Animals in War

After a long time focussing on a new job, a new country, and developing other parts of the website, it is finally time for another blog entry. I do so with the serious but important topic of war. It is difficult to put words on the tragedies of war – the loss of lives, the displacement, the violence and the many years of trauma that follow. With over 10 years of war and unrest in Syria, and now a new war in Ukraine, this seems a good time to pick up on this topic and look at the role of and impact on animals. The devastation to human lives and the countries where war takes place can hardly be overstated. Death, abandonment, injury, displacement, loss of home, family and friends are some of the things faced by victims of war, both human and animal. What follows is a small window into how war affected human as well as nonhuman animals in ancient Mesopotamia. 

Animals fighting and dying alongside humans in war

The most striking way that animals occur in war is as part of battle. Some of the earliest evidence of this in Mesopotamia comes from the visual material – plaques, inlays, seals, sealings and the famous Standard of Ur. The Standard of Ur, found in a wealthy tomb in the so-called Royal Cemetery at Ur is dated to the Early Dynastic III period (mid-third millennium BCE). It has two large panels of decoration, the ‘Peace’ side and the ‘War’ side. On the ‘War’ side, we can see wheeled vehicles (sometimes called battle wagons) pulled by a team of four equids – probably either donkeys or the hybrid equids known as kungas. On the lowest register, they are right in the midst of battle, trampling enemies and with soldiers and drivers in the wagon itself.

The Standard of Ur, British Museum 121201

Another early example of donkeys fighting as part of chariot-teams comes from the so-called ‘Stele of Vultures’. The stele relates to a border dispute between the two city-states of Lagash and Umma in the third millennium BCE, and it records this dispute in both image and inscription. Both sides of the stele are carved, but unfortunately only preserved in fragments. One side shows the god Ningirsu having captured his enemies in a net and, in a register below, probably the same god in his divine vehicle (the part with the animals pulling it has not survived). The other side depicts the king of Lagash, Eannatum, heading a tightly packed infantry unit on foot in the top register; in the second register, he leads another infantry unit from a wheeled vehicle (the part with the animals again not surviving). In a third register, he presides over some of the events of the aftermath of battle, including animal sacrifices, libations and the building of a tumulus for the dead soldiers. The associated inscription mentions how the Lagashite king had burial mounds made for his fallen soldiers and abandoning 60 teams of the enemy’s donkeys and the bones of their personnel. At this point in time, the equids were typically in teams of four, as also on the Standard of Ur. In other words, a total of 240 donkeys of the enemy died in the battle (customarily, the losses of the victor are not recorded). 

The Stele of Vultures, Louvre

Equids continue to fight in human wars throughout the second and first millennia. In the second millennium BCE, there are big changes in chariot warfare: the ’true’ chariot appears. This is a much faster and lighter vehicle, with only two wheels that are spoked rather than the earlier disk version. It is usually pulled by a team of two horses instead of the four-team donkey/kunga. In the Late Bronze Age, this combination became widespread and is found not only in Mesopotamia but also Egypt and the entire Eastern Mediterranean. It was an important part of any army, and the Amarna Letters suggest that cities had difficulties defending themselves without a chariotry component.

In the first half of the first millennium, we also see horses and chariots being a part of the Assyrian army – as well as in the armies of their opponents. They are most evocatively depicted on the palace reliefs of Neo-Assyrian kings, but also in earlier Hittite images such as for example the early first millennium orthostats found at Carchemish. Although chariots appear to continue to dominate, the Neo-Assyrian reliefs also increasingly depict horses used as cavalry. Donkeys and other equids were no longer used for direct battle, but were present in other ways, as we will see below, and could be used in emergencies to escape or retreat from the fighting. 

However, another animal occurs at this time as ridden and fighting: the camel. The Neo-Assyrians did not themselves have war camels, but some of their enemies did. We thus have heartbreaking images of Arabs and their camels clashing with Assyrians and succumbing to the attack.

Palace relief from the North Palace at Nineveh, depicting Assyrians and Arabs in battle, 7th century BCE, British Museum 124926

The final animal that participated in battle that I would mention here is perhaps more surprising: the dog. Their participation is only known from the second half of the third millennium BCE (read also more here). We do not know their exact role during combat, but they are depicted alongside equids and wheeled vehicles, and recorded in the written records as belonging to army generals. This is just one testament to one of the most enduring close human-nonhuman animal relations. With the dog most likely being the earliest domesticated animal, and the many varieties of the relationship over time – including modern canine units and dogs trained to detect explosives, drugs, money and human diseases, among many others things – this early collaboration is perhaps not as unusual as at first sight.

Animals carrying and providing provisions for the army

A less obvious aspect of animals in war is as carrying provisions for the army on the move. The impact of beasts of burden and traction as facilitators of war would have been immense, and can be illustrated with examples at least as recent as WW I and WW II, where horses, mules and donkeys, along with other animals such as dogs and messenger pigeons participated in large numbers. Many died: almost half a million horses are recorded as lost during WW I. Although other animals could be used to carry provisions (for example, cattle and human porters), donkeys were most commonly used for this purpose in ancient Mesopotamia. It is of significance mostly for an army on the offensive – that is, an army moving in order to attack, and therefore needing to bring provisions with it. Especially the large contingents of the Neo-Assyrians moved over very long distances, and sometimes besieged far away cities for months or even years on end. These would have required substantial amounts of food and water, along with other goods – for both humans and other animals.

This much less dramatic aspect is not usually the subject of the visual evidence. It can occasionally be found indirectly in the written sources, although even then usually only when there are problems, as a letter found in the city of Mari shows:

When we departed (to get) here, Ishme-Dagan, together with his troops, started out in the middle of the night for Ekallatum. And the grain that Ishme-Dagan transported on his donkeys from the namashshum fo Ashkur-Addu did not arrive in Razama. And his donkeys returned without their load to Ekallatum. They (say), ‘Ishme-Dagan is hungry. There is no grain whatsoever in the land.’

Hempel 2003, 402-403

Animals as mediators

Beside carrying the provisions, the animals themselves also were provisions. While the diet of the soldiers on the move almost certainly consisted primarily of grain-based food, it may occasionally have included meat. Certainly, significant amounts of sheep were also part of the army, as they were crucial for divination. Divination of sheep livers and entrails (extispicy/hepatoscopy) was an integral part of the army practices from at least the Old Babylonian period onwards. It involves the sacrifice of a sheep and subsequent inspection of its liver. This procedure was used to make enquiries about the next strategic step, and diviners were part of the army personnel. Surviving records explain how to interpret specific features found on the liver – for example a discolouration, lump or unusual shape:

If an enemy plans an attack against a city and its plan is revealed, it will look like this. 

If the enemy musters which hostile intent but the prince’s [army(?)], however considerable it may be, is not powerful enough, (it will look like this). 

Ulanowski 2020, 45

The practice is depicted in palace reliefs and other art. The exact number of sheep killed in this manner is impossible to establish, but given the prevalence of the practice, it must have been quite substantial and added up to many animals in total. To see that animal sacrifices occurred as part of the rituals of war at least as early as the third millennium BCE, we can return to the Stele of the Vultures. In the register where the Lagashian king presides over post-battle rituals, a priest making a libation stands on a pile of headless animals, presumably sacrificed for the occasion.

Palace relief from Nimrud, Northwest Palace, depicting army camp with divination of sheep (lower lefthand corner), 9th century BCE. British Museum 124548.

The aftermath of war

In the aftermath of war, beyond those fallen on the battlefield, animals were present in two ways: as scavengers and as part of the loot. Starting with the former, the Stele of the Vultures again provides a good early example. In the top register with the king on foot in front of an infantry contingent, another fragment of the stele shows vultures carrying human heads and other body parts, picked up from the battlefield (hence also the name of the stele). Similar images occur in other depictions; on a stele of Sargon found in Susa, dogs also participate in this scavenging activity. Such motifs are part of the ideology or we might even say propaganda of victorious rulers, and we can also here detect a repetition of this theme in the Neo-Assyrian repertoire. 

Palace relief from Nimrud, Southwest Palace, depicting a vulture carrying entrails from the battlefield, 8th century BCE. British Museum 118907.

Many animals, especially medium to large-sized mammals, were also important resources. The breeding, rearing, herding and training of various animals would have been an enormous and very expensive affair. For example, the horses used in war would require years of breeding, rearing and training by specialists, which would have required extensive management and administration. Wars were fought for a variety of reasons, but access to resources would have been one of the key ones, even if official narratives offer a different version. Even the Standard of Ur, with its lines of sheep, goats and equids (and some fish!), indicates the significance of (animal) resources. Animal loot was carefully recorded by the Neo-Assyrians along with people and goods. Just as mass deportations of humans was a common practice, so was that of the captured animals – they were displaced and moved long distances, often to the Assyrian heartland and capital. 

