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Where in the World? Part Two: The Zooarchaeology of Africa - Ep 46
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Welcome to episode two of a miniseries focusing on the zooarchaeology of various world regions. This episode is centred around African zooarchaeology, focusing on the natural history and anatomy of the most prominent wild and domesticated species. Find out more about African Giant Rats, how loud Guinea fowls can be and what a zebrinny is.
Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging
For rough transcripts of this episode go to www.archpodnet.com/animals/46
Links
- Beja-Pereira, A., et al. (2004). African origins of the domestic donkey. Science, 304, 1781.
- Boeyens, J. C., & Van der Ryst, M. M. (2014). The cultural and symbolic significance of the African rhinoceros: a review of the traditional beliefs, perceptions and practices of agropastoralist societies in southern Africa. Southern African Humanities, 26(1), 21-55.
- Marshall, F. (1989). Rethinking the role of Bos indicus in sub-Saharan Africa. Current Anthropology, 30(2), 235-240.
- Parkinson, J. A. (2018). Revisiting the hunting-versus-scavenging debate at FLK Zinj: a GIS spatial analysis of bone surface modifications produced by hominins and carnivores in the FLK 22 assemblage, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 511, 29-51.
- Pikirayi, I. (2018). The demise of Great Zimbabwe, AD 1420–1550: an environmental re-appraisal. In A Green and R Leech (eds) Cities in the World, 1500-2000.Routledge, 31-47..
- Potts, R. (1984). Home Bases and Early Hominids: Reevaluation of the fossil record at Olduvai Gorge suggests that the concentrations of bones and stone tools do not represent fully formed campsites but an antecedent to them. American Scientist, 72(4), 338-347.
- Rossel, S. et al. (2008). Domestication of the donkey: Timing, processes, and indicators. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(10), 3715-3720.
- Shen, Q. et al. (2021). Genomic analyses unveil helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris) domestication in West Africa. Genome biology and evolution, 13(6).
- Stiner, M. C. (2004). Comparative ecology and taphonomy of spotted hyenas, humans, and wolves in Pleistocene Italy. Revue de Paléobiologie, 23(2), 771-785.
- Wylie, D. (2009). Elephant. Reaktion Books
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Message
00:00:00
Speaker
You've been hearing ads for Zencaster these past months. Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Go to zen.ai forward slash the archaeology show and fill out the contact information so Zencaster can help you bring your business story to life. You're listening to the archaeology podcast network.
Exploring Zooarchaeology Globally
00:00:30
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Archaeo Animals, the podcast all about zoarchaeology. I'm your host, Alex Fitzpatrick. And with me, as always, Simona Falanga.
00:00:45
Speaker
And this is the second part of our latest mini series, which we've titled Where in the World because I'm extremely good at titles. And it's finally forcing us to not talk about British stuff and actually look at the other parts of the world because it's there's a world out there beyond the UK, shockingly.
Focus on African Wildlife
00:01:12
Speaker
Once again, dropping truth bombs within two minutes. I know, and I don't think you'll be able to even talk about the Romans in this episode. Are you going to be okay? I don't know. I'm sure I can shove them in somewhere. This is true, yes. We know this as a fact now.
00:01:37
Speaker
But yeah, it's quite good because it's given us a chance to get out of our comfort zones because we are very conscious that both of us being trained and living in the UK, we do tend to get a bit British centric.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, what we've been doing sort of for this mini series that we've broken them up into continents. So we covered Europe in our last one. So feel free to go check it out if you want. And today we'll be looking at Africa, of course, disclaimer as for all of our mini series, you know, these are roughly sort of one hour long episodes. So it is a very broad
00:02:14
Speaker
overview of sort of zoo archaeology in any given continent so so please you know bear that in mind because especially you know with Africa it's a huge continent so we'll do our best with the time we've got.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, so we will be speaking a bit broadly, but we'll make specifics when and where we can. And this will go for the rest of the miniseries. That said, if you're like these episodes and you want us to tackle, say, a specific country or a specific region within these continents, let us know. We love to take episode requests when they come.
African Elephants and Ivory Trade
00:02:51
Speaker
Anyway, let's start with the wild species as we have been doing in the last episode. So Africa is great because we can actually get into some really interesting species that we haven't talked about in previous episodes, starting with the African elephant, which technically refers to two separate species, the African bush elephant.
00:03:16
Speaker
Am I doing the species name again? Every time. Luxadonta fricana. It just sounds right when you say it. It's not going to sound right when my American accent tries and tackles this, and also I did really poorly in Latin when I took it in my undergraduate, so it's a little bit traumatizing for me. Fair enough. I just make them all sound like Roman generals. This is true.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. And arguably the most important part of the elephant from a archeological perspective, if we're just looking at artifactual kind of remains and things like that, is the ivory tusks, which have actually been found as grave goods from burials of important people and leaders of the Ibo Uco in Nigeria.
00:04:08
Speaker
The other subspecies is the African forest elephant.
