Human and Aquatic Beings: Interactions in and beyond the Eastern Mediterranean (3rd—1st Millennia BCE)
About this ebook
The chapters in this volume explore questions related to fishing practices and technologies, social status, human-fish/mollusc relations (including potential over-exploitation), and fish/molluscs in ritual practices (e.g. as temple offerings, festival consumption, burial offerings), and ideology and religion (e.g. associated with supernatural beings or sacred space, as hybrid creatures, and as represented in luxury goods). The volume also examines aquatic species as a nonalimentary resource, for example as jewellery, inlays, dyeing and medicinal purposes. The material under investigation includes faunal remains (worked and unworked), fishing gear and related tools, iconography and written sources. Many chapters also integrate multiple lines of evidence, ranging from stylistic, contextual and iconographic analyses to zooarchaeological investigations. This volume is relevant to archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, biologists and anyone interested in human-animal relations and/or the archaeology of the early Eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions.
About the author
Christina Tsouparopoulou, Assistant Professor in Mesopotamian Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, UKSW Warsaw and Honorary Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Durham University. Main research interests: Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Eastern Mediterranean, religion, popular material culture, text and object, human-animal relations, digital humanities.
Lærke Recht, Professor of Early Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, Department of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Institute of Classics, University of Graz and International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies Research Fellow; Main research interests: Bronze Age Aegean, Cyprus and Near East, human-animal relations, iconography, religion, digital archaeology.