These are just some of the ways that animals were part of and caught up in human conflict in ancient Mesopotamia. It is far from an exhaustive account. For example, it is harder to reconstruct the impact on smaller and wild animals. One might here consider the heartbreaking devastation to animals caused recently by the wildfires in Australia – not a case of a human war, but a possible indication of the more ‘invisible’ damage of laying waste and setting fire to cities and animals such as dogs, foxes, rodents getting caught in it. Companion animals may equally lose their home, source of food and co-habitants. Stories of modern war naturally focus on the devastation to humans, but in recent reports on Ukranians forced to leave behind their animal companions, we get a glimpse of yet another aspect of the cruelty of human wars.

References and further reading:

^{Bahrani, Z. Rituals of War: The Body and Violence in Mesopotamia. (Zone Books, 2008).}

^{Heimpel, W. Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary. (Eisenbrauns, 2003).}

^{Lau, D. Tiere im Krieg: Der mesopotamische Raum. Tiere und Krieg, 21–33 (Neofelis, 2017).}

^{Tsouparopoulou, C. The “K-9 Corps” of the Third Dynasty of Ur: The dog handlers at Drehem and the army. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie 102, 1–16 (2012).}

^{Ulanowski, K. Neo-Assyrian and Greek Divination in War: Ancient Warfare Series Volume 3. (Brill, 2020).}

Food, Animals and the Indus Civilisation

I have been looking forward to this post for some time now. Akshyeta Suryanarayan works on organic residue analysis, which is a technique that can help us understand how pottery was used in the past – including tracing animal products such as meats, dairy and beeswax. So it combines two of my favourite interests: ceramics (yes, I’m one of those archaeologists) and human-animal relations. Then there’s the added bonus of it all being discussed in the frame of the archaeology of the fascinating Indus Valley. 

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by Akshyeta Suryanarayan

Hi, I’m Akshyeta Suryanarayan, a PhD candidate in archaeology at University of Cambridge. This blogpost discusses my PhD research which is focused on investigating food in the Indus Civilisation through ceramic residue analysis.

My research is focused on the urban phase of the Indus Civilisation (c. 2600-1900 B.C.), known as South Asia’s first urban civilisation, with sites located across present-day Pakistan, India, even Afghanistan. This civilisation is enigmatic to archaeologists because unlike its contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, its script is undeciphered and there is not much obvious evidence of social or political hierarchies, either in the presence of monumental architectural structures like palaces or temples, or obvious power symbols, like big statuary or stelae.

Map of the Indus Civilisation in the urban period, with modern rainfall isohyets reflecting winter (left) and summer (right) rain gradients. Settlements are in yellow and cities in black. Courtesy of Cameron Petrie.

The one thing that the Indus Civilisation is known for is its cities: cities like Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Ganweriwala (unexcavated) in Pakistan, and Dholavira and Rakhigarhi in India with fired mud-brick architecture, walled enclosures, streets, drains, wells and platforms.

Mohenjo-daro: Lower Town. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Harappa: ‘Granary’. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Harappa: Mound AB excavations with Kot Diji and Harappa phases. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Dholavira. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Although some of these cities have large buildings and residential blocks that likely served some public and/or specialised social/political function, for example, the Great Bath, ‘Pillared Hall’ and the ‘stupa’ at Mohenjo-daro,[1] we are not sure about how society was structured or who was in control within a single city or across cities.

Mohenjo-daro: ‘Citadel Mound’ with ‘stupa’. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Mohenjo-daro: Great Bath. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Most Indus scholars today believe that power within cities was likely shared across groups in a heterarchical system. This unique aspect of the Indus Civilisation often means that it is not included in discussions about early states. And yet, it is hugely important to our understanding of the many iterations of complex societies. Additionally, the Indus ‘city’ has had so much focus in scholarship that not much is known about rural settlements, which greatly outnumber the cities. The relationship between rural and urban settlements is also not well-understood (a new paper by Danika Parikh and Cameron Petrie expands upon rural-urban dynamics in the Indus Civilisation further). My PhD attempts to understand the relationship between urban and rural populations in terms of their food economy.

Beads of gold, lapis lazuli, agate and etched carnelian from the Royal Cemetery of Ur that were likely produced in the Greater Indus region and Afghanistan. British Museum 120577

Collection of jewellery from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Zebu bull seal with Indus script. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Unicorn seal with Indus script. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Three clay sealings from Harappa. Source: http://www.harappa.com

Indus pottery and food

Although striking, buildings and beads are not the most common remnant of the Indus civilisations. That honour goes to another type of object that most archaeologists either love or hate, and that others most commonly make fun of archaeologists about: pottery, or rather, broken bits of it. Fired clay is a wonderous material: it is fragile at the same time as it is virtually indestructible, and it can be used to investigate a range of aspects of social life in the past. Copious amounts of broken potsherds are found at Indus sites and have been used as a proxy to characterise Indus chronology, craft production and organisation, and social identity. While investigating how pottery was made at different sites can tell us a lot about organisational networks, ultimately, pots, jars, bowls and plates were containers for organic products and foodstuff, used for boiling, stewing, brewing, mixing, serving, and storing. The use of different types of Indus pottery has not been investigated in a systematic fashion, which is an aspect my PhD addresses.

Ledged-shouldered ‘cooking pots’ and small black bowl from Nausharo, an Indus site. Source: http://www.harappa.com

An Indus perforated vessel from Lahore Museum. Source: http://www.harappa.com

The porous nature of ceramic makes it ideal for absorbing fats and oils from foodstuff that are released or used as part of the cooking process. These fats and oils (or lipids) bind with the ceramic and are relatively well-protected from degradation and leaching by water due to their hydrophobic nature. Thanks to different chemical techniques, it is possible to use extraction methods involving solvents to remove lipids from within the ceramic fabric, separate the complex mixtures of compounds that make up the lipid extracts, and identify unique components within extracts. Some of these compounds can be matched with existing reference materials (taking into account degradation processes), making it possible to identify products like beeswax, plant waxes, fish, heated products, or even bitumen and resinous materials. Additionally, the stable carbon isotope values of specific lipids are determined and compared to various modern animal fats like the adipose fats (meat) of ruminants like sheep/goat, cattle, and deer, non-ruminant animals like pigs or fowl, equines like horses, and dairy fats. This means that we can identify whether vessels were used for processing dairy products like milk, cheese, or yoghurt, or for the meat of different animals. The use of ceramic lipid analysis thus enables an investigation into the cultural use of vessels, as well a new means to understand how food was meaningfully processed and created in vessels.

Organic residue analysis method and potential results

Why food?

I am particularly fascinated by food in archaeology and lipids in ceramic vessels as I think they provide a unique lens by which to investigate the blending of the natural environment with human material culture and the ontological/social/political; if one could ever set up neat categories of human experience that way. Each step involved in the production and processing of food is influenced by complex decisions. The selection of ingredients into a vessel involves knowledge of the environment: from the managing and processing of crops; raising, managing, and butchering of animals; or gathering of plants and forest products; with choices of ingredients based on factors like seasonality, cultural ideas about ‘what is good to eat’, memory (“my grandmother made it this way”), and taste preferences. Certain types of foodstuff encode all kinds of social, ontological, and/or cosmological meanings. Cooking or processing of food involves skill, specialised technique and is a sensorial practice. It is here where special tools (knives, grinding stones) or vessels are used for the desired end-product. As a time-consuming, laborious process, it is usually relegated to specific people (this is often gendered – ask yourself who cooks your meals at your home today?), forming a ‘community of practice.’ Finally, in the serving and sharing (or avoidance) of food in everyday or ‘special’ occasions, a variety of ‘commensal politics’ are played out, which can “signal rank or rivalry, solidarity and community, identity and exclusion, and intimacy or distance”[2].

Commensality is an important aspect of food. Image source: the Guardian.

While all these aspects of food are fascinating, it can be challenging to access them in archaeology, especially when one has little access to textual records or imagery concerning everyday habits. Additionally, early excavations were notoriously poor at collecting and recording artefacts like charred seeds and animal bones, which form the basis of our reconstruction of subsistence practices in the past. In the context of the Indus Civilisation, although excavation methods have much improved, there are a variety of issues that affect interpretation, including the poor preservation of remains, and patchy collection of detailed spatial and chronological information. Despite the somewhat fragmentary evidence, debates about food production are interwoven with concepts of urbanism, environment, and ideas about the uniformity or diversity of practices across Indus settlements. In my thesis I have put together available evidence for agricultural and pastoral practices across the Indus Civilisation, but focus specifically on northwestern India, which is from where I have accessed pottery samples for lipid analysis from a range of rural and urban settlements, thanks to the Land, Water and Settlement and TwoRains project, and Deccan College, Post Graduate and Research Institute, Pune.

