking to determine the status of the animals they study. This contribution will examine bones from a series of sites, most in Denmark but some also in Sweden. Three main areas will be considered. First, Mesolithic animals will be discussed. These are universally regarded as wild boar, and the effects of the rising sea level and consequent fragmentation of their populations will be examined. Second, Danish Neolithic and later domestic animals will be discussed; these could either have been domesticated in Denmark from local wild boar, or could have been introduced from outside along with exotic agricultural items such as wheat or sheep. Third, we will consider Middle Neolithic animals from the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Wild boar were almost certainly not present on Gotland during the Mesolithic, and the animals must therefore have been introduced by human agency. However, opinion is divided as to whether they were domestic pigs, wild boar introduced to found a hunted population, or a crossbred or feral population. The sites to be examined are listed in Table 7.1. The various sites have been excavated at various times over the last century or so. Some were published shortly after being excavated, but others had to wait many years for publication. Excavation quality has certainly varied, but we believe this will probably not have exerted a major influence on the results we present. Our work is based on the mandibles, and these are large and robust. They are unlikely to be overlooked during even poor-quality excavations, and they survive better than many other parts of the skeleton. Samples are therefore unlikely to be biased either by recovery of preservation. In grouping sites by period, for example ‘Early Mesolithic’, we are certainly conflating sites of somewhat different ages.

Wild boar hunting in the Eastern Mediterranean from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BC

Recent studies of the archaeozoological material from the site of Ras Shamra- Ugarit and of related textual sources have been added to the archaeological data; these studies demonstrate in an unexpected manner the importance which the wild boar held on this site during the Late Bronze Age. Is this importance characteristic of Ugarit or of the Late Bronze Age? This question encouraged us to look for traces of wild boars and wild boar hunting in the osteological, iconographic, and textual data for this period in neighbouring regions. This study represents the first stage in research which is intended to be carried out in more detail. Thus here we will only propose avenues for reflection. The site of Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast corresponds to the ancient city-state of Ugarit, the flourishing capital of a small coastal kingdom. Its key geographical situation and its port rendered it a point of contact between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world. The city prospered in the Late Bronze Age before being destroyed by the ‘sea people’ in about 1180 BC. The ‘sea people’ and the ‘people from the North’ are known exclusively from Egyptian sources (Ramsès III, Medinet Abu). They are considered to be the destroyers of almost all the Levantine cities of the coast at that period. The excavations of the port (Minetel- Beida), the royal palace, the sanctuaries, and the residential quarters have produced many objects which are evidence of relations with Egypt, Cyprus, and Anatolia, as well as exceptional archives (2nd millennium BC)—numerous economic, administrative, literary, and mythological texts on clay tablets. Ugarit was an important commercial crossroads (Yon 1997). The archaeozoological study carried out on nearly 7000 bone remains reveals a food economy based on the breeding of cattle, sheep, and goats (Vila in press c). Evidence of pig rearing was not found. Hunting was not a common activity, being concentrated mainly on deer and sometimes wild boar. Although its domestic equivalent the pig was not bred at Ugarit, the wild boar was hunted and consumed on the site: 22 remains, some with butchering marks, provide the evidence (Vila & Dalix 2004).

Ethnoarchaeology of pig husbandry in Sardinia and Corsica

In this chapter we illustrate, with examples, present-day traditional practices of pig husbandry in Sardinia and Corsica. The approach to this work is ethnoarchaeological, which means that its main aim is to collect modern socio-economic data that can be useful for the interpretation of zooarchaeological remains of pigs and, more in general, for our understanding of the past (cf. Schiffer 1976: 31). The analysis of modern society as an aid to understanding the past has a long tradition in archaeology, and was particularly encouraged by the innovations in archaeological methods of the late 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Binford 1978; Gould 1980). The comparison between past and present is based on the concept of analogy (cf. Gould 1980: 29), which has been much discussed and criticized in the archaeological literature (Audouze 1992). Nevertheless, analogy remains a useful tool in archaeological interpretation as long as it is used cautiously and with an understanding of context (Hodder 1982). It can also be argued that archaeological interpretation is inevitably analogical as we cannot directly observe the past, and any attempt to improve our understanding of the past is based on comparative models, whether they are drawn from ethnographic observations or not. The relation between people and animals represents a core factor in the functioning of past and modern societies. Sus hunting and husbandry in particular constitute very important activities in many different periods and areas of the world. There is a wealth of ethnographic studies on human–Sus relations in traditional societies, but this is mainly confined to the South Pacific (e.g. Rappaport 1968; Griffin 1998; Sillitoe 2003). Ethnoarchaeological studies of human–Sus relations are much rarer, though the work carried out by ethnographers has occasionally been used for archaeological interpretations (e.g. Nemeth 1998; Redding & Rosenberg 1998). The geographic bias towards South East Asia, and New Guinea in particular, is understandable when we consider the abundance of wild and domestic pigs in those regions, and the great importance that they have for local economies and societies. Conversely, most of western Asia is dominated by Muslim cultures, where pig husbandry is not practised because of the prohibition of pork consumption (Simoons 1961).