00:04:13
Speaker
And ivory artwork is also commonly associated with the Kingdom of Congo, located in the lower Congo region of Africa. These also include very elaborately carved side-blown horns called olefins.
00:04:29
Speaker
And these very figurative, again, very elegantly carved scepters. So these are actually really kind of important when we look at the Portuguese colonization of parts of Africa. When Portuguese colonizers and missionaries actually arrived to the continent, many of these kind of ivory artworks would be especially commissioned as gifts and trade.
00:04:56
Speaker
leading them to be referred to by many as the Afro-Portuguese Ivory. So many of them are on display under that kind of name.
Western Gorillas and Primatology
00:05:06
Speaker
And also in terms of a wide species, because another fairly well-known one is the Western gorilla. But again, like the elephant, we do refer to two separate species. She have the Western lowland gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla, Gorilla. Just in case there are any doubts there, Gorilla three times. And the Cross River Gorilla.
00:05:27
Speaker
gory, la gory, la diele. In a way, like we want to cover gorillas, because it gives us an interesting sort of moment to talk about sort of a distant cousin of zoo archaeology. Primatology, which is arguably a branch of physical anthropology. Primatology, of course, specifically studies non-human primates and looks at their interactions between themselves and other species, their behaviors and their evolution over time. These studies, of course, you know, have been
00:05:55
Speaker
crucial to helping us better understand things such as the complexity of guerrilla societies and social groups, as well as their ability to use tools and gather food more easily, which is incredibly fascinating to think of from an archaeological perspective.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, because, you know, we always look at objects, things that look like tools from that kind of anthropocentric perspective, especially obviously in places like the United Kingdom, where we don't really have we don't really have gorillas. And, you know, if you find something that looks like it was used as a tool, you'd be like, oh, you know, is that some kind of warped item, some kind of tool used by humans from long?
00:06:34
Speaker
But it's interesting to think of finding objects. And for gorillas, it's mostly just kind of reworking branches and things like that. But even still, it's interesting to kind of not consider them as tools in that same perspective, even though they technically are.
00:06:51
Speaker
But it's an object that has been shaped to serve a particular or not necessarily reshaped or an object has been repurposed for a particular use with intent. Of course, you see that with a range of sort of primates and you see that in chimpanzees as well, where like tools get utilized for what doesn't look like their apparent purpose, if that makes sense.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just interesting, I guess, to think of if you had, say, a archaeological assemblage. And let's say there were a couple of branches in there that were actually used as tools by gorillas.
00:07:29
Speaker
One, we wouldn't be able to really know, but it's just, is it just funny that that would be kind of in an assemblage of items that could be used as tools and we would just not even consider it because we're very anthropocentric a lot of the times in our work.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yes, we do forget that, you know, like using tools is not a human specialty. I mean, plenty of other issues too. I mean, corvids think I've been proven to use tools. Like I said, they will gather sort of twigs and sticks to like help like extract insects and they will like keep them aside, reuse them later.
Cultural Significance of Lions
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah, there was a really great tweet a couple of weeks ago. Someone pointed out that they found a bottle and a bunch of shells, empty snail shells. And they pointed out, oh, this has been used as a tool by local birds that were smashing the shells against the bottle this whole time.
00:08:28
Speaker
And it's like the little things like that that I find very, very interesting, especially from a zoarchological perspective of trying to be less anthropocentric. I don't know, I like to I like to time my brain and not sometimes I think it's fun, I guess. And also, like I said, this was a great example of primatology, which we don't really talk about, but it is kind of our distant zoarchological cousin in a way.
00:08:57
Speaker
I guess, again, because we tend to be very British-centric, there's not much in the way of primates that isn't human. With the exception, now we know of the one monkey species in Gibraltar.
00:09:08
Speaker
This is true. Yes, of course, that that's the one exception. But especially, I think, as an American who, you know, in America, archaeology and anthropology are very much intertwined. I did a whole semester in primatology. I realized it was not my thing, which is, I guess, kind of ironic, given that I went on to do archaeology, which isn't really that different in some respects. I was kind of just like all the all these monkey bones look the same. I don't get it. And look at me now.
00:09:38
Speaker
I guess they had the last laugh. They're making a great blog post. These bookie modes are all the same, I don't get it. To be fair, the lecture was also at 9am on a Wednesday, so I mean, let's just say I did not show up most of the time, so maybe I missed some of the key classes that taught me how to differentiate between all those bones. I'm a very good student. Anyway, moving on, the other kind of animal I think we all kind of think of when we think of Africa is the lion.
00:10:07
Speaker
Thank you for that. And it's arguably one of the most important animals, both culturally and symbolically across many African cultures. Lions are pretty well represented in depictions across
00:10:25
Speaker
African artifacts, which, you know, makes sense. There's a lot of cultures kind of symbolize lions as being the top of kind of hierarchies in the animal kingdom, the idea of it, you know, king of the jungle type things, associating it with strength and rulership. Although I also know that in some East African cultures in particular, in East African folklore,
00:10:51
Speaker
The lion is considered a very lazy creature and is often the butt of some jokes in terms of being slow and lazy and not fussed to get up and things like that.