Ancient Indus food

There is a huge range of scholarship about plants and animals in the Indus Civilisation, which already tells us a lot about Indus food. Very briefly, a range of winter and summer crops (wheat, barley, winter and summer pulses, millets and rice) were grown in the Indus Civilisation. A recent paper by Cameron Petrie and Jennifer Bates hypothesises that the entire region can be broadly divided into four geographical zones where, 1) primarily winter crops were grown with some summer crops; 2) primarily summer crops were grown with some winter crops; 3) primarily summer crops were grown, and 4) primarily winter crops were grown. These zones coincide with the availability of summer and winter rainfall across the region and match available archaeobotanical evidence.

Hypothetical areas within the Greater Indus region where distinct cropping strategies were practiced (Petrie and Bates 2017)

As far as animals are concerned, Indus populations seem to have preferred cattle/buffalo, with between 70-80% of faunal assemblages at sites made up of the remains of these large ruminants. Sheep/goat make up between 10-20% of faunal assemblages, while non-ruminants such as pigs and birds and freshwater fish contribute to a small percent of the animal bone remains at sites (with exceptions at coastal sites). Wild animals such as deer and rabbit are also found (no horses or equids are found at Indus sites, sorry Laerke!). No clear regional differences have been observed with respect to animal remains; except for occasional site-specific variations. On the basis of this, Indus scholars have given primacy to cattle at Indus sites: it is assumed (and occasionally demonstrated), that cattle were used for traction at agricultural sites, sustained a thriving dairy economy, and eventually consumed.

Zebu, or Bos indicus bones make up most faunal assemblages across Indus settlements. Source: www.wikipedia.org

Sheep/goat (Ovis aries and Capra hircus) were also widely exploited at Indus settlements. Picture courtesy of Emma Lightfoot.

It appears that although Indus populations grew a variety of crops with clear regional variation across the Greater Indus region, there are no clearly identifiable regional differences (yet) between the types of animals they chose to consume. Studies of starch grains recovered from the surfaces of stone tools have revealed tantalising evidence of the processing of ginger, aubergine and mango, giving us a glimpse of vegetables, fruits and condiments that are generally missing in the archaeobotanical record, although detailed evidence is not yet available. My thesis is adding to our knowledge about Indus food by detecting what kinds of  organic products can be identified in different ceramic vessels, especially dairy products, and whether there were differences between foodstuff processed in urban and rural Indus sites in northwest India and over time, from the urban to the post-urban period.

The results from my analyses will soon be published. They open up a variety of questions about how Indus lifeways were materialised through everyday acts of cooking and eating. These include how food practices defined the relationship between people, plants and animals. Did urban and rural residents process similar types of food, or were food practices shared regionally? What could this mean about rural and/or urban identity and commensality?

However, it is important to remember that there are methodological limitations and interpretational challenges associated with studying highly degraded organic remains. For example, it is not possible to reconstruct ‘recipes’, or detect very specific ingredients processed in the vessels. There are also issues related to the untangling of mixtures of products processed in vessels. Despite this, a focus on ancient food helps us look beyond just ‘subsistence’ or animals and plants alone and adds a social dimension to everyday acts of sustenance. Studying culinary practices within the Indus Civilisation helps us appreciate how both rural and urban populations were active agents in maintaining a food economy.

Understanding ancient food in this region is particularly important when we consider the incredible diversity of food in South Asia today. Food has complex ontological, ritual, social and political meanings in different South Asian communities, where it is deeply intertwined with caste, ‘tribe’ and religious identity. Food is also tied into colonial, neo-colonial and nationalist ideologies and agendas, and recently, in India, meat-eating has become a virtual battleground where debates about morality, nationality and religiosity are waged. In this context, studying ancient food practices and questioning the foundations of what constitutes our idea of ‘South Asian’ or ‘Indian’ cuisine is vital.

Thanks for reading!

 

All www.harappa.com images are copyright of J.M. Kenoyer/Harappa.com, Courtesy Dept. of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan.

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Notes

[1] That was possibly not a Buddhist stupa but an Indus-period building contemporaneous to other structures in its vicinity (see Verardi, G. & F. Barba. 2010. ‘The So-Called Stupa at Mohenjo-Daro and Its Relationship with the Ancient Citadel’. Pragdhara 19: 147-170).

[2] Appadurai, A. 1981. ‘Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia’. American Ethnologist 8 (3): 494-511.

A Brief History of the Chukar Partridge in the Southern Levant

It’s been a while, but I think this was worth waiting for! I’m very excited fo finally have a post about birds in the ancient world, and I hope you will enjoy this blog by the talented Ben Greet as much as I do.

by Ben Greet

I first encountered the Chukar partridge on a warm spring evening in May 2017. We were engaged in some ornithological fieldwork for my postdoctoral position at The University of Reading on the project ‘People and Birds in the Southern Levant’ and had stopped to camp in Dana Biosphere Reserve in the south of Jordan. Once we arrived, I walked down one of the tracks that led to a view of the Dana Valley, wanting to make the most of the sunset by watching it from the top of the valley and take a look at the road down to Wadi Faynan – our destination for the next morning. As I did so, a covey of Chukar partridges flew out from their rocky perch beneath me making their characteristic call…

Listen here

Whilst I did not realise it at that moment, this brief encounter with the Chukar in its habitat of rocky slopes likely mirrored countless similar encounters between people and the partridge that have occurred over millennia. My encounter, though, lacked an aspect that has seemingly defined the relationship between us and the Chukar for thousands of years – the hunt. Humans have been hunting the Chukar partridge in the southern Levant for at least 12,000 years. At sites like el-Wad Terrace, dating to the 14^th millennium BCE, and Hatoula, dating to the 11^th millennium BCE, remains of the Chukar partridge were found that indicate they were hunted by the inhabitants of these sites. This is best exemplified at Hayonim Cave, a site dating to the 13^th millennium BCE. Here, over 200 fragments of Chukar partridge bone were found within the bird bone assemblage recovered from the site, a much higher frequency than any other avian species. Whilst not comparable to the mammal remains, these results demonstrate that the Chukar partridge made up a significant portion of the diet of the inhabitants of Hayonim Cave around 15,000 years ago. Although pure speculation, when conducting ethnographic research in southern Jordan I was shown a traditional method of hunting birds by the local Bedouin – seen in the video below. It seems quite plausible a similar method could have been used to hunt the Chukar by the inhabitants of Hayonim Cave.

Yet, these bones were not just the remnants of meals, but also cultural objects. A group of twenty Chukar partridge bones were found around the wrist of a 25-year-old male at Hayonim Cave. These fragments came from the tibiotarsus, or central leg bone, of the Chukar and they were partially worn within the supratendinal bridge, an archway of bone that contains a tendon. The wear and the placement of these objects around the wrist point to their use as decorative beads. To get a better understanding of these objects, I reconstructed them with the bones of Red-legged partridges, which you can see below.

Reconstruction of the Chukar partridge bead bracelet found at Hayonim Cave. Photo by author.

A further 46 examples of these beads were found across the domestic areas at Hayonim Cave and more examples were discovered at the sites of el-Wad and Mallaha. Those found at Mallaha, which dates to the 13^th millennium BCE, are especially interesting, because the Chukar was not the most frequently hunted bird at the site (which was instead the mallard). Thus, the inhabitants of Mallaha were deliberately choosing the Chukar to make these beads, identifying it as a culturally relevant bird within their community.

At both sites, then, Chukar partridge beads were being used as personal ornamentation and so likely served as an expression of personal identity. Whilst it is difficult to determine the meaning of these objects within this community, they may have been representing concepts of community identity or ancestry. At Mahalla, one of these beads was discovered with the remains of a child. It was placed around the child’s neck and was already worn, implying it was passed to the child by someone who wore it regularly. This passing of an object to a younger individual in the community might suggest it symbolised a type of blood connection. Even at this early date, then, Chukar partridges were not just commodities to hunt, but also give us glimpses into aspects of past societies.

‘Chukar partridge’ by Imran Shah via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Chukar continued to be regularly hunted throughout the next few millennia, as the high frequencies of their remains at Neolithic sites in Wadi Faynan and Wadi Hasa and the Iron Age assemblages at Jerusalem attest. But by the Roman period we start to see less Chukar remains at archaeological sites in the region, as domestic birds begin to take a more prominent position within the lives of the southern Levant’s inhabitants. Despite a lack of remains, though, there is still evidence for the hunting of Chukars during this period. Within a Roman-era basilica building at Sepphoris, near the Sea of Galilee, the mosaics depict various birds that have been captured and trussed-up ready for eating. Amongst these are the familiar black and white striped markings of the Chukar.