A dental microwear study of pig diet and management in Iron Age, Romano-British, Anglo-Scandinavian, and medieval contexts in England

Insight into the diet of domestic animals in the archaeological record can elucidate diverse activities pertaining to ancient agricultural systems, including the utilization of the landscape by livestock and their herders (Bocherens et al. 2001; Bentley et al. 2003; Charles & Bogaard 2005), the impact of livestock farming on the environment (Amorosi et al. 1998; Witt et al. 2000; Mainland 2001), seasonality in husbandry practices (Akeret et al. 1999; Akeret & Rentzel 2001; Charles & Bogaard 2005), animal productivity (Amorosi et al. 1998) and the role of animals in society (Moens & Wetterstom 1988; Mainland & Halstead 2004). Research into the diet of domestic livestock has, however, largely focused on cattle, sheep, and goats (see for example all the references cited above) and it is only relatively recently that palaeodietary studies have begun to consider suid diet/nutrition and its potential value for elucidating the socio-economics of pig husbandry (e.g. Ervynck et al. this volume). This article presents one further such study: an analysis of dental microwear patterning in domestic pigs from selected Late Iron Age to medieval contexts in England, undertaken as part of a wider project into the potential application of dental microwear analysis to the question of pig diet and management in the prehistoric and historic past (Mainland et al. in prep.). Dental microwear analysis, although still primarily used within palaeontology (Teaford 1994; Rose & Ungar 1998), is increasingly being applied in archaeology to reconstruct both human (Rose & Ungar 1998; Schmidt 2001) and animal diet (Beuls et al. 2000; Mainland & Halstead 2004). In common with many other palaeodietary techniques (e.g. Schwarcz & Schoeninger 1991), dental microwear will not identify the consumption of individual foodstuffs but rather reflects broad functional and/or dietary adaptations (Rose & Ungar 1998); for example, browsing vs grazing (Solounias & Hayek 1993), folivory vs frugivory (Teaford & Walker 1984), hard vs soft diet (Teaford & Oyen 1989). Preliminary studies in modern suid populations have indicated that one basic axis of variation in pig diet/management is potentially identifiable using dental microwear, namely the separation of indoor-reared/stall-fed and outdoor reared/rooting populations (Ward & Mainland 1999).

Culture, ecology, and pigs from the 5th to the 3rd millennium BC around the Fertile Crescent

By the 5th millennium BC people in the Middle East were dependent for their meat on four domestic ungulates: sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, all considerably smaller than their wild ancestors (Bökönyi 1977; Uerpmann 1979; Flannery, K.V. 1983; Laffer 1983; Meadow 1983; Stampfli 1983; Grigson 1989; Ducos 1993; Horwitz & Tchernov 1998; Vigne & Buitenhuis 1999; Peters et al. 2000; Ervynck et al. 2001; and many others). It is uncertain whether equids had been domesticated at this date, but their remains are so few in most sites of the 5th, 4th, and 3rd millennia that they can be discounted in any discussion relating to the domestic economy. On the small number of sites where their remains are plentiful they are thought to be derived from wild onagers or wild asses (Uerpmann 1986). In these three millennia the numerical proportion of pig remains compared with those of other domestic artiodactyls varies from site to site. In view of the later pig prohibitions of Islam and Judaism it is of particular interest to know, for the prehistory of the area, when and where pigs were present or absent, and if absent whether this can already be accounted for by any developing social or cultural attitude, in the millennia before the establishment of these religions, or whether it must be explained by simpler economic or environmental factors. All dates in the present work are based on uncalibrated radiocarbon years BC, simply because even when radiocarbon dates for the sites are available (which is by no means always the case), many have not been published in calibrated form. The period studied in the present work starts with the later pottery cultures of the 5th millennium BC which are usually designated as Early Chalcolithic (Late Halaf, Amuq E, and Ubaid 2 and 3) although in the southern Levant most authorities refer to the contemporary Wadi Rabah culture as the Late Neolithic. The 4th millennium is the period of the Chalcolithic (or Late Chalcolithic), typically the Ghassoul-Beersheva culture of the southern Levant and the Uruk and Late Ubaid periods in Mesopotamia, northern Syria, and south-eastern Turkey.