00:11:07
Speaker
Well, yeah, that is the funny thing is that that's probably that's much closer to the actual realities of the lion. But it's interesting to see that kind of difference across cultures. And of course, historically, hunting of lions is very long documented with the reasons for it also varying across cultures in ancient Egypt. For example, lion hunting was mostly reserved for pharaohs.
00:11:33
Speaker
And among the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania, line hunting is actually kind of seen as a rite of passage. And I believe it's still seen as that among the remaining Maasai that are located there.
Rhinos in African Communities
00:11:48
Speaker
So it's really interesting to see the line kind of vary across cultures, across the African continent.
00:11:55
Speaker
Another one that we chose in terms of wild animals is the white rhino. Oof, that's a mouthful. Charatotherium simum. It is the largest extant species of rhino for now, alas. Again, the trend continues, which has two subspecies, the southern white rhino and the rarer northern white rhino, which I think is now sort of functionally extinct.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, I believe there's only like a handful, if not like very few left in and I believe they're almost all in captivity, maybe. Yeah, but I guess like not enough to sort of sustain a healthy population. No, definitely not.
00:12:40
Speaker
But anyway, I think probably going to see a lot of that like over like sort of all the continents that we're going to cover in all fairness. So but yes, so analysis of iron age and historical African farming communities in southern Africa has led to interpretation that rhinos were both symbolically significant. And that's based on sort of artificial evidence just clay and gold rhino figurines, but also significant on a domestic context based on the skeletal remains that were found sort of in
00:13:08
Speaker
settlements or domestic conflicts in general. So we have uncovered horns, hide, meat, which were likely used for food and goods to trade.
00:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, it is actually really interesting because I think also as two people who are not connected to the African continent and have a lot more unfamiliarities in comparison to when we tackled Europe, a lot of these are kind of uses of animals that I think neither of us would have maybe thought of immediately. No.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, and like, so it's interesting, I never would have thought white rhino or rhinoceros in general to be used for meat per se. And I think that speaks maybe to a kind of broader cultural difference in terms of, you know, a lot of times I think when we think of animals, especially African animals, and again, with the disclaimer that we do not do work on the African continent, we all I don't know about you, but I always kind of think of
00:14:16
Speaker
African animals in the present tense, because especially if you're thinking about the work that's done here in the UK, a lot of that work is that kind of conservation work, you know, zoos, things like that. Yeah, you tend to think of them as in now, and not sort of what the exploitation of the rhino would have been in the Iron Age.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that we'll go across a lot of the other continents that we aren't necessarily as familiar with, you know, or don't have a familiarity with working with them in that, you know, because we don't think about them archaeologically, it's interesting to kind of delve into the research has been done, or has been done on a lot of these animals and think about how you know, how they're fought in the past.
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, because I think like the exception, the only time we would seen this species would perhaps be in the Roman period. There you go. Where animals would get brought over sort of to fighting arenas, which again, yeah, more happy things.
00:15:16
Speaker
Well, I guess this isn't really that happy. It's kind of happy, maybe. But our last species... Sorry, like maybe my sarcasm wasn't properly conveyed. Well, I mean, this last species is kind of happy. It's the spotted hyena. Yes, crocuta, crocuta.
00:15:35
Speaker
And it also kind of fits into what we were just talking about with thinking about these animals in the present tense versus the past, because we actually have evidence of the spotted hyena
Hyenas and Archaeological Significance
00:15:46
Speaker
in the past, in the Pleistocene here in the UK.
00:15:52
Speaker
I don't think we've actually covered the spotted hyena in general though, but even though... I think we've looked at them because we have a Pleistocene, sort of Pleistocene species episode. So we covered sort of the subspecies, you can call it that, that was found throughout Europe, which is crocuta crocuta spelea, sorry, the cave hyena.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Yeah, now it's coming back to me. But even though we did cover that in a European context, that was back in the Pleistocene. But today, and of course, in the past, hyenas were actually a major taphonomic agent in sub-Saharan Africa. As scavengers, they actually produce very distinctive assemblages of skeletal remains with identifiable gnawing and associated droppings.
00:16:39
Speaker
And yeah, that's why they're terrifying to me, is how they can really go out of bone and leave these very distinctive kind of skeletal, remain assemblages. And I don't want that happening to me, to be honest. I think they're in equal parts, beautiful and terrifying, like the honey badger.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yes, exactly. But it is interesting to think about how, you know, if you have an assemblage of kind of scattered prey remains, you could easily think of it as, oh, it's the spy Hyena and how they transform their own kind of assemblages. Because they have essentially long story short, they've got the Carnassials from Doom. Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
basically I guess will be like the last premolar sort of lower premolar in the upper first molar, big carnassials. And as we kind of think about how scary that is, I think we'll take a break and we'll move on in our next segment onto the domesticates.