Classical texts from this period allow us to again move beyond the singular view of the Chukar as a game bird. Letters from Roman senators acknowledge their own ‘passion for partridges’ (Fronto, c.153 CE), which they kept as pets, and noting their anger when one of the birds was killed by their cat (Agathias Scholasticus, 7.203). Perhaps the most interesting note, though, concerns the emperor Severus Alexander. According to the Historia Augusta (Severus, 41), Severus, whose mother and father were born in the Roman province of Syria, was partial to partridge fighting. Although not a popular as cockfighting, this seems to have been a widespread practice in the Classical world and is also reported in Aelian’s Characteristics of Animals (4.1). The practice even continues today in regions of central Asia (e.g. Afghanistan, Pakistan), as attested by various YouTube videos recording these matches between Chukars.

Bronze bust of the emperor Severus Alexander from the Archaeological Museum of Dion

When we move into the Byzantine period, we begin to see Chukars appear in church mosaics across the region. Their appearance in this context seems again linked to the Chukar’s primary role as a game bird. This can be seen in the mosaics of Hippolytus Hall in Madaba, which are the remains of an upper-class residence dating to the sixth century CE. The panel depicts Aphrodite and Adonis seated together with a peasant girl holding a basket of fruit and a dead Chukar who enters from the left. This peasant girl seems to have been included in the scene as an indication that it occurred in the countryside, which, by extension, links the practice of hunting Chukars to the traditional rustic activities of the region. Chukars appearing alone in church mosaics, then, may have held a similar meaning within these contexts. We even know from earlier texts (Aelian, 4.16) that Chukars were used as hunting decoys, with caged birds luring their companions towards the hunter.

Peasant girl holding a Chukar partridge in a mosaic scene from Hippolytus Hall in Madaba. Photo by Tiffany Chezum from Manar al-Athar.

The Chukars position as a symbol of rustic life within the Byzantine period fits with some of the wider symbolic themes of these church mosaics. These rustic activities would have been familiar to the congregations of these churches, who may have even engaged in the hunting of Chukars themselves. The depiction of these scenes within a sacred church context, then, as Rina Talgam puts it, ‘closed the gap between the commonplace and the sacrosanct’ – with the Chukar acting as a piece of this puzzle. Yet, it also had a symbolism all of its own in during this Christian period. The church fathers, such as Augustine (Contra Faustum, 14.12), wrote that the partridge represented the anti-Christ, with Hippolytus blaming the bird’s ‘vainglorious’ nature for this equivalence (On Christ and Antichrist, 53-4). On the other hand, the depiction of birds within cages, some of which are partridges, could also be read as an image of the soul trapped in the body. Thus, the empty cages that are found in church mosaics across the region are images of the soul released from its bodily confines towards heavenly Paradise.

Sculpted Chukar partridges from Khirbat al-Mafjar. Photo by Sean Leatherbury from Manar al-Athar.

A focus on hunting returns in the depictions of the Chukar partridge in the Early Islamic period. Whilst not entirely recognisable, we see sculpted statues of Chukar partridges within the décor of the Umayyad palace of Khirbat al-Mafjar, which dates to the middle of the eighth century CE. The palace was constructed by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid II, known for his focus on leisurely pastimes. His pursuit of athletics, poetry, womanising, and hunting are possibly part of the reputation that led to his eventual assassination. Whilst caliph, he not only decorated Khirbat al-Mafjar with partridges, but he can be seen depicted beneath an arch of Chukars at the desert palace of Qasr Amra. Whilst some have read these partridges in his palaces as images of his womanising or of a connection to Allah, it seems far more likely they form part of the elaborate hunting symbolism within these palaces. This is especially the case at Qasr Amra, which was a dedicated headquarters for the caliph’s hunting excursions into the eastern desert. Once again the Chukar is chosen for its connection to the hunt, an equivalence that dates back almost 15,000 years.

Qasr Amra. Photo by Otto Nieminen from Manar al-Athar.

This is perhaps the most problematic part of the Chukar partridge’s position within the contemporary southern Levant. It still occupies this prominent position within the hunting culture of the region. In my own ethnographic work in southern Jordan, the Chukar was consistently mentioned in interviews as the best bird to hunt. A recent survey of hunting groups on social media conducted in 2017 demonstrated that the Chukar was the most frequently hunted bird in Jordan, with over 1,500 killed in a single year, and these were only those recorded kills seen in photos, the actual number may be much higher. Although not currently endangered, the advent of motorised vehicles and high-powered rifles must be taking its toll on the species in this region. We only have to look at the disappearance of the ostrich or the bustard for examples of birds driven to extinction through the same method of over-hunting.

But this has always been the case with the Chukar in the southern Levant – it is intimately connected to the hunt, whilst also symbolically entwined with the cultures of the region. In the same ethnographic interviews, whilst mostly concentrated on the hunt, respondents would also exclaim their love of the Chukar and particularly its call. I developed a similar love for the bird and its call on that May evening back in 2017. To ensure its continued presence in the region, though, ornithologists and conservationists must recognise the central role of hunting in the relationship between our two species and use this to encourage a protection of the bird. Those that love the Chukar, also love hunting it. Whilst this may seem anachronistic, similar programmes of incorporating hunters into conservations efforts of ducks in the US have seen great success. Let’s hope similar programmes can ensure the Chukar remains a staple of the landscape of the southern Levant, with their calls greeting other visitors to the Dana Valley for years to come.

‘Chukar partridge’ by Imran Shah via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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References

 

Bar-Oz, G. 2004. Epipaleolithic Subsistence Strategies in the Levant: A Zooarchaeological Perspective. Leiden: Brill.

Belfer-Cohen, A. 1988. The Natufian Graveyard of Hayonim Cave. Paléorient. 14(2), 297-308.

Davis, S. J. M., Lernau, O. and Pichon, J. 1994. The Animal Remains: New Light on the Origin of Animal Husbandry. In: Mechevallier, M. and Ronen, A. eds. Le Gisement de Hatoula, en Judeé Occidentale, Israël. Memoires et Travaux du Centre de Recherche Français de Jerusalem No. 8., 83-98.

Dunbabin, K. M. D. 2014. Mythology and Theatre in the Mosaics of the Graeco-Roman East. In: Birk, A. Kristensen, T. M., and Poulsen, B. eds. Using Images in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow, 227-52.

Eid, E. and Handal, R. 2017. Illegal Hunting in Jordan: Using Social Media to Assess Impacts on Wildlife. Oryx, 1-6.

Fradkin, A. 1999. Animal Figures in the Basilical Building Mosaics at Roman Sepphoris, Lower Galilee, Israel. Near Eastern Archaeology. 62(4), 233-239.

Fowden, G. 2004. Quṣayr ‘Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Horwitz, L. K. & Tchernov, E. 1996. Bird Remains from Areas A, D, H, and K. In: Ariel, D. T. and De Groot, A. Eds. Excavations at the City of David 1978-1985. Volume IV. Qedem 35. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Munro, N. D. 2013. A Faunal Perspective on the Relationship between the Natufian Occupations of Hayonim Cave and Hayonim Terrace. In: Bar-Yosef, O. and Valla, F. R. eds. Natufian Foragers in the Levant: Terminal Pleistocene Social Changes in Western Asia. Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory, 463-477.

Pichon, J. 1983. Parures Natoufiennes en os de Perdrix. Paleorient. 9(1), 91-98.

Pichon, J. 1987. L’avifaune. In: Bouchud, J. ed. La Faune du Gisement Natoufien de Mallaha (Eynan) Israel. Paris: Association Paleorient.

Talgam, R. 2014. Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press.

Homer’s Horses – Part II

I’m going to start 2019 with a continuation of how I ended 2018: The Homeric epic. Having seen how horses were described and used with chariots in The Iliad, I now want move to the perspective of the horses themselves and their living conditions.

The agency of horses

Homer’s horses are not simply passive tools used by humans in their violent conflict. They are instead perceived as social actors who are both brave and cowardly, and who have invested interests in the well-being of their owner and driver -not to mention, a great desire to win. They are fearsome yet make mistakes or refuse to perform certain tasks.

