Live Stock and Dead Things - (Animal Lives) by Hannah Chazin (Paperback)

About the Book

"In Live Stock and Dead Things, Hannah Chazin combines zooarchaeology and anthropology to challenge familiar narratives about the role of non-human animals in the rise of modern societies. Conventional views of this process tend to see a mostly linear development from hunter-gatherer societies to horticultural and pastoral ones to large-scale agricultural ones and then industrial ones. Along the way, traditional accounts argue, the custom of inheriting land, livestock, and other sources of value introduced social inequality and stratification. Against this, Chazin raises a provocative question: What if pastoral domestication wasn't just about instrumentalizing non-human animals after all? Chazin argues that these conventional narratives are inherited from conjectural histories and are based on misinterpretations of archaeological data. In her view, the category of "domestication" flattens the more complex dimensions of humans' relationship to herd animals. In the book's first half, Chazin offers a new understanding of the political possibilities of pastoralism, one that recognizes the powerful role herd animals have played in shaping human notions of power and authority. In the second half, she takes readers into her archaeological fieldwork in the South Caucuses, which sheds further light into herd animals' transformative effect on the economy, social life, and ritual. Appealing to anthropologists and archaeologists alike, this daring book offers a reconceptualization of human-animal relationships and their political significance"--

Book Synopsis

Reconceptualizes human-animal relationships and their political significance in ancient and modern societies.

In Live Stock and Dead Things, Hannah Chazin combines zooarchaeology and anthropology to challenge familiar narratives about the role of nonhuman animals in the rise of modern societies. Conventional views of this process tend to see a mostly linear development from hunter-gatherer societies, to horticultural and pastoral ones, to large-scale agricultural ones, and then industrial ones. Along the way, traditional accounts argue that owning livestock as property, along with land and other valuable commodities, introduced social inequality and stratification. Against this, Chazin raises a provocative question: What if domestication wasn't the origin of instrumentalizing nonhuman animals after all?

Chazin argues that these conventional narratives are inherited from conjectural histories and ignore the archaeological data. In her view, the category of "domestication" flattens the more complex dimensions of humans' relationship to herd animals. In the book's first half, Chazin offers a new understanding of the political possibilities of pastoralism, one that recognizes the powerful role herd animals have played in shaping human notions of power and authority. In the second half, she takes readers into her archaeological fieldwork in the South Caucasus, which sheds further light on herd animals' transformative effect on the economy, social life, and ritual. Appealing to anthropologists and archaeologists alike, this daring book offers a reconceptualization of human-animal relationships and their political significance.

Review Quotes

"This is a significant contribution to zooarchaeology and to our understanding of the Late Bronze Age in the South Caucasus. Though a work of serious scholarship, it is also frequently surprising and often delightful. Specialists will pore over this book, but it offers genuine rewards to the non-specialist reader as well."-- "Mary J. Weismantel, Northwestern University"

"We have been waiting for a book like this for many years. A meticulously researched, beautifully written study that is both zooarchaeological and zoopolitical, and one that gives nonhuman animals in postdomestication, premodern societies the chance to be social and historical actors themselves. Beyond teleology, facile distinctions, and binarisms, this is a rare bird of a book that pays our dues to the mundane beings that lived and labored with and alongside humans but which were instrumentalized and objectified in scholarship for far too long."-- "Yannis Hamilakis, Brown University"

About the Author

Hannah Chazin is assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University