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Speaker
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Domesticates in Africa
00:19:43
Speaker
Welcome back to Arceo Animals. This episode, we're talking about the zoo archaeology of Africa, and we are on the second segment. So we will be talking about the domestic kits that are normally found in this continent.
00:19:58
Speaker
mean, there might be some repetition here and there, because as we discussed in our previous episode of the mini series about Europe, the same sort of common domesticates do tend to spread around the entire globe. But we've tried our best to find some some species that are either predominantly found in Africa or were domesticated on the continent. And we will start with the
00:20:26
Speaker
Dromedary, which is also known as the Arabian Camel. It was probably first domesticated about 4,000 years ago in the Arabian Peninsula, but it is now widespread in other places such as the Sahara Desert. And we have actually talked about camels in a previous episode,
00:20:48
Speaker
Yes, I guess the main physical difference that comes to mind is that the camel will have two humps while the dromedary will only have one. Which is, you know, something that I would never have thought about. But again, it's that kind of bias that we will come across in basically every single episode that isn't about Europe or I guess maybe in my case, I'll be able to kind of remember things from North America.
00:21:15
Speaker
But, you know, it's those little things that you're just like, oh, never would have thought about that. And I think we also kind of see that when it comes to the many, many subspecies of many of these animals. Yeah, because I mean, I guess the full name of the dromedary will be the Arabian one-humped riding camel. But that's a mouthful.
00:21:38
Speaker
And as I said, we did cover camels, so there's not that much difference in terms of what they are as domesticates. They have a variety of uses, as you just said, transports, the riding camel.
00:21:56
Speaker
for ploughing, draft animals, beasts of burden, for milking, and for meat and wool. And also sometimes for leather, although it is apparently a terrible form of leather that comes out of a dramatic hide. Merle Well, I guess it's just one of those things you make the most out of the animals you have at your disposal. Sarah Yeah, for sure.
00:22:22
Speaker
Now our next one is the zebu, just Bostaurus indicus, which is actually a subspecies of the domestic cattle. As you can see, you know, Bostaurus is the species name of domesticated cattle, with sort of a subspecies being indicus, which makes sense as this subspecies of cattle actually originates from the southeast of Asia, and has since spread to the African continent.
00:22:48
Speaker
you can generally find depictions of the Zeborn pottery found in Egypt, which suggests that actually the subspecies may have been present there since about 2000 BC, with then further introductions to sub-Saharan Africa taking place around 700 AD, and eventually reaching all the way to the Horn of Africa by the year 1000 AD.
00:23:09
Speaker
In a way, as you expect, the Zebu looks very similar to domesticated cattle, but actually they're not as milk-bearing as most of the cattle breeds we'd know of, unless they get specifically crossbred with other cattle species, with milk production in mind. They're not heavy milkers, which is a term that Alex taught us in the last episode.
00:23:31
Speaker
Now another difference with other cattle or your generic cattle include a very characteristic hump and ruby ears as well as of course you know a much better tolerance for hotter and drier climates which makes this particular subspecies more suitable to Africa and Asia. They also have very
00:23:50
Speaker
big neck folds, which I find extremely cute. They're very adorable looking. If you don't know what a zebu looks like, please Google it. They're very adorable looking, a little hump. They got the little droopy ears. I kind of sad we don't have zebu in Europe. We kind of do. I probably in zoos or something, but they're just really cute.
00:24:17
Speaker
I guess maybe they could just about cope in the Mediterranean area, because I guess in terms of landscape, it is in terms of vegetation and climate, it is quite close to the North African countries, but probably not much beyond that. Yeah, I believe the other thing I read about them is that they're also very resistant to a lot of different parasites, so they seem to really be pretty sturdy, sturdy cattle.
00:24:47
Speaker
Heavy milkers, not so much. But otherwise, pretty sturdy cattle with droopy ears. Anyway, moving on to a domesticated fowl, we have the guinea fowl. More specifically, we have the helmeted guinea fowl.
Guinea Fowl in African Culture
00:25:07
Speaker
Numida meleagris.
00:25:09
Speaker
which has actually been introduced across the world as a domesticated species, but actually originates from southern Africa. And they're often kept as free-ranging poultry and are actually apparently much more protein-rich than other domestic fowl, including chicken, and also much richer eggs, apparently.
00:25:32
Speaker
It's the one upside of keeping guinea fowl as well, because they are loud creatures. Are they? Oh, they are so loud. Like just easily started and then when they start going, oh man. I don't think I've actually seen guinea fowl, so I would not have known. But yeah, that sounds horrible, I guess.