For example, horses are described as being afraid,

… not even
[Hector’s] swift-footed horses would attempt it for him, but stood
whinnying loudly at its very edge: the wide ditch
terrified them

Book 12, l. 50-52

As we saw in Part I, horses form strong bonds with their human owners and trainers, and when losing them, they may feel corresponding levels of grief. This happens when Patroclus dies and the horses of Achilles are devastated:

But the horses of Aeacus’ grandson, far from battle,
had been weeping ever since they heard that their charioteer
had fallen in the dust at the hands of man-slaughtering Hector.
Automedon, the stalwart son of Diores, kept lashing them
with repeated blows of the swift whip, and many times
he spoke to them with soft words, and many times with threats;
but they had no wish either to go back to the ships by the broad
Hellespont, or to join the Achaeans in the fighting,
but as a grave-pillar that stands over the burial-mound
of a dead man or woman stays in place, firmly fixed,
so they stayed motionless, harnessed to the beautiful chariot,
their heads drooping to the earth; and hot tears
flowed from their eyes to the ground, as they mourned
in longing for their charioteer; and their thick manes were soiled,
hanging from the yoke-pad along both sides of the yoke

Book 17, l. 425-440

Horses are also attributed with ‘personhood’ and individuality. This is perhaps best expressed in the explicit naming of horses. Here we can stay with the horses of Achilles

So Automedon led the swift horses under the yoke for him –
Xanthus and Balius, a pair who flew with the winds’ blast,
whom Podarge the storm-mare had borne to the West Wind
as she grazed in a meadow beside the waters of Ocean.
In the trace-reins he harnessed the blameless Pedasus,
the horse that Achilles carried off when he took Eëtion’s city;
though it is mortal, it could keep up with immortal horses.

Book 16, l. 148-154

Xanthus and Balius are immortal horses, the offspring of divine beings. They are of course fitting for Achilles, who himself has a divine mother. But obviously a horse does not have to be immortal to be famous, as Pedasus proves. In the above quotation, Automedon speaks to the horses. This happens a number of times, and Xanthus even replies:

Then from under the yoke the glancing-footed horse Xanthus
spoke to him; it had bent its head down, and all its mane
was drooping to the ground from the yoke-pad beside the yoke,
and the goddess Hera of the white arms had given it speech:
‘We shall surely bring you back safe this time, huge Achilles;
but the day of your death is near at hand, and it is not we who
will be its cause, but a great god and your powerful destiny.
It was not through our sloth or carelessness that the Trojans
stripped the armour from the shoulders of Patroclus

Book 19, l. 404-412

Hector also speaks to his horses – rather confusingly, one of them is Xanthus’ namesake (the name probably refers to the light colour of the coat, but is also used for humans). Interestingly, we hear that were at least partly in the care of Andromache, Hector’s wife. Not only does she serve them wine (!), she also prioritises them above Hector, at least in this particular instance:

So he spoke, and summoned his horses, and said to them:
‘Xanthus and you, Podargus, Aethon and bright Lampus,
now is the time when you must repay me for the lavish care
that Andromache, daughter of great-hearted Eëtion,
gave you, serving you mind-cheering wheat, and mixing it
with wine, to drink when the spirit urged you, before she
served me, I who am proud to be her tender husband.
So come, press on as fast as you can …

Book 8, l. 184-191

It is important to note here that these are human impressions. I am not here making any claims about how horses experience their world. This is about how Homer – and by extension the ancient Greeks – perceived horses as having agency. That is, as experiencing feelings, having desires and intentions, and acting upon them, with greater or lesser success. It is an entangled (if unequal) relationship where both parties actively influence the world of the other.

 

Mares and stallions

It’s often assumed that only stallions are suitable for warfare and that they are the most prestigious. The Iliad features both mares and stallions, as we have already seen in several instances. There is no indication that stallions are preferable to mares. When lineages are recounted, both dame and sire are mentioned. Mares and stallions take part in the battle,

Meanwhile Neleus’ mares, sweating, were carrying Nestor
out of the battle, and with him Machaon, shepherd of the people.

Book 11, l. 597-599

… and we saw how both mares and stallions are named and can be fast enough for chariot racing:

soon the swift
mares of Pheres’ grandson Eumelus broke into the lead, and
keeping pace with them came the stallions of Diomedes,
the horses of Tros.

Book 23, l. 375-378

Donkeys and mules

Horses are not the only equids in The Iliad. But Homer’s donkeys and mules do not get to go to war or compete in races. They get to haul heavy loads of wagons and plough the soil. They get to carry the dead back from the battlefield at the end of the day.

A donkey makes a rare appearance in a rather unflattering simile as being stubborn and gluttonous:

As when a stubborn donkey, passing a cornfield, defies the boys,
driving it, and though many sticks have been broken on its sides
it goes into the field and causes havoc in its deep crop, and
the boys beat it with sticks, but their strength is weak, and they
drive it out with difficulty, only when it has had its fill of food

Book 11, l. 558-562

Mules are not painted in a much better light. The only real compliments they receive are that they are better at ploughing the soil than oxen (Book 10, line 352) and that they are very strong (Book 17, lines 742-743). Their star role is when they help bring back the body of Hector when Priam goes into the Achaean camp to beg for Achilles’ mercy. Neither donkeys nor mules are ever named or otherwise individualised.

Mules as pack animals, from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, 7th c. BCE. British Museum 124879

The hardships of being a Homeric horse

Being a horse in Homer’s world could be tough. There may be times when they would get to graze in large herds in green pastures. But references to how horses are treated when pulling the chariot do not point a particularly pleasant picture:

So [Agamemnon] spoke, and his charioteer whipped the fine-maned horses
towards the hollow ships, and they flew willingly on;
their chest were covered in foam and spattered beneath with dust

Book 11, l. 280-282

Not much is said about the specifics of everyday training of horses in Homer, but passages like these provide a hint as to the methods used. The realities of war is an altogether different category.

Egyptian whip handle, 14th c. BCE. The Met 26.7.1293

Ugly war

War is ugly. The Iliad is in many ways a long, detailed narrative of the gore of war. Limbs are torn off, bones broken and brains mushed. For horses too, it is far from a pretty affair. In one instance, the gods have been interfering on both sides but then left the battle to sit next to Zeus and simply watch. Achilles is left to continue his mad rampage, slaughtering the Trojans and their single-hoofed horses (Book 21, line 351).

We get an explicit description of the death of Achilles’ trace horse when Patroclus has borrowed the chariot and horses to go fight in Achilles’ place:

Sarpedon threw second at him with his shining spear and
missed Patroclus, but hit the horse Pedasus with the spear
on its right shoulder; it screamed as it grasped its life away,
and fell bellowing in the dust, and the life flew from it.

Book 16, l. 466-469

Scene of battle with chariot and warriors. The Met 56.171.9. Horses and mules were part of war even in modern times. Large numbers were lost during WWI.

Sacrifice

As if the violence of battle wasn’t enough, humans subjected horses to yet another type of untimely death: that of sacrificing them (and other animals) to supernatural beings. Horses were probably not the most common sacrificial animal, but their deaths must have been quite a spectacle. When Achilles kills Lycaon and throws him into the river, he says to him,

Not even this clear-flowing, silver-swirling river will help you,
this river for whom you have for many years sacrificed bulls
in plenty, and hurled single-hoofed horses alive into its eddies.

Book 21, l. 130-132

Of course the most notorious sacrifice in The Iliad is the one performed by Achilles at Patroclus’ funeral. This large sacrifice included “many strong sheep and shambling, crook-horned cattle”, four strong-necked horses which were “hurriedly flung onto the pyre”, nine dogs whose throats were cut, and 12 young Trojan men (Book 23, lines 161-177). There is a slightly different rationale behind the sacrifice of each animal here. Sheep and cattle are standard sacrificial animals, and it is particularly important that their fat is distributed in the prescribed manner. The dogs were Patroclus’ own, and seem to have been sent with him (or perhaps assumed to not want to live without him). The Trojans were sacrificed as a fairly basic kind of revenge for Patroclus’ death. The horses are less clear given that they are not the ones Patroclus drove in life. Those would be Achilles’ own divine horses, and he is obviously not willing to part with them. Instead, the ones actually sacrificed were probably substitutes.

It is possible that in some instances, it was considered a great honour to be a sacrificial victim. There is no indication of that in this particular event, and as a wise man (i.e. Nietzsche) once remarked, no one ever let the animals speak for themselves.

