This micro-workshop is the second of a series of cross-disciplinary inquiries designed to identify new approaches in the study of animals in history. By forging a conversation around the historical and scientific studies of animal bones, the possibilities for reading animal materiality as historical sources are explored. State of the craft zooarchaeological methods used to characterize ancient to more recent human-animal relations are discussed alongside historical challenges that have informed the reliability of, and relatedly, trust in various scientific practices. The fruition of integrative methods especially prompts workshop participants to explore how new historical puzzles have arisen in animal evolutionary history, or in the history of scientific analyses of animal proteins in connection to understandings of mobility and space.

Talks

Naomi Sykes (University of Exeter): “Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Bio-cultural Issues”

Irina Podgorny (Universidad Nacional de La Plata): “Ossa loquuntur?: Animal Bones and the Humanities in the 19th Century”