Current views on Sus phylogeography and pig domestication as seen through modern mtDNA studies

The history of pig domestication is also the history of the beginnings of Eurasian agricultural civilization. Wild boar were an important hunted resource for many millennia before the domestication process significantly altered this relationship between pigs and humans. The end result of this process (involving not just pigs but all other farm animals and pets) has led not only to the development of a staggering number of breeds and variations of what were once solely wild animals, but also to the intensification of the relationship between human beings and domestic animals, to the point of near total dependence of each upon the other. By investigating when, where, and how many times pigs (and other animals) were domesticated, we not only gain an insight into the process of domestication, itself, but also (by extension) a deeper understanding of human history, evolutionary biology, biogeography, and a host of other disciplines. The beginnings of pig management and domestication probably began sometime between the 10th to 8th millennium BP. In western Eurasia, the earliest archaeological evidence for pig domestication comes from a number of sites in Eastern and central Anatolia: Çayönü Tepesi (Ervynck et al. 2001), Hallan Çemi (Redding & Rosenberg 1998; Redding 2005), and Gürcütepe (Peters et al. 2005). At Çayönü Tepesi, a unique 2,000-year stratigraphic sequence, spanning the 9th to 7th millennia BP, has provided perhaps one of the best opportunities to observe the actual process of domestication for pigs. Thus, biometrical and age-at-death data led Ervynck et al. (2001) to postulate several shifts in the intensity of pig–human relationships, not necessarily directly driven by humans in its initial stages. Active involvement of humans in this process, it was argued, took place much later. However the process is specifically defined, the evidence from Çayönü Tepesi clearly reflects an intensification of the relationship between people and pigs over two millennia, and points to eastern Turkey as a centre of early pig domestication. Unfortunately, most early archaeological sites do not possess such long, continuous, or reliably dated occupation sequences, which has made the identification of other centres of animal domestication difficult at best.

The pig in medieval iconography

Representations of the pig can be found in a wide variety of visual material worldwide, and throughout time. The term ‘pig’ is used here as a general term to cover all domestic and wild forms of Sus scrofa (where relevant and possible precise distinction between these forms will be specified). The images that exist, vary in terms of the form or shape of the pig, the representation of its characteristic features according to sex (male–boar vs female–sow), form (domestic or wild), age (adult pig or piglet), or physical characteristics (i.e. snout, tusks, tail, trotters, hair and hide coloration, razorback, and bristles). A visual appreciation of different living forms can be found in works such as Burnie (2001) or Buczacki (2002). This chapter is concerned with the creation and use of visual images of the pig. It offers a selection of materials dating in range from the medieval to the early modern period and will cite selected examples to represent continuity or change in the use of images where appropriate. The materials providing representations of the pig include (but are not exclusive to) illuminated manuscripts, prints and posters, engravings and drawings on either parchment or paper, canvas paintings, stained and painted glass, wood carvings, embroidery and textiles, stonework, moulded or cast metal, ceramic wares, and figurines. Exclusive porcine works discussing this iconography include those by Foster (1977), Ryba (1983), Brochier (1988), Bonera (1991), and Lawson (1995). In addition to depictions of pigs, functional and decorative and artistic uses were also found for the inedible body parts of real pigs such as the tusks appearing in visual cultural materials reflecting the precious value of the animal by some people. The main approach of this paper is thematic in order to emphasize how visual representations of the pig have had associations with filth, shame, lust, fantasy, care and consumption, inspiration, and human identity. Many assumptions have been made about the relative importance of the sources of inspiration drawn upon for the creation of particular images or motifs in the surviving media, and the availability of these to their creators (for a discussion on the practice of artistic transmission during the Middle Ages, see Scheller 1995).

