ARCHAEOLINGUA

Edited by
ERZSBET JEREM and WOLFGANG MEID

Series Minor
31
ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMAGINATIONS
OF RELIGION

Edited by
THOMAS MEIER and PETRA TILLESSEN

BUDAPEST 2014
 Front Cover Illustration
Our cover girl shows one of the most famous paintings of German
romanticism: Der Wanderer ber dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer above the Sea
of Fog) painted by Caspar David Friedrich in 1818. We believe this painting to
be an especially suitable cover because many of archaeologists convictions
on prehistoric religion are deeply rooted in romanticism. To name only a
few we want to point to frequent statements on religion as the irrational, i.e.
non-functional, on natural sacredness of sites (naturheilige Pltze) and we
point to emotional and experiential approaches to religion and especially to
phenomenology. Friedrichs painting includes many of these aspects, most
obviously the emotionality of a magnificent landscape. Moreover the fog may
be interpreted as a metaphor for the hidden religions of the past that some
archaeologists seek to reveal (or revive?).

ISBN 978-963-9911-24-6
HU-ISSN 1216-6847

by the authors and Archaeolingua Foundation

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digitised, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

2014
ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPTVNY
H-1250 Budapest, ri u. 49
Copyediting by Melanie Strub, Thomas Meier and Petra Tillessen
Desktop editing and layout by Rita Kovcs
Printed by Prime Rate Kft
 Table of Contents

Preface by the editors ......................................................................................... 7

THOMAS MEIER together with PETRA TILLESSEN
Archaeological imaginations of religion:
an introduction from an Anglo-German perspective ................................ 11

JOHN BINTLIFF
Sacred worlds or sacred cows? Can we paramaterize past rituals? ....... 249

ERICA HILL
Imagining animals in prehistoric religions ............................................ 265

ROBERT J. WALLIS
Animism, ancestors and adjusted styles of communication:
Hidden art in Irish passage tombs .......................................................... 283

MIRANDA ALDHOUSE-GREEN
Style over content .................................................................................. 315

LIV NILSSON STUTZ

Dialogues with the dead. Imagining mesolithic mortuary rituals .......... 337

KATJA HROBAT VIRLOGET

Conceptualization of space through folklore.
On the mythical and ritual significance of community limits ................ 359

TIINA IKS
The concept of liminality and Smi sacred landscapes ......................... 383

About the authors ........................................................................................... 401

 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion

ERICA HILL

Summary
Ethnographic evidence indicates that animals play complex, overlapping roles as food,
sacred objects, and mythic creatures. Yet our reconstructions of animals in religions of the
past tend to represent functional categories in which animals are objects to be dominated.
In this chapter, I suggest that we fail to appreciate the range of roles animals played in
prehistoric religions, in part because we have few modern Western analogs. This chapter
takes a critical look at our neglect of animals in past religions and advocates greater
attention to animals as agents and mythic subjects.

Contributors to this volume have presented several approaches to religion in the

past, focusing on place and landscape, material culture, and the perennial question
of the sacred / profane dichotomy. In this chapter, I examine the relationship
between animals and religion, an area of study in which, I suggest, archaeologists
have experienced a failure of the imagination. It is my contention that, despite
their representation at archaeological sites in the form of representational imagery,
teeth and bone, antler, horn and hide, animals as rich symbolic subjects in ancient
belief systems have been generally neglected, despite the attention they have
received in cultural anthropology (e.g. MULLIN 1999; NOSKE 1993; SHANKLIN
1985).
This neglect by archaeologists has contributed to the simplification of the
role of animals in religion prehistorically, limiting them to feast foods and to
the functional category of ritual. I suggest that there are three reasons for our
failure to creatively explore the roles of animals in religions of the past: first
is the discipline-wide neglect of religion as a subject of study, particularly in
North America; second, mainstream Western culture limits animals to only three,
clearly defined and mutually exclusive categories; finally, zooarchaeology has
fostered an instrumentalist and materialist perspective on human-animal relations
that privileges subsistence and ecology over ritual and cosmology.
In the final section of this chapter, I suggest ways in which archaeologists
might reimagine animals in the past, first by considering what features of their
biology and behavior make them good to think. Additional examples illustrate
how animals act as agents or mythic subjects in some cosmologies. These
266 Erica Hill

examples provide us with new analogies for human-animal dynamics and expand
our understanding of prehistoric animal roles.