00:25:59
Speaker
I think like where I'm from, we actually call them like Pharaoh chickens. Really? Which I guess it makes sense. You know, they are very bright. They're fabulous looking birds. They are, yeah. Bright blue and red heads and then just they just scream.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, I was looking at some pictures, as you do during my lunch break at work, and one of my co-workers was like, oh, why are you looking at peacocks? And I was like, no, they're guinea fowl. Like, not actually, it's a guinea fowl. Actually, it's a guinea fowl. Actually, it's a helmeted guinea fowl. Yeah, even more specific, how dare you?
00:26:39
Speaker
But I kind of get why. Depending on what guinea fowl you're looking at, they do kind of have like those really bright colors that you would kind of associate with peacocks. And yeah, they're very interesting looking. But as Simona said, extremely loud. So, you know, if you're thinking of getting a guinea fowl, proceed with caution, I guess. But perhaps more interesting and surprising to me was that
00:27:04
Speaker
the actual origins of domestication in Africa have only kind of recently been examined. And by recently, I mean, this paper only came out last year, which I guess it was kind of funny because I always kind of knew a guinea fowl as a domesticated fowl. So it's very interesting that they've only kind of recently done the genetic research. So apparently this is just a date for, you know, the actual kind of
00:27:33
Speaker
separation of species on a genetic level is somewhere in between 3500 BC and 900 AD in West Africa, and it was a single event domestication.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. It's always changing our knowledge of the past, especially with domestication, I guess, because we only kind of just have the fancy AD&A kind of work and things like that.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, Murray on from, uh, galliforms onto one that I guess is probably not going to be as a well-known is the African giant rat, which actually refers to several species. But the one we'll be looking at specifically is the Southern giant pouch rat. So creature Tommy's answer J.
00:28:35
Speaker
I could not correct you as we've been through. I'm really deferring to you on these pronunciations for the Latin, but... Just not 100% where the accent falls there, but I hope. It's fine.
00:28:50
Speaker
But actually, in many rural areas, giant rats actually represent a fairly significant source of meat and protein.
Giant Rats and Contemporary Domestication
00:28:59
Speaker
More often than not, they tend to be hunted or caught, although you do get domesticated giant rats being kept, including and being kept as pets.
00:29:10
Speaker
also like recently have been utilized for sort of like more, so day to day like modern purposes, such as detecting landmines and tuberculosis, just remarkable, they detect tuberculosis.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, kind of stemming off what we were just talking about with the Guinea foul in terms of, you know, our understanding of the past is always changing. The past processes like domestication are also continuously still working and changing and kind of transforming even today. And the giant rat thing is actually really interesting, especially because I believe
00:29:46
Speaker
there was there's a nonprofit that started this whole training African giant rats to detect land mines, which is unfortunately a huge problem in places in Africa. And then they realized that they could also take those rats and have them detect tuberculosis. Sarah, because I definitely read about the land mines, but yeah, tuberculosis, I mean,
00:30:13
Speaker
I think it's still somewhat kind of recent. But yeah, and I was also thinking the landmine issues must be, you know, obviously it's a horrible issue for any person. But I also assume that it must be something you really have to kind of do as preliminary work if you're going to do archaeological excavation in Africa, in some place in Africa as well. So do they release giant rats?
00:30:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, they are heroes. And I believe that's how they refer to them as hero rats, which is how they should be referred to, because that's better work than I could ever do in my lifetime, to be completely honest. Like, it would be a big deal if I could detect landmines or tuberculosis. And these rats can do both. So.
00:31:07
Speaker
icons. Yeah, good for you African Giant Rat. We salute you here at Archio Animals.
00:31:15
Speaker
But yeah, it's always interesting to kind of think about more modern kind of approaches to, I guess, kind of approaches to domestication, but more of just kind of finding new avenues that domestication works through, if that makes sense. But kind of going backwards to a more old school
00:31:39
Speaker
form of domestication.
Donkeys in African History
00:31:41
Speaker
It's an old friend. An old friend, who I believe we talked about in the last episode. We have indeed. So, but you know what? Who cares? It's our podcast. We can do whatever we want. It's the donkey. We're doing donkeys again. Why not? A bit of an echos africanos asinos.
00:32:02
Speaker
But we have a good reason for doing them again. And that is because they were likely first domesticated in the fourth millennium BC in Northeast Africa, probably stemming from the Nubian subspecies. So the Echos africanos africanos. And the Somalians. And the African twice. Yes. And yes, and the Somalian is Echos africanos somaliensis.
00:32:28
Speaker
So those two subspecies of African wild eyes, so they were probably the kind of ancestors of the modern day domesticated donkey. And given that they were probably first domesticated in this area, they were likely first used by Nubian pastoral groups as pack animals. And eventually they would become one of the main vehicles for long distance trade in Egypt and
00:32:54
Speaker
Their importance to Egyptian culture and more specifically to Egyptian royalty would actually be seen in the kind of interpretations that came from the remains of donkeys that have been found in Abydos, which is an area in Egypt that has several
00:33:17
Speaker
different kind of royal graves. A lot of these tombs aren't actually identified to specific kings, specifically the one that I'm talking about has not been identified to a specific king, although it's probably one of the early Egyptian kings, likely around the period of rulers such as Narmer.
