Dear all
I have one ? about the pigs. Do the number of pigs
vary according to the landscape type; example are more
pigs found/breed and preferred near forest areas
sites, and less when you move to sites away from
forest areas (pastral grounds) to say agricultural
areas with less food for pigs or where they are
unwanted for stirring up trouble and beeing to
relatively expensive. Are there more of the other
domesticated animals at the latter sites ?.
Regards from
Jesper S. Østergaard
--- Umberto Albarella <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Dear Ed,
>
> This is a complex issue that is hard to sum up in a
> few words. My feeling is
> that it is difficult to generalise, the impact that
> pigs have on agricultural
> seems - according to historical and anthropological
> literaure - to vary
> enormously according to climate, environment, type
> of agriculture, type of pig
> husbandry and other cultural and ecological
> elements. I think that the issue
> has probably got to be tackled on a regional and
> period basis. To give you an
> example during recent ethnographic work that Filippo
> Manconi and I carried out
> in Sardinia and Corsica (western Mediterranean) it
> became clear that, although
> pigs can cause damage, this is not a big issue in
> that particular area, partly
> because the problem is solved by inserting some iron
> wire in the pig snout, a
> practice that is well known for other areas and
> periods. However, in those
> islands there is a predominant pastoral tradition
> and pig husbandry is
> generally at a small scale. The pigs are also
> extremely small. The story may
> certainly be different in other areas.
>
> This subject in quite hot in connection to two main
> research areas: the
> beginning of pig domestication and the origin of the
> taboo in pork consumption.
> There are a number of articles discussing this in
> the volume
>
> Nelson, S. (ed.), Ancestors for the pigs: pigs in
> prehistory, Philadelphia,
> MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 15.
>
> More papers touching on this subject will be
> published in the proceedings of
> the conference "Pigs and Humans" which was organised
> by the university of
> Durham (UK) last September, and which are now in
> preparation.
>
> There is of course lots of discussion of this in
> most of the classical
> anthropological literature dealing with food taboos.
>
>
> It will eventually be interesting to have on Zooarch
> some further idea of where
> your project is leading you to and what are the
> details of the region you are
> investigating
>
> Cheers,
> Umberto
>
>
> --
> Umberto Albarella
> Dept of Archaeology
> University of Durham
> Durham DH1 3LE, UK
> tel.+44-191-3341153
> fax +44-191-3341101
> http://www.dur.ac.uk/Archaeology/staff/UA/index.htm
>
> "The worst betrayal of intelligence is finding
> justification for the world as it is"
> Jean Guehenno
>
>
> > Dear Umberto:
> >
> > At this point I'm mostly interested in the
> general impact (positive or
> > negative) that pigs have on land reserved for
> agricultural productivity. The
> > reason I ask is that Im exploring alternative
> possiblities (unrelated to pork
> > consumption) as to why ancient communites bothered
> raising pigs.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Ed
>
>
> Quoting Ed Maher <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > >Dear Ed,
> > >Could you please qualify this a little more? Are
> you interested in the
> > actual chemistry of the soil as is affected by
> pigs' manure, or more in
> > general on the impact that pigs can have on
> agricultural land? The latter is
> > a much debaterd issue while for the former I
> suspect that you will have more
> > difficulties in finding information in the
> archaeological or anthropological
> > literature.
> > >Cheers,
> > >Umberto
> >
> >
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
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