Keeping horses

It’s not all bad news for Homer’s horses. We are told of how they are fed and something apparently happily munching away at their manger. There is even an awareness of the realities and practicalities of war, where there is not always enough supplies for everybody. This was the concern of Pandarus when he decided not to bring his horses and chariots to the war:

Here I do not have horses, or a chariot that I can mount;
yet in Lycaon’s halls you must know that I have eleven chariots,
fine ones, freshly built, brand new. Over them cloths
are spread, and next to them pairs of horses
stand, champing on white barley and emmer wheat.
…
wanting to spare my horses, in case they ran short of fodder in
places where men are crowded together, and they used to plentiful food.
So I left them behind, and I came to Ilium on foot

Book 5, l. 192-196, 202-204

During the horserace that Achilles puts on at Patroclus’ funeral games, Menelaus attempts to spare his horses for fear that they and their chariot will be hurt (Book 23, l. 433-437).

Horses are even at times spoiled, as when Andromache took care of Hector’s horses, or when Patroclus groomed Achilles’ horses:

a kindly man, who would often pour smooth olive oil over
their manes after he had washed them down in bright water

Book 21, l. 281-282

Note, though, how it is not their owner taking care of them, but a helper, groom or charioteer.

Homer’s horses were not given a choice as to whether or not they wanted to take part in the Trojan war. Other than that, they are every bit as versatile in their mood and actions as their human – and divine – counterparts.

Scene of chariot with four horses on Greek vase from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

Homer’s Horses – Part I

The Iliad and The Odyssey are some of the oldest literary classics in the world. Their epic stories of the horrors and glory of war, pride, long journeys and the squabbles and interference of gods and goddesses have held our imagination for millennia. They continue to have relevance today, in particular concerning the realities of violence and war, and the attitude and representation of women. 

Horses feature prominently in The Iliad. With very few exceptions, they star as chariot horses. What is fascinating for me, and I think for the study of human-animal relations, is that Homer’s horses are frequently attributed with agency and intention. They make deliberate choices based on their feelings and desires. Another feature is the way humans are described as having horse-related skills. One of the characteristics of the Homerian poetry is the ample use of epithets, and many of them are in fact only understood in equine terms.

I will get back to these themes shortly. First, a bit of background to set the scene. Homer’s works are thought to date to around the end of the 8th c. BC. The events themselves are envisioned as taking place much earlier, although exactly when is still a matter of debate. Certainly many elements refer to earlier times, and some even as far back as the Bronze Age. But it is difficult to disentangle, and we cannot assume that the story is an accurate reflection of Bronze Age conditions. The Iliad is divided into 24 ‘books’, and may originally have been performed (as it also was later on).

The Iliad tells the story of the last part of the decade-long siege of Troy by the Greeks – also known as Achaeans or Danaans. Achilles is the main hero of the Greeks, and the fighting is prolonged because he refuses to fight during most of the narrative due to a disagreement with his king, Agamemnon. The rest you must read for yourself, if you have not done so already. In case you haven’t, or don’t already know the story, this is your spoiler alert. Heroes will die. Horses will die. If you don’t want to know who and how, stop reading now. 

Epithets

Every recurring character in Homer is associated with some kind of epithet, or standardised descriptive label, if you will. These can be based on characteristics such as physical attributes, skills or associated objects (usually parts of armour). In this system, a number of humans are referred to based on their skills with horses, features which are apparently considered positive and giving the person status. These are some of the horse-related epithets used:

‘Horseman’: Nestor, Pyleus, Tydeus, Phoenix, Oeneus
‘Breaker of horses’: Agamemnon, Castor, Thydeus, Dioemedes, Antenor, Hector
‘Whipper of horses’: Pelops, Menestheus, Orestes, Oïleus
‘Horse-driver’: Tydeus, Peleus, Phoenix, Oeneus
‘Supreme in horsemanship’: Admetus

Certain regions or peoples can have similar attributes:

Trojans: ’Breaker of horses’
Argos and Tricce: ’Rearer of horses’
Phrygians: men with nimble horses, fighters from horses
Danaans: swift-horsed
Cadmeians: whippers of horses
Ilium: rich in horses
Land of Eneti: home of a strain of wild mules
Maeonians: horse marshals
Pylians: chariot-fighters
Thracians: horse-breeding

Hades is described as ‘master of famous horses’, while Zeus is ‘driver of horses’, so the gods too can have skills associated with horses. The horses themselves are described as  swift-footed, huge gleaming, high-stepping, snorting, single-hoofed, fine-maned, loud-whinnying/loud-neighing, powerful, and as having powerful necks.

 

Magnificent horses

Generally speaking, Homer’s horses have a positive vibe about them. They are prestige animals associated with high status and can cause great amazement. Indeed, Dolon (one of the Trojans) describes the horses of the Thracian king Rhesus as,

… the finest and the biggest I have ever seen:
they are whiter than snow, and they run like the winds.

Book 10, l. 436-437

In turn, Nestor exclaims,

They are amazing, and look to me like the rays of the sun.
I am always meeting Trojans in battle – I can claim that
I do not hang back by the ships, aged warrior though I am –
but I have never seen or clapped my eyes on such horses.

Book 10, l. 547-550

 

Chariots

In The Iliad, horses are almost exclusively used with chariots. Mostly a pair of horses pull a chariot, but occasionally we hear of four horses or two horses and a third ‘trace’ horse acting as an extra. The chariot carries two men: a charioteer who navigates the horses, and a soldier or warrior. The soldier is the hero and main fighter and rarely drive the chariot himself. Every important hero in the story has his own chariot and personal charioteer. Some charioteers are particularly famed, most obviously Achilles’ close companion Patroclus. As we will see, he was loved so much that even the horses grieved for him after his death.

Despite strong bonds between charioteer and horses, and charioteer and warrior, charioteers can be replaced. After Hector’s charioteer Eniopeus is killed by Diomedes,

Bitter grief for his charioteer crowded thick into Hector’s heart,
but he left him, distressed though he was for his companion,
to lie there, and went in search of another bold charioteer, and
not for long did his horses lack a master…

Book 8, l.124-127

The chariot was primarily used for transport to the battlefield, and perhaps more importantly, to flee the fighting or escape a pursuer. But they do also end up in the middle of the action, and spears are hurled rather haphazardly on the battlefield, hitting both humans and horses. There seems in particular to be a certain sport in hurling off charioteers while in full motion, as this happens repeatedly. However, most often the warriors step down from the chariot in order to actually fight.

There are indications that just as today, it was desirable to have a pair of horses that were of similar build and colour:

The finest horses belonged to the son of Pheres,
now driven by Eumelus; they were swift as birds, and were alike
in coats and age, their backs dead level measured by the rule.
Apollo of the silver bow had raised them in Pereia,
both mares, and they carried in them the terror of Ares.

Book 2, l. 763-767

Chariots and horses are some of the favourite spoils of war, and when a warrior has been killed, not only is his armour stripped from his body, his chariot and horses are also sent back to the victor’s camp. When the horses have served their duty, Homer is persistent in noting that they are unyoked.

 

Chariot racing

Horses and chariots were also used for horse-racing. At Patroclus’ funeral, Achilles commissions a number of competitions, and the first one is a chariot race. Homer describes it at length. There are five contestants: Eumelus with swift mares, Diomedes with Aeneas’ famous stallions from Tros, Menelaus with Agamemnon’s mare Aethe and his own horse Podargus, Antilochus with horses bred in Pylos, and Meriones, whose horses are simply qualified as fine-maned. Notice how in the case of racing, the heroes themselves do the driving (and take the glory).

It’s not a Ben-Hur kind of chariot race, but it’s pretty close:

…the horses quickly galloped over the plain,
leaving the ships far behind; under their chest the dust
rose and hung in the air like a cloud or a whirlwind, and
their manes streamed behind them, blown by the wind’s gust.
The chariots at one time bent low to the earth that nurtures many
and at another bounded high in the air; their drivers stood
in their chariots, and each man’s heart was beating hard
in his desire for victory, and each man was calling out to
his horses, as they flew across the plain in the clouds of dust.

Book 23, l. 364-372

Archaic black-figure vase showing chariot racing at a funeral. The Met.

It even includes a bit of ‘cunning’ with Antilochus trying to get the upper hand by taking the inner lane on the turn (on his father Nestor’s elaborate instructions), and Eumelus’ horses being forced off the track. Unsurprisingly, Diomedes takes the win. He quickly claims his prize, then unyokes his horses. In that order. The first prize was a woman and a tripod. The second prize was a mare pregnant with a mule-foal. This was clearly a highly desirable reward and it causes some friction between the contestants.

The race at the funeral games have just two horses, but there are other examples where four horses were used, as a team from Elis illustrates:

four prize-winning horses, together with their chariot, had been
on their way to the games, intending to race for the prize
of a tripod

Book 11, l. 699-701

In another case, we get a glimpse of other equestrian games happening, with what seems to be some kind of stunt,

As a man well skilled in horsemanship, who from many horses
has harnessed together four and drives them at speed
from the plain towards a great city, along the public way,
and many people marvel at him, changing his stance but
all the time keeping secure on his feet, while the horses fly along

Book 15, l. 679-684

Although the word ‘drives’ is used here, this is probably a description of a riding stunt rather than a chariot being involved.