Obstacles to Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion

The Archaeological Study of Religion

In North America, prehistoric religion has only lately become a focus of study, as
archaeologists move beyond studies of ritual behavior into the realm of prehistoric
belief (e.g. FOGELIN 2007; VANPOOL et al. 2007). This neglect is in part due
to the limited interest that many processualists have in questions of religion or
cosmology. Early in the development of the New Archaeology, Lewis BINFORD
(1962) acknowledged the role of ideotechnic artifacts items which signify
and symbolize the ideological rationalizations for the social system (BINFORD
1962: 219). However, his later work implicitly denied the importance of cognitive
phenomena in favor of the technomic and sociotechnic features of human
adaptations (e.g. BINFORD 1978; 1981; 2001). Later North American processualists
tended to follow his lead, despite calls for greater attention to religion, ritual,
and ideology (LEONE 1982). Therefore, despite the fact that processualism as
originally outlined encompassed those ideological or cosmological facets of
human existence, in practice, beliefs, ideas, and feelings were located within the
realm of the epiphenomenal (LEONE 1982: 746; WHITLEY 1998: 303; but see
KINSEY 1989 for a processual analysis of animal imagery).
North American archaeologists interested in complex societies, particularly
those of Mesoamerica, made some progress in the 1970s (e.g. FLANNERY
MARCUS 1976; HALL 1977; MARCUS 1978), but were pessimistic that an
archaeology of religion could develop without ethnohistory. Marcus wrote in 1978
that without [ethnohistory] one could not even glimpse prehistoric cosmology,
interpret ancient public buildings, understand the contexts of ritual paraphernalia,
or analyse [...] iconography (MARCUS 1978: 173). Yet BROWN (1997: 466) has
noted that ethnohistory may also dominate our views on prehistoric religion
to such an extent that our imaginations are limited to that which was recorded
following European contact.
In the United Kingdom, the study of religion in archaeology followed a
different trajectory, with interest in ideology and belief systems expressed in
the form of cognitive processual archaeology (e.g. RENFREW 1985; 1994b;
RENFREW ZUBROW 1994), the study of past ways of thought as inferred from
 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion 267

material remains (RENFREW 1994b: 3). The scope of cognitive archaeology

included the study of design, measurement, representation, and symbols. Renfrew
(RENFREW 1994b) argues that archaeologists employing a cognitive processual
approach should focus on the use of symbols in social relations, iconography, and
in activities related to the supernatural. He locates the search for the meaning of
symbols within the realm of interpretive, idealist archaeologies (MORPHY 1989:
1011).
Renfrew makes explicit reference to animals as symbolic objects and indicators
of ritual activity, when they relat[e] to specific deities or powers (RENFREW
1994a: 5152). In the same volume, POSTGATE (1994) explores the function of
dog figurines in ancient Mesopotamia. He identifies the dogs as either apotropaic
devices or as gifts to the goddess Gula in place of actual dogs. In each case, the
figurines are interpreted in functional terms. The fact that dogs are represented,
rather than some other animal, appears irrelevant, or at least epiphenomenal. For
Postgate, the figurines are understood only in reference to their associated deity,
and the focus is on human manipulation of images, rather than upon the dynamics
of human-animal relations.
Postgates functional interpretation works well within the framework of
cognitive processual archaeology, but it also reproduces the idea that animals
and their representations are created objects to be acted upon. The dog as a living
symbol with specific biological and behavioral features, embodied and able to
actively protect as an apotropaic device, forms no part of the interpretation.
However, the dog may be more than an emblem or symbol of the goddess; the
dog may be the goddess herself (ORNAN 2004). Burial of figurines then, may have
been an effort to harness the power of the goddess in dog form. As apotropaic
devices, dogs are especially apropos, given their tendency to behave protectively
and to sound alarms by barking. The choice of a dog is therefore nonrandom, as
its behavioral characteristics likely made it an especially appropriate symbol or
avatar.
Although both processual and cognitive archaeologies explicitly addressed
the issue of religion in their early formulations, recent developments suggest that
interest in the topic has taken a contextual and interpretive turn. Archaeologists
are exploring familiar data sets, including faunal remains, in new ways (e.g.
DEFRANCE 2009). Maya archaeologists, for example, are actively interpreting
the composition and distribution of animal remains in light of Maya myth and
iconography (e.g. EMERY 2004a; 2004b; MASSON 1999). Given that animals play
such central roles in religious belief and practice as symbols, as deities, as
268 Erica Hill

