Aija Macāne (Riga/Helsinki) ‘Stone Age Companions. Humans and animals in hunter-gatherer burials in north-eastern Europe’.

Join via Zoom

Stone Age Companions: Humans and animals in hunter-gatherer burials in north-eastern Europe 
Animal remains, particularly tooth pendants, comprise a significant part of hunter-gatherer 
grave inventories in north-eastern Europe. Pendants made from animal teeth are the most numerous artefacts in hunter-gatherer burials at Zvejnieki (Latvia). In some burials, the number of animal teeth exceeds 300 specimens, meaning that numerous animals were needed to provide such a number of teeth and suggests complex activities involved in acquiring and curation of these materials. Furthermore, animal-derived materials had a central role in mediating social communication and cosmological beliefs. They were not just ornaments of the body or wrappings, but their materiality and embedded qualities suggest multiple potential uses, including social identification, protection and transformation. 
 
The presentation discusses hunter-gatherer burial practices in north-eastern Europe and focuses particularly on animal remains found in burials at Zvejnieki (Latvia), Skateholm I and II (Sweden) and Sakhtysh II and IIa (Russia). What meanings embodied animal remains and what they tell about the relationships between humans and animals? In this study animals are considered not only as a source of food and raw materials, but as companion species that inhabited a shared landscape with humans. The study shows that fragmentation and selection of specific body parts was important, and that animal individuality and personality were essential to establishing relationships between them and humans. Companionship in Stone Age north-eastern Europe was forged at an individual level, and both humans and animals participated in the creation of interspecies relationships and environments.