 

Gods have horses too

Even gods have horses and chariots, which they use to travel from place to place. Their horses are of course immortal (but not named), eat immortal fodder and both they and the chariots are apparently mostly made of gold and bronze. A selection from a passage concerning Poseidon’s horses is just one example:

There he went, and yoked his bronze-hoofed horses to his chariot,
swift-flying horses, their manes flowing with gold,
and armed himself in gold, and picked up his whip,
golden and finely made …
… Poseidon the earthshaker reined in his horses and
unyoked them, and threw immortal fodder before them,
for them to eat; around their hoofs he fastened golden tethers

Book 13, l. 23-36   

Gold chariot with four horses, found in Tajikistan. 5th-4th c. BCE. British Museum.

 

Pedigree and breeding

Most competitive equestrians today will consider the pedigree of a horse before buying one. There is a reason that the breeding industry is so big. Bloodlines are important indicators of a horse’s potential. Specific characteristics are selected, depending on how they are to be used – for example, speed, body build, leg movement, mental attitude or even coat colour.

This is by no means a recent development. Already in the third millennium in the Near East, we hear of some cities being famous for the equids they breed. In The Iliad, we also have examples of horses with long lineages which are carefully memorised, and as we saw from the epithets, some places were famous for their horses.

Unsurprisingly, the most famous horses have some association with the gods, as for example Aeneas’ horses:

You must know, they are of the same stock that Zeus wide-
thunderer gave to Tros as compensation for his son Ganymedes,
for they were the best of all horses under the dawn and the sun.
Anchises, lord of men, bred from this bloodstock by deceit,
by putting mares to the stallions without Laomedon’s knowledge.
From these six foals were born in his halls, and of these
he kept four for himself, and raised them at his manger,
and he gave two, provokers of panic, to Aeneas.
If we were to capture these we would win glorious fame.

Book 5, l. 265-273

Or King Erichthonius,

who became the richest of all mortal men; he had
three tousand mares of his own grazing in meadows on
marshland, delighting in their tender young foals; and while
they were at pasture the North Wind was seized by desire for
them, and lay with them in the likeness of a dark-maned horse,
and they conceived and gave birth to twelve foals.

Book 20, l. 220-225

Elis is one of the places known for their fine horses, and capturing mares with foals during a campaign against them makes for particularly good booty:

and one hundred and fifty head of chestnut horses,
all mares, many of them with their suckling foals.

Book 11, l. 680-681

That is all for now. In Part II of Homer’s Horses, I will look at how horses are attributed with agency, and the kind of life that a (war)horse might expect to live in the Homeric world.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

The horse versus the rest: Depictions of equids in the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt

This blog post is written by the wonderful Lonneke Delpeut, who is an expert on horses in ancient Egypt. We met at a conference in Stavanger, with my favourite title so far: Horses, moving. Those two words encapsulate my subject and my approach very neatly, with horses the subject (and of course other equids, let’s not forget) and ‘moving’ expressing a sense of agency and intention – horses moving and being moved. Lonneke presented a fascinating paper on images of Egyptian horses, with an important distinction between what is being depicted and how it is being depicted. She kindly agreed to contribute with a post here, and I have very much been looking forward to it, so here we go…

 

by Lonneke Delpeut

With the introduction of the horse in Egypt at the beginning of the Eighteenth dynasty (1550 B.C.), the artists and craftsmen responsible for making the beautiful depictions in tombs and temples had a new animal to display. They had to transform a three-dimensional being into something flat. Luckily, the artisans had plenty of experience depicting all kinds of four-legged animals, so the horse might have been new, but the appearance of it would be inspired by other animals. There are other equids that had been known in Egypt, namely the zebra (Equus grevyi and Equus quagga) as well as the wild ass, the Equus asinus. Two types of donkeys had been known in Egypt since the Old Kingdom, the time of the pyramids, namely the domesticated donkey (Equus Africanus asinus) and its ancestor that was still hunted, namely the Equus Africanus. Lastly, the horse was introduced relatively late, completing the collection of equids in Egypt. Since donkeys had been depicted in Egypt for a very long time, and one had to draw the horse based on something, the first depictions of the horse look a lot like donkeys. Most prominently alike is the way their legs are displayed in exactly the same: all four on the ground but apart from each other. This is how the Egyptians indicated movement by four-legged animals; the artist had to be sure that the observer knew the animals were moving forward.

Most important for the Egyptian artist was for the observer to identify the concept he was trying to convey correctly. This means that beside the shared characteristics between donkeys and horses, the Egyptians had to put in some horse-specific features too. These features in the beginning of the Eighteenth dynasty were especially important since the horse was new; in Egypt as an animal, but also as a depiction. One of these features was the colour of the horses’ coat. We see that many horses show white (which means grey) and chestnut coat colours at the beginning of the Eighteenth dynasty (fig. 1), which distinguishes them from donkeys, who are always grey with white. We know that the Egyptians were well aware of the fact that white-coloured horses are not truly white, since in many cases the snout is depicted as grey and their eyes are brown. We can even tell the difference between young and old horses, since in one Theban tomb, the tomb of Menkheperreseneb (TT86) the manes are depicted a darker kind of orange (a sign of a young horse) than the other pair of horses. Another factor that shows the pictorial difference between donkeys are horses are the manes that are depicted flat in the neck. This is a feature that changes further on in the Eighteenth dynasty. These features are horse-specific to distinguish the horse from the donkey.

Fig. 1. Syrians bringing horses, Tomb of Rekhmire. The Met.

Another difference between donkeys and horses is the work they do. Donkeys are often depicted as beasts of burden, and even though horses pull chariots, they are only used as a mode of transportation for human beings. This is contrary to donkeys, which were used to carry heavy bags of grain, they are used to plant seeds by walking them into the ground and are never shown depicted in front of chariots. The only other equid that is allowed in front of a chariot, is a hybrid. It is uncertain whether the Egyptian hybrids were mules or hinnies, but they are most certainly hybrids since they show characteristics of both horses and donkeys. In fig. 2 for example, we see a depiction from the tomb of Nebamun, now in the British Museum in London. The upper part shows two horses in front of a chariot, and the lower part shows two hybrids in front of a chariot. The coat colour and the tail belong to donkey-like features while the chariot, the ears and the size belong to horse-like features. The fact that they are depicted so closely to each other is no coincidence; the observer is challenged to immediately tell the difference between the horses and the hybrids.

Fig. 2. Wall painting from Tomb of Nebanum, Thebes. The British Museum.

Another significant difference visible in this scene is the behaviour of the animals and their grooms. The horses have their heads raised, their feet seem restless, and the groom holds the reins tightly with both hands, standing behind the chariot. The hybrids however are eating from a trough that is standing on the ground, and their groom is sitting on the chariot with his back to the animals. He had such confidence in the calm, resting hybrids that he can afford to not pay constant attention to them. This is in strong contrast with the horses’ groom, who cannot afford to let them out of his sight. This partly shows the actual difference in behaviour between horses and hybrids, but it is also a feature that helps the observer distinguish the hybrids from the horses. Another important difference is that the horses seem to have been castrated, since only the phallus sheath is visible, while the hybrids still show all possible masculine gender markers: they are stallions, without a doubt.

The Egyptians had to be sure the observer identified the horses as such. At the beginning of the Eighteenth dynasty, they did this by making sure the colour and the manes were depicted differently from those of donkeys, but as time goes by, the horse starts to develop its own pictorial characteristics. Not only are they depicted differently, they are also used differently, as donkeys are never depicted pulling chariots. This so to say ‘privilege’ was mainly reserved for our beloved noble animals: the horse.

 

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If you want to learn more, here’s some recommended reading to get you started:

J. Baines, ‘Theories and Universals of Representation’ in: Art History (vol. 8, no. 1; March 1985).

M. Bibby, ‘The Arrival of the Horse in Egypt: New Approaches and a Hypothesis’, in: R. Ives, D. Lines, C. Naunton (eds), Current Research in Egyptology III: December 2011 (BAR IS 1192; Oxford, 2003).

J. Clutton-Brock, P. Raulwing, ‘The Buhen Horse: Fifty Years after its Discovery (1958-2008) (Journal of Egyptian History 2.1-1; 2009).

D. Laboury, Tradition and Creativity: Inter-iconicity, in: T. Gillen, (Re)productive Traditions in Ancient Egypt (AegLeo 10; Liege, 2017).