metaphors, as sacrifices increased attention to prehistoric religion may foster

greater interest in animals. Such a pattern is already emerging in studies of
European and Near Eastern sites (e.g. PLUSKOWSKI 2005).

Limited Roles for Animals in the Western Tradition

A second reason that archaeologists have tended to neglect the roles of animals
in religion is the simple fact that we have few historical examples or Judeo-
Christian analogs that represent animals as anything other than symbols,
entertainment, pets, or food and raw materials. While some animals are edible,
Leviticus and Deuteronomy proscribe those which are vile, unclean, and therefore
inedible (DOUGLAS 1966). In Genesis, animals are described as gifts given by
God specifically for human use. Elsewhere, scriptural sources dictate how certain
domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, and doves should be used for
sacrificial purposes or as offerings to expiate sin (BOROWSKI 1998: 214). The
fact that animal sacrifice is such a prominent theme in the Old Testament may
have contributed to the frequent interpretation of structured animal deposits as
sacrifices or offerings when encountered at archaeological sites (e.g. DEFRANCE
2009; FLORES 2003; LUCAS MCGOVERN 2007; ROFES 2004).
With the exception of the various inedible creatures, the role of most Biblical
animals is at least partially dietary. The use of cattle, sheep, and goats in Leviticus
involves consumption either by humans or by God in the form of burnt offerings.
While animals do appear as representatives of deities the golden calf of
Exodus, for example such animals are textually associated with idolatry and
punishment. Further, animal idols are explicitly described as incapable of action
(e.g. Habakkuk 2: 189). In all examples of righteous religious behavior, animals
are objects symbols, sacrifices, subsistence. They are not persons, and they have
no souls, spirits, or powers.
Christianity limits the use of animals secondary symbolic functions, usually
derived from earlier Old Testament precedents. Examples include the lamb as
a symbol of purity and innocence; the serpent as the embodiment of evil; and
the lion, ox, and eagle as symbols of the evangelists Mark, Luke, and John,
respectively. With the exception of the serpent, each animal is understood as a
symbol associated with a specific person. In contrast with other Near Eastern
belief systems, animals are neither avatars nor representations of persons. Rather,
they are objects associated with persons.
 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion 269