00:33:40
Speaker
And yeah, so they found, I believe it was three donkeys found in situ, completely, you know, full bodied donkeys found in their own bespoke grave chamber of a unknown early Egyptian king in a manner that's actually kind of associated with more high ranking humans, I believe, in other grave chambers associated with this one tomb they found
00:34:09
Speaker
remains of people who are probably high ranking officials and kind of close advisors and associates with whoever this Egyptian king was. So, I mean, that's, that's high praise, I think. Merle Yes, the high praise indeed for the humble donkey. Sarah I mean, they probably deserve it. Donkeys do a lot. They may not detect landmines and tuberculosis, but they're cute.
00:34:38
Speaker
They do a lot of hard work, they're also very stubborn, but so am I, so who am I to judge? Yeah, big mood as the youth say. Big old mood. And I guess more importantly, and this is what we'll end this segment on, because I need to, we need to talk about this, Simona. We've kind of touched upon in the past, you know, that you can cross speed donkeys.
00:35:01
Speaker
And turns out that they have cross-breeded bread, cross-breed, cross-breeded bread. Cross-bread. Cross-bread. I know, I know how to speak. Donkeys and
00:35:17
Speaker
zebras. I almost said zebras, but I am American. And I have to remind myself that sometimes. Donkeys and zebras, and we have to highlight this because they have a variety of names that I need to, I need to get out there into the ether. So a male zebra and a female donkey across are referred to as zonkeys, zebroids, zebras.
00:35:44
Speaker
and male donkey and female zebras are known as zebra hinnies.
00:35:50
Speaker
and zebra knees. Yes, it's very exciting news. And they have actually been used as pack animals in Africa, in wars, they have been used to carry arsenal and things like that. And more broadly, kind of uses a bit of a curiosity in places like zoos. But I mean, they're also part like of the other section, you know, beyond, remember it was beyond the waterfowl collection, here's my zebra collection.
00:36:19
Speaker
Well, no, it's a zonky collection. And of course, you know, the whole reason why these species can all interbreed is because Zebra also belongs to the genus Echos, which is also known as the same genus as the donkey and the horse. And now the zonky. So while you think about zonkies, which is exciting to me, we will take a break and we will come back with our case studies.
00:36:49
Speaker
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00:37:18
Speaker
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00:37:47
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. We are talking about the zoo archaeology of Africa in this episode. And as always, everyone's favorite part of the episode, I'm not going to spend too much time on it because this bit is probably getting old. It's the case studies.
00:38:14
Speaker
But yeah, so we are going to talk about two different sites that are probably very important.
Olduvai Gorge and Human Evolution
00:38:22
Speaker
in African archaeology, obviously. There are loads of sites in Africa. It's very difficult to pick, just two. But I figured the first one that we talk about is pretty important. Arguably one of the most important archaeological and anthropological sites in the entire world. It is Uldivoy Gorge in Tanzania. So if you're not familiar with Uldivoy Gorge,
00:38:51
Speaker
It is the site where one of the earliest human species, Homo habilis, was originally settled, and they would eventually be followed by Paranthropus boise, Homo erectus, and finally Homo sapiens.
00:39:10
Speaker
Understandably, Aldevoy Gorge is a pretty significant site for understanding human evolution, as well as the development of social and communal behaviours among human species.
00:39:25
Speaker
I think speaking again as someone who was a anthropology major in America, I think Oldboy Gorge is one of those sites you really tend to talk a lot about and haven't really had a chance to kind of think back about the site since kind of moving to the UK and doing my stuff there.
00:39:46
Speaker
It's extremely cool. Simona, I don't know if you've ever really kind of covered this before and your study user. No, like I've independently read about it because it's very cool.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess, you know, I can't really speak for the way archaeology is taught on an undergraduate level here in the UK. I don't know if it's really kind of talked about because, like I said, in America, archaeology and anthropology are very much intertwined. So a lot of my early archaeology and anthropology courses, we talked a lot about this site. And like I said, it's for a very good reason. It is a
00:40:30
Speaker
Like I said, one of the most important anthropological and archaeological sites in the entire world. But we won't be talking about human evolution, not only because I still don't really understand it. There's a lot of species names in
00:40:48
Speaker
physical anthropology that I cannot pronounce and hard for me to remember all of them. And that is why I didn't do very well in my physical anthropology classes. But yeah, let's talk more about the animal remains, which I guess I've never even really thought about because again, it is such an important human evolution site that when we were doing research for this episode, I was like, Oh, yeah, there would be animal species represented at this
00:41:14
Speaker
site, huh? It's just something that doesn't immediately come to mind. Like, for instance, like in a previous episode about Europe, we had Pompeii as one of the case studies. And of course, everyone's heard of Pompeii, but you don't your mind doesn't necessarily go to, so what animals did they keep a Pompeii? Yeah, that is true. And it's kind of a shame, I guess. I mean, I think it kind of speaks to that.
