I also think this an interesting thread: first because the original post
(I feel) flirts with making the old 'historical error' of assuming that
standards of animal husbandry, or animal rights, now held by people in
developed countries were the norm in past times or past cultures; and this
made me wonder WHAT the young woman's academic counselor could have been
thinking in permitting her to go down that road. But perhaps I
misunderstood.
Second, because Salima's and Julie's comments got me trying to see out of
the ancient butcher's eyes. Surely how you cut up a chicken (or whatever
species) depends upon your mental picture of it as an object. For example,
back when I was in undergraduate school at A-squared and living in
University-sponsored student communal housing, there was a running joke
about letting Deb carve the roast chicken because the event was sure to be
attended by an anatomy lecture which tended to spoil everyone's appetite.
At the opposite extreme are the folks Salima and others mention who cut
the chicken up into chunks "regardless of the joints" -- which leads me to
think that their mental picture is of a uniform block of material, so that
they do the same to the chicken as if they were cutting wood into chunks
suitable to fit into a pit or stove.
Further on the same thought, I wonder if this is why we see no sawn
butchery at Roman Vindolanda. Everything is disjointed, and while there is
indeed hacking, it certainly is not crazy. The butchers were using fairly
heavy, very sharp iron cleavers, and though they did not hit precisely
into the joint space each time, they were obviously aiming for
disarticulation rather than 'chunking'. This is true for all food species
and in all size/weight ranges, i.e. even chickens and suckling piglets.
I've seen good papers in the Roman-era literature showing a skeleton
template of, say, a cow which composites the position of all the cut or
hack-marks observed for the entire assemblage from a given site. On such a
diagram there is a concentration of cuts or hacks at the joints, but there
are also quite a few along the shafts. At Vindolanda, I have very few
cattle long bones (especially humerus, femur, and tibia) that are not
smashed to smithereens, presumably because they were after the bone
marrow. Nonetheless even the smashed bones usually have hacked ends,
indicating that they were disjointed first. Long bones with hack marks in
the middle might thus have been 'baseball specimens', i.e., 'a swing and a
miss'. Because one would really have to swing: with the flesh and sinews
still on, to cut right through all of it takes a fair amount of force,
even with a sharp cleaver. Nonetheless I still wouldn't call this 'crazy'
-- maybe the guy was tired at the end of a long day, or a slave in a hurry
because being harassed, or schlepping where he could get away with it --
these hypotheses or thoughts are more viable than 'crazy' I think. Cheers
all, this is always good fun -- Dr. Deb
> Often a random hacking of the animal, regardless of the joints, was
> done in ancient (and in much of modern) Egypt
> Salima Ikram
>
> On 12 Apr 2011, at 12:31, KIM DAMMERS wrote:
>
>> My example is a far cry from the Iron Age, but here it is. Here is
>> Korea, animals for meat, especially, but not only, chicken, are cut
>> willy-nilly, so that splinters and bone fragments of variable length
>> are the norm. The average restaurant exhibits no standard pattern
>> of cutting. Joints are more-or-less disregarded or perhaps even
>> avoided in cutting up the meat. The cutting for fowl is done with
>> scissors.
>>
>> Kim Dammers
>> Konyang U.
>> Nonsan
>> ROK
>
> Salima Ikram
> Professor of Egyptology
> American University in Cairo
> P. O. Box 74, Road 90, Tagammu 5
> New Cairo 11825, EGYPT
> [log in to unmask]
> Fax: 20227957565
>
>
>
>
>
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