Building upon this instrumentalist Judeo-Christian foundation, Renaissance

thinking and colonialism in the Americas and elsewhere associated Native peoples
with animals and nature, and therefore with savage and uncivilized behavior.
Colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia represented untamed natural worlds
awaiting the imposition of Christian order. The colonial powers were part of a
divinely-ordered hierarchy that gave them dominion over animals (and animal-
like humans) (MULLIN 1999). Here again is the idea of God-given power over,
which limits and obscures agency and conceptually expands Judeo-Christian
instrumentalism to include new categories of animals and humans.
Related to the idea that animals are objects to dominate is the persistent Euro-
American belief that humans and animals are discontinuous categories (MESKELL
2008; NOSKE 1993). This belief is reinforced in the science of taxonomy and the
species concept in biology, which constructs animals as discrete genetic packages.
Humans stand apart and above animal categories, in part because they possess
language and culture, essentialist ideals that supposedly distinguish humans from
other forms of life (DANDRADE 2002; PLSSON 1996), although recent research
on primates and marine mammals is destabilizing this belief amidst heated debate
(e.g. PENNISI 2006; SIMMONDS 2006).
Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism stands in contrast to the ontologies of
many Native American societies of the Subarctic (e.g. BRIGHTMAN 1993;
NELSON 1983) and Amazonia (e.g. RHEM 1996; FAUSTO 2007; VIVEIROS DE
CASTRO 1998) in which humans and animals exist along a continuum. In such
societies, the boundaries between humankind and the animal world are permeable
and dynamic. Relations with non-human animals are cooperative, rather than
antagonistic (PLSSON 1996), and animals themselves are persons with agency,
culture, and society (RHEM 1996). Similar ontological alternatives were likely
operative in the past, and should be considered in our reconstructions of ancient
religious systems.
Instrumentalist constructions of animals in the West are also apparent in the
contexts of entertainment and companionship. Non-edible animals such as polar
bears, dolphins, and tigers are tourist attractions; they are also highly contested
symbols of conflicting political and environmental values. Euro-American
familiarity with such rare and charismatic species has a long history: the Tower
of London once housed a number of big cats, and the practice of keeping an exotic
animal menagerie started as early as the thirteenth century in England (OREGAN
2002; OREGAN et al. 2005). The use of animals as entertainment at the Roman
270 Erica Hill

Coliseum suggests that such practices date back more than two millennia in the
Western tradition.
A final category of animal use that we imagine in the past is the prehistoric
pet, although ethnographic (VIDAS 2002) and emerging archaeological evidence
(THOMAS 2005) indicates that animals in many societies were treated in ways that
bear no resemblance to the specially fed, groomed, and medicated pets of today.
Intact, articulated skeletons of animals are frequently interpreted as companion
animals treated like humans in death (FILER 1995; WOOSLEY MCINTYRE 1996:
281, 83). Prehistoric pets may also be recovered in human burial contexts
where an animal, especially a dog, is interred with a human. Implicit is the idea
that people in the past related to and treated their animals similar to the ways
we do today, an interpretation that generally has limited archaeological support.
While dogs are often candidates for prehistoric pets, burials of humans with other
animals tend to be interpreted merely as ritual, for example in the report of a child
buried with a bright pink water bird (PARMALEE PERINO 1971).
Our desire to find prehistoric analogs for modern human-animal relationships
extends to certain species of birds. Recent faunal analysis of parrot remains
recovered from a Moche tomb in Peru revealed that one bird had a healed
mandible. The investigator noted that healing indicates that care and feeding were
necessary to keep the bird alive until its jaw healed. Such evidence, in concert
with iconography, suggested to the investigator that affectionate bonding
occurred between humans and parrots (WAKE 2007: 230). No other interpretation
is proposed; yet the iconographic evidence supplied in support of this close
association likely represents use of the birds as a source of feathers (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Detail of parrot or macaw between two Moche men.

Both men appear to be holding feathers (after WAKE 2007: figure A.16)
 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion 271

Ethnographic evidence indicates that in several prehistoric societies, young

birds were captured and kept caged or tethered; their long iridescent flight feathers
were then plucked as needed (HILL 2000). This practice likely occurred among
the Moche; remnants of a headdress and tunic from another tomb at the same
site provide evidence for the use of feathers on clothing (DONNAN 2007: 83, 89),
indicating that parrots were sources of raw materials. The interpretation of the
healed mandible as evidence of care and affection better represents the twenty-
first-century attitude toward psittacids than the sentiments of the Moche, who
may have been more concerned with keeping a valuable source of decorative
ritual objects alive and productive. While prehistoric pets likely do occur in
the archaeological record, making such an argument requires us first to reject
received notions of how specific classes of animals should be treated and base our
inferences on archaeological evidence, analogy, and consideration of the wide
range of animal roles in the past.

