ANTH 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Somali Wild Ass, Botai Culture, Chalcolithic
3 Jun 2018
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Tuesday, May 1, 2018 Lecture Notes
Pigs
• Pigs for the Ancestors- Ethnography in New Guinea (Tsembaga)
o Pigs are the most important domestic animal, and rituals are intricately
symbolized through them.
o Most ritual occasions are marked by pig slaughter, including a yearly
cycle with special events, but most dramatically by a year-long festival
called the Kaiko, that happens every 5-20 years, depending upon the size,
composition, and growth of the pig herd.
• Pigs- a useful domesticate
o Pigs eat root crops that can’t be easily used by people. They also benefit
the development of secondary forest on a site owing to their thinning of
trees and herbs. They also help to soften the soil through the use of their
snouts.
o In a settlement, they also eat garbage, converting waste into usable matter.
• Why intensify pig production?
o Energy is not the only purpose of subsistence- humans need minerals,
vitamins, and proteins. Grains are better at this than starchy root crops.
o Pigs eat domesticated plants and transform the carbohydrates into fat and
protein (pigs are 10.9% protein and 27% fat). Sweet potatoes are 0.9-
1.7%/0.3%, and manioc is 0.7-1.2% and 0.3%.
o Pigs are an expensive necessity (large numbers of pigs cause people to
disperse, they also destroy things).
o Reproduction is easy, because they keep only breeding females and
castrated males. Females are impregnated by wild (feral) males.
• Pigs and Ceremony
o Pigs are eaten mainly in life events (birth, death, weddings), but also
during stressful times (war, emergencies).
o When do you do a Kaiko- generally when pigs get to be too much work.
Horse
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• Horse- Equus caballus
o Horse domestication is very complicated.
o DNA suggests that there is no single origin point for the horse- either it was
multiple events or they constantly bred with wild individuals.
o Bone morphologies that distinguish domestic from wild Equids are unclear.
o The geographic range of wild horses prior to domestication is unknown.
o Horses are used for diverse purposes- meat, milk, traction, riding, wealth, etc.
o Probably a secondary domestication event.
• Wild Ancestors
o Horses are odd-toed ungulates. They have one big toe [hoof].
o There are many kinds of caballine equids- Zebras…
• Cranial Morphology
o Domestic horses are thought to have a decrease in cranial capacity, a broader
forehead, facial foreshortening, a narrower muzzle, and a decrease in tooth size.
o Preservation issues of nomadic sites complicates our ability to identify these
changes.
• Body Size
o We have few comparative specimens to use from a pre-domestic period.
o Early sites likely have a mix of wild and domestic animals.
o We have little resolution on environmental processes that may affect size.
o For traction or riding animals, you may want bigger individuals.
• Mortality Patterns
o In bovids (sheep, goats and cattle), herders cull young males because they stress
the food supply and they can cause problems.
o Problem- horses are not very sexually dimorphic so telling males and females
apart is harder.
o Teeth are harder to differentiate in equids.
• Wild and Domestic Herds
o Two types of wild herd- the family band and the bachelor group. Sons and
daughters leave the natal group between 1 and 3 years old.
o You are unlikely to get a bunch of juvenile males in a hunting situation.
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Document Summary
They also benefit the development of secondary forest on a site owing to their thinning of trees and herbs. Grains are better at this than starchy root crops: pigs eat domesticated plants and transform the carbohydrates into fat and protein (pigs are 10. 9% protein and 27% fat). 1. 7%/0. 3%, and manioc is 0. 7-1. 2% and 0. 3%: pigs are an expensive necessity (large numbers of pigs cause people to disperse, they also destroy things), reproduction is easy, because they keep only breeding females and castrated males. These don"t occur until the iron age: traction causes rugosity in muscle attachments and arthritis in a horse"s limbs. It is known that horses pulled carts and chariots by the mid 3rd millennium bc: bit wear is complicated and subjective. The largest is botai, a site with 158 houses, 300,000 animal bones. 99% of bones were horse: most horses died as mature adults.