Economic and ecological reconstruction at the Classical site of Sagalassos, Turkey, using pig teeth

Teeth are without doubt some of the most useful structures for zoological and archaeozoological research. Their complex crown morphology renders them extremely important in taxonomic determination, since subtle differences in shape and form can exist to species level. Of the various calcified tissues present in the mammalian body, tooth enamel is also the hardest and most stable. This is extremely important for the study of fossil remains, since teeth are very resilient to many taphonomic variables. Teeth can provide many clues about an animal’s past life. They are extremely conservative in their development and growth, which progresses in a relatively well-understood chronological sequence. As a result, crown development, and tooth eruption can provide some of the most useful archaeozoological evidence for the age at death of an individual. The mouth is also the place where the initial physical and chemical breakdown of food occurs; the teeth are the means of shearing, chopping, and mastication, and as such will be affected to varying degrees by any major changes in the physical and chemical make up of ingested food. Thus, normal progressive wear on the teeth at a macroscopic level also provides a useful and widely used methodology with which to estimate the relative age at death. Tooth development is also adversely affected by a wide range of physiological factors, which can leave a number of tell-tale ‘footprints’ in the dental tissues themselves. As a result, a permanent (and chronological) record of physiological stress can be routinely reconstructed from the study of ancient teeth. All of these approaches can be used to shed further light on aspects of animal husbandry regimes in the past. This chapter deals with the pig remains excavated at Sagalassos, a Roman to Early Byzantine town in south-western Turkey. The ruins can be found approximately 7 km north of the village of Ağlasun in the province of Burdur, and 110 km to the north of Antalya. The site lies on the southern slope of the western Taurus at an altitude of between 1450 and 1600 m a.s.l., and extends over 4km2 (Waelkens 1993).

The histopathology of fluorotic dental enamel in wild boar and domestic pigs

Studies into the behavioral ecology of wild boar and domestic pigs are promising, yet largely neglected, areas of archaeozoological research. Changes in both the diet and health of animals may reflect specific details about the possible scale and extent of human impact on hunted wild boar populations and domesticated pigs in the past. Histological and chemical ‘signatures’ of (for example) physiological stress, brought about by possible human influence, can often be recovered in the dental and skeletal tissues of Sus. However, a fuller interpretation of what the significance of these signatures might be can only be achieved if their aetiology is known, and that can only be done by studying these phenomena in modern extant populations. One of the many aspects of the human–Sus relationship is the exposure of wild boar to contaminants from anthropogenic sources. An example of this is the pollution of wild boar habitats by fluoride from power plants and other emission sources, leading to the occurrence of characteristic dental changes, known as dental fluorosis, in the affected individuals of Sus scrofa (Kierdorf et al. 2000). However, dental fluorosis also occurs in wild and domestic mammals (and in humans) living in areas with increased environmental levels of fluoride from natural sources (Shupe et al. 1983; Cronin et al. 2000, 2003; Garrott et al. 2002; WHO 2002). The macroscopic changes of dental fluorosis reflect a disturbance of the processes involved in enamel formation. Once the permanent dentition of an individual is fully formed, exposure to excess levels of fluoride will not lead to fluorotic enamel changes. Dental fluorosis can therefore be used as a highly sensitive indicator of excess fluoride exposure during the period of tooth formation in humans and other mammals (Fejerskov et al. 1988; DenBesten 1994; Boulton et al. 1999; Kierdorf & Kierdorf 1999; Kierdorf et al. 1999). Higher levels of fluoride also exert negative effects on the skeleton throughout the life of an individual, the pathological changes being known as skeletal fluorosis (WHO 2002). This crippling disability is a major human health problem in various regions of Africa, China, and the Indian subcontinent, where millions of people are affected (Finkelman et al. 1999; WHO 2002).