Instrumentalism in Zooarchaeology

The third issue that stands in the way of imagining animals in prehistoric religion
is zooarchaeology itself. The emphasis on diet and economy, calorie counting
and catchment areas means that there is rarely careful consideration of the other
roles that animals fulfilled in ancient societies. Rather, animals are economic
resources, commodities and means of production for human use (NOSKE 1993).
The explicitly materialist, utilitarian approach that zooarchaeologists often
take toward animal remains implicitly denies any role to the supernatural or
the cosmological. Taxonomy, taphonomy, and relative contributions of species
to an archaeological assemblage can and should remain major concerns
of faunal analysts; however, reconstructing the roles of animals in prehistoric
religion requires us to consider how humans relate to animals in cognitive terms.
The appearance, habitat, behavior, and relative scarcity of animals affects how
humans conceptualize them, and should therefore be considered in any discussion
of animal remains in ritual contexts.
An attempt to imagine prehistoric religion, for example, should explore
what common feasting animals mean to those who consume them. Certainly
subsistence economics fat, protein, and calorie content, relative abundance,
energy expenditure played a role in the selection of certain species. In a study
of feasting in the American Southwest, Potter (POTTER 1997: 359) notes that
animals suitable for feasting are those which were abundant and amenable to
272 Erica Hill

communal hunting. He argues that hares (Lepus spp.) may have been a preferred
feast food due to the fact that humans must work together, and thereby form
extra-kin social bonds, to harvest them. While strengthening social bonds may be
result of communal hunting and feasting, the significance and symbolism of the
animal to the consumer are also part of the equation. Identifying a ritual function
in archaeological faunas is critical to the development of a zooarchaeology
of religion; we now need to explore how such ritual animals fit into the
cosmologies of the consumers why the dead prefer some species of animal
offerings, why certain taxa make good sacrifices, and what feast animals signify
to ritual participants.
In sum, the slow development and functional biases of archaeologies of
religion, the limited roles that Western society assigns to animals, and the emphasis
placed on materialist, utilitarian assessments of faunal remains in isolation from
other lines of archaeological evidence have led us to interpretations that are flawed
and unimaginative. Through a better understanding of the variety of roles animals
play in religion cross-culturally, we may improve upon our reconstructions of
the past. Below I outline how the study of animals in religious contexts may go
beyond function and into the realm of meaning.

Reimagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion

Biology and Behavior

In the study of ancient belief systems, one question concerning animals that we
should focus on is why certain species were used in the ways that they were.
Some animals were chosen as feasting foods, whilst others were used for augury.
Certainly economic considerations play major roles in species selection; however,
biological and behavioral characteristics may make some animals especially good
to think.
Addressing such questions does not require the rejection of the standard
methods or techniques of zooarchaeology. Rather, interpretations of animal
remains as status signals (e.g. EMERY 2003; ERVYNCK 2004; POTTER 2004) or as
fat- and calorie-rich treats (e.g. MULVILLE OUTRAM 2005) are compatible with
the exploration of the roles of animals in religion and cosmology. For example,
Jonathan Driver emphasized the singularity of raven (Corvus corax) remains at
a Paleoindian site in British Columbia, noting the lack of evidence for butchery
or secondary processing of the bones, while at the same time highlighting
 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion 273

the behavioral attributes of the bird its vocality, distinctive appearance, and
preference for cliff habitats (DRIVER 1999). When these characteristics are
considered relative to the context of the site a promontory and cave with a
distinctive natural pillar formation interpretive possibilities are expanded and
enriched. DRIVER (1999) concludes that he has insufficient evidence to demonstrate
the deliberate deposition of raven skeletons by Paleoindian foragers; however,
his detailed discussion of raven behavior, site context, and landscape provides
the foundation for interpretations that accommodate the possible cosmological
and religious significance of the birds. By exploring ravens as mythic creatures,
harbingers, and creators, Driver links the distinctive appearance and behavior of
the birds to beliefs about their meaning.

