Ram’s head beads are well-known items of personal adornment in the Dolenjska Hallstatt cultural group. Recent analysis has demonstrated that they are the most common zoomorphic artefacts in this ...region with 187 currently known. This article updates the list of known beads and contextualizes their significance in the Dolenjska Hallstatt cultural group. It is argued that the sheep imagery of these beads and their distribution in female graves is related to local textile production. It is proposed that beads signalled aspects of personal and economic identity for Dolenjska Hallstatt women related to the production of high-quality textiles. In addition, the distribution of these beads demonstrates Iron Age community networks on the western frontier of Dolenjska, and perhaps even reflects the movement of women between communities.
There is a rich iconographic tradition demonstrating the importance of animals in ritual in the Dolenjska Hallstatt archaeological culture of Early Iron Age Slovenia (800–300 bce). However, the role ...of animals in mortuary practice is not well represented iconographically, though faunal remains in graves indicate that their inclusion was an integral part of funerary performance. Here, animal bones from burials are compared to images of animal sacrifice, focusing on the ritual distinctions between the deposition of whole animal bodies versus animal parts. It is proposed that human–animal relationships were a key component of funerary animal sacrifice in these multispecies communities. The deposition of whole horses may have been due to a personal relationship with the deceased human. In turn, the sacrifice of an animal and division of its parts may have been essential for the management of group ties with the loss of a community member. Particular elements such as teeth, horns, and claws may have served as amulets—perhaps indicating that these were personal items that had to be placed in the grave with the deceased or that the deceased needed continued protection or other symbolic aid.
Summary
In later prehistory horse ownership was a manifestation of wealth and physical prowess, and demonstrated access to distant lands. Because of the expense and restricted availability of horses, ...they are often reduced to indicators of status without more nuanced considerations of how lived human‐horse interactions enmeshed them in these status displays. To complicate the simple horse/status object equivalence, this article presents a specific case for the symbolic and social significance of horses in Early Iron Age south‐eastern Slovenia through the lens of equine iconography, and argues that horses and particularly equestrianism were essential to embodying elite masculine identity. Broadly, this article seeks to move beyond equating high‐status goods with high‐status people by discussing how particular events, bodily abilities and human‐animal relationships were all intertwined in the materialization of social distinction for a particular group.
Depictions of birds are overrepresented in the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture, and appear on over a quarter of artefacts depicting animals. A wide variety of artefacts with birds have been found ...primarily in graves, and crosscut gender, status, and age. However, poor preservation of zooarchaeological remains has made reconstructions of lived human-bird interactions difficult. This study uses ecological and ethological data, combined with local imagery, to provide insight into prehistoric human-bird interfaces in this area, and the cultural conceptions surrounding these interactions. Birds would have been a constant presence in the lives of Dolenjska Hallstatt people; however, human relationships with them were based more on observation than direct interaction. Birds were ubiquitous in imagery, and it is proposed that this stemmed from Dolenjska Hallstatt conceptions of birds as important observers of human actions, ritual mediators, and possibly guides or guardians. Their differences from humans and other animals distinguished them - they were set apart, and depictions highlighted non-normative behaviours. Birds in the Dolenjska Hallstatt worldview were more than animals, ascribed extraordinary capabilities that made them ritually potent and richly symbolic creatures.
This dissertation investigates the place of animals in the cultural world of Early Iron Age southeastern Slovenia (800-300 BCE) by analyzing animal iconography and faunal remains in archaeological ...contexts. The central questions are: What types of human-animal relationships characterized Early Iron Age Slovenia, and how were these relationships intertwined with conceptions about animals in local cultural frameworks? I examine the conception of the animal world and its symbolic significance through quantitative and qualitative analyses of animal depictions on artifacts as well as faunal remains from mortuary contexts. The analysis is structured to answer a series of empirical questions that provide insight into the central questions posed above. These include: 1) In what contexts do animal depictions and zooarchaeological remains appear and is there any patterning within or between these datasets? 2) Are there any differences in the representation or treatment of certain animals based on taxon? 3) Are any of these representational artifacts or taxa preferentially associated with elites or other identifiable social roles? This holistic analysis reveals how ideologies and practice were co-constituted in the construction and maintenance of human-animal relationships and how conceptions of animals were deployed in symbolic communication through the medium of artistic representation. The use of multiple lines of evidence provides a robust framework, both materially and theoretically, to address ancient beliefs and practices regarding animals. The juxtaposition of representational practices and the remains of physical interactions with animals evidenced by the zooarchaeological remains provides insight into multiple aspects of prehistoric animal relations – the real and the ideal(ized). This highlights the multifaceted nature of human-animal relationships and the fundamental role played by material culture in these interactions, where multiple complementary, competing, or even contrasting ideologies and modes of practice may exist simultaneously in the same cultural sphere, and are negotiated through time. This project contributes to a growing literature on how animals and humans are intertwined in preindustrial societies conceptually as well as physically – good to think as well as good to eat, sacrifice, or depict.
Assembling animals Adrienne C. Frie
Incomplete Archaeologies,
03/2016
Book Chapter
What possibilities are there for understanding how animals were conceptualized in prehistory, and what modes of practice, relationships, materials, and bodies were implicated in such conceptions? ...Here I would like to add to the ongoing discussion of assembling as a contingent, complex, and open-ended project by investigating how interactions with, representations of, and ideas about animals were brought together in mortuary ritual in the Early Iron Age of south-eastern Slovenia.
The intriguing aspect of assemblages is that despite their often heterogeneous nature, we usually presume that the elements encompassed by them were brought together by something beyond random chance. This
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