We would like to invite you to participate in our session "Studies of
human-animal relationships: new theoretical approaches" at WAC in
Dublin, June 29th - July 4th 2008. The session is under the main theme
"Our changing planet". Our apologies if you have already received this call for papers.

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Session abstract:

A theme at the first WAC conference was Cultural Attitudes to Animals,
including birds, fish and invertebrates. The session resulted in four
important publications.

These volumes include a proliferation of perspectives, ranging from
philosophy to zooarchaeology, and the broad spectrum and theoretical
debates make them invaluable reading to students of animals in human
societies. The aim of this session is to readdress some of the issues
that were raised under the WAC theme from 1986. The human-animal
relationship is a thriving field in many social disciplines today
(exemplified by the wide range of disciplines found in the journals
'Society and Animals' and 'Anthrozöos'). However, not since WAC 1986
has there been such a wide-ranging contribution to the theoretical
development of animal studies in archaeology.

Research on animals in archaeology has mainly been directed towards
subsistence and economy, or the symbolic and ritual roles of animals.
Both approaches tend to treat animals as objects. The symbolic
approaches are essentially emblematic, focusing on human
representations of animals, whereas the zooarchaeological research
tends to focus on animal exploitation rather than human-animal
relations. This instrumental attitude towards nature is tainted by
some general ideas in society at large, caused by the elimination of
animals from everyday experience in modern society. The predicament of
animals has never been more serious than today, as human practices,
such as expanding agriculture and urbanization, now threaten the
animal world as well as the entire global environment.

While the 'new animal geography' has theorised issues such as the
place of animals in urban contexts, its focus has been on the modern
world. Archaeology has the potential to provide a previously lacking
time-depth: the domestication and herding of animals for instance
resulted, and continues to result, in profound changes to
environments, both physically and conceptually. The distribution of
non-human predators in particular has shrunk since the Neolithic; domestic
animals have undergone significant morphological changes. For a
long-term perspective on the often conflicting relations between
humans and their environments a synthesis is needed between
archaeology and disciplines focussing on more recent human-animal
interactions, whether conflicts between farmers and wildlife or
genetic modification. Modern farming practices, often used as a term
of reference by archaeologists, can actually be seen as a historical
anomaly. Prehistoric societies were not populated exclusively by
humans exploiting other species for calories. Rather, we should
acknowledge the fundamental omnipresence of animals in both farming
and hunter-gatherer communities. Humans and animals alike dwell in the
world; they share the same environment and they relate to each other
in it.

Inspired by the WAC volumes from 1989, this session invites papers
that, drawing on multi-disciplinary challenges, aspire to present new
theoretical perspectives or approaches that deal with the social
aspects of the human-animal relationship. Relevant issues might be:

- animals and identity
- cosmological perspectives on animals and the environment
- ontological perceptions of animals
- integration of social life and economy
- practice and belief
- formation of the relationship between humans and animals as part of
wider human-environment interactions.
- using archaeological case studies to inform work on recent
human-animal relations.

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Due to time restraints, we would like to invite 10 minute position
papers, each followed by a 5 minute discussion. Papers should be
circulated in advance.
The deadline to submit an abstract to the WAC webpage is 22. February.
See http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6/index.html
Please let us know if you would like to participate!

Papers from the session will be considered for the forthcoming World
Archaeology volume 42:2 on human-animal relationships. Submission to
this volume is September 2008, and publication will be June 2010.

Best wishes,
Kristin Armstrong Oma (University of Oslo)
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Andrew Shapland (University College London, Institute of Archaeology)
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Anja Mansrud (University of Oslo)
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