Animals as Agents

Another way to reimagine animals in prehistoric religion is to consider them

agents. Above I argued that we generally consider animals in the past in functional
or utilitarian terms, often involving a value hierarchy in which humans dominate.
While we may acknowledge that animals played a part in ritual, we tend to
construct them as objects. Ritual objects, perhaps, but still objects manipulated
according to the needs of human users. Interpretation ends at the level of function,
leaving deeper questions of symbolism and cosmology unexplored. Yet there
is abundant evidence among the ancient Egyptians and Maya, for example
that animals played prominent roles in origin stories, as actors in myth, and as
harbingers of future events.
In each case, animals act as agents, effecting change, influencing events,
helping humans or avoiding them as recompense for a perceived offense. For
example, in Alaska among traditional Tlingit and Haida people, ravens are
believed to have the ability to transform themselves and engage in fundamentally
creative acts. Raven brought light into the world and had a central role in the
origins of humankind. Today, many Tlingit in southeast Alaska are members of
the Raven moiety and identify themselves as Ravens. Identity is linked directly to
religious belief, as each clan and moiety owns stories describing their own origins
and that of the world itself. Ravens and humans share personhood, and through
Ravens agency, places on the landscape were named and made known to humans
(THORNTON 2008).
In the boreal forest regions of Alaska and Canada, certain prey animals
possess a different kind of subjectivity (BRIGHTMAN 1993; NELSON 1983). They
274 Erica Hill

determine whether a hunter will be successful in harvesting them. A number of

taboos surround hunting and butchering; these are part of a religious ontology in
which animals are embodied persons and active participants in a hunt. If a hunter
boasts about his hunting success, for example, animals may be offended and refuse
to come to him the next time he goes out. Similarly, if the process of butchery
is done improperly, the animal in its reincarnated form will avoid the hunter and
spread knowledge of the hunters bad behavior among fellow creatures (LARSEN
1970; NELSON 1983). Animals therefore determine whether or not a village will
have a good winter. If hunting is poor, a ritual specialist, usually with shamanic
characteristics, will determine what caused offense to the animals and prescribe
behaviors to mollify them (LEWIS 2003).
In these examples, animals cannot be considered ritual objects manipulated
by humans. Instead, they are active participants in daily life; they are dynamic
decision makers with the ability to cause great harm. Beliefs about animals
held in these societies are expressed in zooarchaeological patterns that can be
discerned during analysis. In subarctic Alaska, certain elements of the body are
removed in a specific way or a certain order and left at the primary processing site
(NELSON 1983). The absence of these elements at a camp site may therefore have
a religious explanation in addition to or in place of a functional one.

Animals in Myth

A third way to conceptualize animals in ancient religion is to consider their roles

in myth. Deities may take the forms of animals, or they may be animals. Humans
may take animal form and vice versa (ANDERSON 2005: 278). Animals such
as dogs or bears may behave as humans, speaking, marrying, and deceiving as
humans do; dogs and bears may put on the skins or appearance of humans and
impersonate them, a common theme in stories of Eskimo and other arctic groups
(e.g. FIENUP-RIORDAN 1994; LAUGRAND OOSTEN 2008; WILLERSLEV 2007).
Myths may explain the origins of certain animals, or an animal may have a central
role in myth as an ancestor or affine, as the anaconda does in many Amazonian
stories (e.g. RHEM 1996; BIERHORST 2002: 36; NUCKOLLS 2004).
Iconography is one source of information about myth. In some cases,
iconographic representations may be linked to ethnohistoric data or to stories
retained by descendant populations. In her study of Maya cave deposits, Emery
observed that deer were most commonly represented by elements from the left
side of the animal. In Maya cosmology, the left side of the body is associated
 Imagining Animals in Prehistoric Religion 275