00:41:39
Speaker
I guess it's like a bit of an issue in archaeology in terms of, you know, what actually gets press, what gets remembered. It's always a very flashy kind of, you know, and again, a lot of times it is human nature. It's stuff that's related to humans. So say like when we were talking about Pompeii, the thing that people remember are those plaster casts of the bodies left behind. You don't necessarily think of, oh, and of course there were
00:42:07
Speaker
Rooster remains in one of the houses, you know? And I guess Aldevoy Gorge is the same thing. We think a lot about the humanoid kind of remains that are so important to how we understand and conceptualize human evolution. And no one thinks, hey, I wonder if there are animals there. So are you saying that humans are being anthropocentric?
00:42:37
Speaker
I mean, it's a hot take, I know, and no one's ever said this, but as longtime listeners know, I say the things people are afraid to say, and I guess I would say humans might be a bit anthropocentric.
00:42:55
Speaker
only ever so slightly. Just a little bit. But, you know, this is why this podcast exists. We are here to look into the zoo archaeological stuff that people don't know about.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, so there are actually a fair number of species present at Old Avoy Gorge. Most of them are kind of mammalian animals, particularly large ones, so zebras, hippos, rhinos, antelopes, pigs, giraffes, elephants, crocodiles.
00:43:29
Speaker
and other kind of aquatic species, some different fish who we will not think about too much because, as everyone knows, I have a vendetta against fish, and various primate species. And kind of interesting in that group are the antelopes. They are the most represented among large mammal species at this site. And this is actually kind of echoed at contemporary sites across East Africa.
00:43:57
Speaker
The kind of main important part of the zoarchaeological stuff at Aldevoy Gorge is actually, I mean, I guess it is a bit anthropocentric, but it's a major part of a long-standing debate over whether or not the hominids hunted or scavenged these animal remains, which we can examine via taphonomic evidence. With the answer being probably both.
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah, ain't that just the way? Yeah, because of course the butchery marks that were found, they're indicative of deflashing. So humans did have access to remains before any carnivores' scavengers, likely through hunting the animals themselves.
00:44:39
Speaker
And the element composition of the assemblages at Aldoy Gorge seemed to favor kind of those meat heavy elements, which could be evidence of, say, you know, transportation of slight elements, the ones that did have those meat heavy elements. You're going to want to grab those and go for a nice chow down, you know.
00:45:03
Speaker
this is like one of the theories that we have in zoarchaeology, sort of like the meat utility index, circles where certain elements would be favored over others based on how much, you know, meat utility each element has. But of course, at the same time, that doesn't necessarily bear in mind, you know, so certain cultural variants, because while a particular element may not be particularly meat bearing, it would be favored by a specific culture over another, I mean, like a
00:45:32
Speaker
I guess a modern day example would be that people really like chicken wings, but in terms of meat utility, not that much there, but people love them. Yeah, and you know, looking at something so deep into the past, we're looking at early hominids, really don't know what's going on there, like even at that kind of cultural
00:45:53
Speaker
level, you know, so it really is up in the air for in terms of that kind of evidence for hunting. Now, on the flip side, we do have kind of the evidence for scavenging. So there are carnivore gnaw marks.
00:46:09
Speaker
And I believe Pat Shipman, who's an archaeologist, made the point that it seems like the gnaw marks were likely made prior to the kind of cut marks that are found on these bones. There's also the fact that these assemblages were in places that are very easily accessible to both humans and carnivorous predators. And we just talked about the hyenas and how, as a taphonomic agent, they would drag
00:46:35
Speaker
animals to, you know, their dens and have that kind of collection of remains there. And the fact that humans and animals could actually, you know, get to these assemblages kind of gives, you know, evidence for the fact that it may be humans coming to these little pits of animals that are half eaten and picking off the rest of them. And there's also the presence of marrow breaking marks
00:47:04
Speaker
that are found on all these animal bones. This is actually pointed out by Lewis Binford, who of course loves to talk about marrow breaking marks. It may be more evidence towards scavenging as if you're scavenging for any kind of meat like this, you're going to want to use as much as possible and that includes breaking the bone to get to that marrow.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, very brave. Yeah, no, exactly. So you kind of if you're gonna risk life or death for that, you might as well get the most out of it. And of course, going back to sort of a taphonomic marks that indicate marrow extraction, by that we mean is sort of a particular way in which the bone is shattered, so like heated with sort of a percussive kind of element. And so the way it shatters indicates that it was
00:48:00
Speaker
hit to get to the marrow. Yes. Of course, it's a lot easier these days because you just tend to saw the bone off and get the marrow that way. But that's too easy.