with the underworld and the heart (COGGINS 1988; EMERY 2004a). A Maya
ritual is known from several painted vases and codices in which a deer or deer
impersonator is sacrificed and dismembered. In some versions, the blood of the
deer is shown flowing from bones and feeding a plant that sprouts corn cobs,
an image of fertility and renewal. POHL (1981) has argued that the deer was a
prominent supernatural in the Maya pantheon and suggests that deer sacrifice
reenacted a myth involving conflict with a jaguar deity. The deer remains found in
caves may therefore represent the results of the ritual, placed in locations inhabited
by supernaturals. By linking the animal with the myth, we can understand the
deer not just as a ritual offering, but as the embodiment of a deity and as part of a
primordial conflict that ensured cosmic regeneration.
In a final example, Lentacker and colleagues (LENTACKER et al. 2004)
analyzed the remains of a Belgian temple to the god Mithras. On the basis of the
faunal remains, they determined that a ritual feast of domestic fowl had occurred.
Oddly, those birds that could be sexed were males. It is at this point that so many
zooarchaeological studies end. Analysts might suggest that consuming males was
an effective way of keeping a large population of female egg producers, or simply
write off the sex imbalance as some impenetrable ritual decision.
But the investigators extended their argument beyond these points to include
myth and iconography and argued that the domestic fowl, in addition to being a
feast item, was a symbol of central religious importance. In Mithraic myth, the
dawn and the rebirth associated with the rising of the sun are symbolized by the
crowing of a rooster. So, while the consumption of domestic fowl had a caloric
function, and may have been associated with social status, since fowl was a much
desired food item, LENTACKER et al. (2004) make a very convincing argument
that religious beliefs also played a role a major role in the choice of fowl at a
Mithraic feast. Through consumption, diners were remembering, reenacting, and
honoring a primordial event of central importance in their belief system.

Conclusions

In this chapter, I have sought to identify some of the reasons why animals in
prehistoric religions have received so little attention. In particular, I highlighted
the ways in which our interpretations of ancient animal remains reflect Euro-
American values, rather than carefully argued evaluations of the archaeological
evidence, relevant analogs, and the numerous ways in which animals and religion
intersect cross-culturally.
276 Erica Hill

The examples that I discussed above are intended to demonstrate how we

can expand the roles of animals in religion by considering their biology and
behavior, as well as their possible roles as agents and in myth. Because the
Judeo-Christian tradition, and indeed most mainstream religions today, do not
involve animals in any meaningful way, we have been unable to imagine them
creatively in prehistoric religions. Instead, we have taken the roles animals play
in the present as pets, food items, and objects of entertainment and extended
these roles into the distant past. Iconography, myth, and ethnographic evidence
give us a clear indication that animals were incredibly important actors in both
ritual and belief. They could be god-like figures, as in the case of Raven, or they
could be non-human persons, as among the North American Koyukon and Cree
of the boreal forests. In such belief systems, animals are constructed as subjects
and agents that play critical roles in human survival. Their actions directly
affected humans, and humans constructed beliefs, taboos, and rituals to structure
human-animal relationships. Animals in ancient religions were mythic subjects,
non-human agents, and persons; in our reconstructions we must imagine them in
such roles, transforming familiar categories in order to accommodate alternative
human-animal ontologies.

Acknowledgments

I thank Thomas Meier and Petra Tillessen for organizing a symposium at the 2008
EAA meetings in Malta, and for all of the work they have put into publishing this
volume. I also thank John Bintliff for his comments, which have significantly
improved this chapter.

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