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah, and man, did I really look at Binford's work on Marrow breakage and Marrow extraction for my PhD. So I have a very good idea what he's talking about with that. Now we have evidence for both sides. What's the truth? Well, it may be a mixture of the two. One of the more recent kind of
00:48:35
Speaker
interpretations I've seen put forth is that it could be that the humans, the early human species were potentially hunting smaller mammals, but they would scavenge the larger ones that have already been killed by predators. And a lot of this has been kind of interpreted through more experimental archaeology that has been done looking at survivorship of bones and taphronomic frequencies,
00:49:00
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it seems to be something that we may not really kind of get the, you know, quote unquote, true from because it's, it's very much based on timing, because it really is kind of chicken and egg almost, you know. And again, like, as with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Because like, if they were already hunting, you know, like, okay, you hunt your smaller mammals, your antelope, but then you see like an antelope that's literally right there. And someone's done all the work for it already, you will take advantage of that.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Simona, what do you think after hearing kind of both sides of the debate? I think I'm going with both. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's kind of a cop out, but...
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like, you actually make a really good point of your hunting and gathering for your survivor. You don't really have the choice to kind of pick or choose per se. If you find something that has already been kind of done, but there's still meat on that bone, you know, you'll probably pick it up.
00:50:04
Speaker
And also, like, if it's a predator that you can scare off relatively easily, not because humans are threatening in any way, shape or form, you know, like, just looking at a human like, oh, it's this thing standing upright below with, you know, no fangs or claws or anything. However,
00:50:22
Speaker
at the same time, like, is it necessarily worth it to pick a fight with this animal and utilize some of my resources and potentially get injured and not necessarily worth it. So some predators might just, you know, go. Yeah. And then that's a follow me for more like biology.
00:50:42
Speaker
Moving on, we will look at our second case study, which is the zookeology of Great Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe is unsurprisingly located in Zimbabwe. It's a medieval site, which is located in Masvinco in the province of Zimbabwe.
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah, and it just seems really interesting, again, to kind of look at a site that is technically a medieval site because of those kind of biases that are built into not only the both of us who are located in the UK, but also in, I guess, our training as well and the way we've been brought up in terms of learning about world history.
Great Zimbabwe and Medieval Trade
00:51:26
Speaker
I can say very clearly I never really got
00:51:30
Speaker
Any kind of education on the history of the African continent or even say like the Asian continent really so it's very easy to kind of not even think about these different time periods but yeah great Zimbabwe was a very important medieval site.
00:51:49
Speaker
And it was kind of similar to our last episode when we talked about BERCA. It was probably a major trade center as well. So there is evidence of long distance trade, including in the presence of Chinese and Islamic material goods, and also local trade, as there is a lot of goods from Central Africa.
00:52:13
Speaker
So at its height, it was actually a massive capital of probably a more powerful state with at least I believe the population numbers is about 20,000 people at its height settled within its territory, which is huge.
00:52:30
Speaker
So really, especially for the time period, would have been a very sort of substantial population, though the site actually originates from sort of earlier Iron Age agricultural communities. So of course, unsurprisingly, much of the zoological record that we have found is concerned with domesticates. So you do see sort of certain trends in terms of the species that you observe sort of throughout the time periods. For instance, during the early Iron Age, the most prevalent domesticates was actually sheep.
00:52:59
Speaker
But then as time goes by, you see them sort of being overshadowed by cattle, which then sort of goes on to represent the vast majority of the domestic assemblage among these agricultural communities. I think cattle are actually sort of
00:53:15
Speaker
Fairly important for people of great Zimbabwe, as much of their wealth was obtained through the control of cattle herds in the region. For example, they would reward gold miners with cattle, thus using the gold as part of their extensive trade network.
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah, and there's still kind of debate and research going on, looking at the reasons for the eventual decline and abandonment of the sites as they're not really that clear, but it's probably due to the kind of environmental impacts of both this large scale cattle herd management, as well as the kind of immense pressures that you would get from this extremely long distance trade. Again, you know, going as far as getting Chinese goods, that's
00:53:58
Speaker
pretty massive trade. And it's interesting to kind of think of animals as economically important beyond per se the labor and the kind of secondary products that we get from them.
00:54:14
Speaker
you know, in this case, we kind of see how they're a form of currency to kind of support this gigantic trade system. So, I mean, I guess this is the good thing about doing a series like this, where we actually get to kind of see these really interesting, different kind of perspectives and different case studies of places that we would never usually talk about because, you know, we're very comfortable in our our British shells, I guess.
00:54:40
Speaker
But I think that does it for this episode. As always, you can find us on Twitter at archaeoanimals. If you have an idea for a future episode for us to cover, if there's something you want us to look more into, you know, just tweet at us, let us know. As always, you can like and subscribe and review us on wherever you get your podcasts.
00:55:06
Speaker
tell a friend, tell them to follow us, and hey, maybe even join the Archaeology Podcast Network as a member and you might find some bonus bits and bobs from us.
00:55:43
Speaker
Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.
00:55:49
Speaker
Thanks for listening!
00:55:54
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:56:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Please consider joining our growing core of members over at arcpodnet.com slash members. If you liked what you heard, consider leaving a review wherever you're listening to this.