A.R. Schulman, ‘Egyptian Representations of Horsemen and Riding in the New Kingdom’ (Journal of Near Eastern Studies 16, 1957).

Chariots of Fire and modern-day carriage driving

Last week I visited the lovely little town of Moulton, just a few miles east of Newmarket. There I went to meet Lesley Young, who is a veterinary cardiologist and who does carriage driving with her two ponies, Roscoe and Grumpy. As Lesley opened the door, I hear her two dogs barking inside, defending the kitchen, apparently. Almost inevitably, horses and dogs go together. Even in the Bronze Age of the Near East and Greece there is a link between the two animals. Or perhaps more accurately, the people that interact with horses also tend to have dogs.

Moulton Packhorse Bridge

Lesley took me to visit Roscoe and Grumpy, and to see how she trains carriage driving. Roscoe and Grumpy are both small ponies with big personalities and a charming amount of cheek. They brought back memories of several wilful ponies and battles of stubbornness. Even so, they were both incredibly well-behaved, especially considering Roscoe’s narrow escape from being eaten by various roots and pieces of plastic (which have claimed many victims in the past). Roscoe is a strong white pony who clearly loves the work of the carriage. Grumpy, who earned his name not through moodiness but by being one of seven, is an older gentleman of chestnut disposition. He suffers from laminitis, which is partly kept in check by him still being active, but the work is of course kept much lighter for him. It is clear that they both enjoy pulling the carriage and cantering across the fields with it.

Roscoe

Grumpy

The carriage used by Lesley is a four-wheeler, which seems to be common for competitive carriage driving. It is a bit heavier than one with two wheels, but also much easier to drive. Two wheels require constant balancing, is harder on the horse and topples over more readily. This is an important point to keep in mind when thinking of the Late Bronze Age chariots used across the Eastern Mediterranean. They would have needed a lot of training and skill to drive, and one can only guess at the number of accidents that happened. Today, there are safety measures every step of the way, but accidents do still occur, and they can be quite serious. So training and experience in how the horses might react to situations become even more important.

But to return to the carriage: Lesley’s can be transformed into either a one-pony or two-pony carriage. A different system is needed in each scenario. The main difference is that one pony requires a pole on either side of the pony, while for two you have a pole in between them that they are both attached to – which is also the system we find in the Bronze Age, where there are no definite examples of one-equid vehicles. 

The carriage set up for one pony

We started by taking Roscoe out on his own. The harness is a rather complicated criss-cross of straps, buckles and reins. The front consists of the girth around the belly, neckstrap and breastcollar. The weight of the carriage is pulled primarily on the shoulders. This is an arrangement more suitable for horses than the broad collar that is more commonly used for draft cattle. The broad, short strong neck of cattle makes the collar work well. It is also the kind of harness we see in the earliest Mesopotamian depictions of equids in front of wheeled vehicles, and indeed with especially large cold-blooded breeds of horses today. The best example is perhaps our lovely Standard of Ur. Later depictions show something in between the modern and the third millennium examples, where the collar seems to have been lowered a bit, with less pressure on the airways of the horse.

Roscoe with his harness

Fragment from Mycenaean chariot krater showing girth and collar. British Museum 1897,0401.1543.

The two reins are guided through rings on either side of Roscoe on both the girth and the neckstrap to Roscoe’s bit. In Bronze Age images, the reins go through just one rein ring which is centrally placed over the equids’ withers, also acting as a divider (remember the beautiful rein ring from Ur?). The remainder of Roscoe’s harness does not appear in the Bronze Age as far as we know. It consists of a crupper, and breeching, which helps work as a backing element that prevents the carriage from hitting the ponies when stopping and allows backwards movement.

The bridle has a safety measure which was known already in the Early Bronze Age: blinkers. Blinkers are small covers that shield the horse’s view to the sides and behind and thus prevent it from spooking and running wild. Horses are often most easily spooked by things from behind them, and the usual instinct is then to run, which can of course be very dangerous with a vehicle attached. Nice examples of the depiction of blinkers appear on Egyptian wall reliefs, as for example on one from Amarna shown below.

Roscoe with bridle

Egyptian relief presumed from Amarna, The Met 1985.328.20.

Once we’d made our way to the outdoor arena, Lesley practiced the dressage test she usually does with Roscoe when competing. I only recently discovered this is a discipline with carriages, and I find it very fascinating. The principles are surprisingly similar to dressage riding, with the way the body is held and tensed affecting the direction of the horse and carriage. As an aid partly substituting the legs, Lesley could use the whip to steer the pony. The whip is thus not used as a way of lashing or punishing the horse, but to steer and control the pace with slight nudges.

The way the reins are held has a wonderful parallel in certain ancient images. Lesley showed me how she would hold both reins in one hand, steering basically by twisting the wrist one way or the other. The other hand would instead hold the whip. The overall impression is strikingly similar to some ancient images, for example one of the ‘miniature marvels’ from the last blog:

Practicing the dressage test

British Museum 1880,0428.1

Hands and reins

We then took Roscoe and Grumpy out as a pair. Apart from the central pole, there are two main differences which are of interest in relation to the Bronze Age evidence. Firstly, even though there are two ponies, there are still only two reins. This is achieved by each rein splitting into two down the middle and one attached to the right side of each pony, the other to the left. This may explain the appearance of only a few reins on depictions like that on the Standard of Ur, but once the two-wheeled war chariot comes into play, two reins were sometimes used for each horse.

Grumpy and Roscoe doing team work

Secondly, the use of the two ponies with Lesley’s carriage requires extra ballast. I got to be the ballast for Roscoe and Grumpy. That was simply fantastic! The backstepper (as it’s properly called, or groom) not only helps prevent tipping in general, but especially if the carriage is going at some speed round corners and the weight needs to be moved to keep the balance. This would have applied even more to those ancient war chariots with two wheels, and the second person often depicted next to or behind the driver may very well have had this kind of function.

Ivory game box from Enkomi (Cyprus) showing charioteer and archer, doubling as backstepper. British Museum.

Modern-day carriage driving is of course not the same as in third and second millennium BC Mesopotamia, Egypt or Eastern Mediterranean, but there is much to be learnt from it. I am most grateful to Lesley for letting me tag along and meet her, Roscoe and Grumpy.

 

Miniature Marvels

One of the first things that drew me to archaeology was these tiny little objects called seal stones. Occurring in almost any imaginable colour, each contains its own secret, revealed through contact with the earthly substance of clay. Every seal tells a story.

If you’re at all familiar with any of the regions of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, you would surely have encountered these little marvels. In the Near East, we find them most commonly in the shape of cylinders until the first millennium BC, while scarabs are common in Egypt, and stamp lentoid variations in the Aegean – and in typical mix-it-all-up manner, Cyprus has a bit of everything.

British Museum 1897,0401.1

British Museum 1901,1016.2

British Museum 1898,1201.198

British Museum 140703

British Museum 1874,0305.8

British Museum 105159

 

 

Seals are tiny objects engraved with a motif. They were used to secure – or authenticate – containers and correspondences. We find their ancient impressions on lumps of clay which were once used on vessels when shipped, and then broken when received or opened. They are also sometimes rolled out or stamped on cuneiform tablets. The motif would identify the owner of the seal or their representative. Sometimes it was accompanied by a small inscription, usually naming the owner and perhaps their family descent, status or occupation. Owners were often royalty or other high status individuals, but occasionally we get glimpses into more mundane occupations, as for example a cook and a nurse at ancient Urkesh in Syria (albeit a cook and a nurse working for the royal family).

So seals appear to have been primarily an administrative tool used by fairly wealthy individuals. But they could also function as amulets, have a talismanic effect and be worn as jewellery (nearly all seals are pierced so a string could be pulled through it). Seals were in most cases valuable items, not only due to the craftsmanship involved, but also the material they were made of. Various kinds of precious stones were used to make seals, including agate, lapis lazuli, quartz, obsidian, hematite and carnelian. The veining and semi-translucency of some would add to their magic effect. Examples in gold and other metals are also known, the Mycenaean and Minoan gold signet rings being the most famous. Others had gold caps added to the ends.

British Museum 1900,0521.1

British Museum EA37644

Since the seal is meant to be pressed or rolled onto unfired clay(1), they are carved in the negative, so that the inscription can be read – we therefore usually refer to the impression (ancient or modern) when describing the scene engraved.

Motifs and styles vary greatly. Many are miniature masterpieces, even if their primary function was not as a work of art. Some are as small as about the size of a finger nail. On this small surface, the craftsperson makes their mark. The information that can potentially be gained from these miniature images is immense. They often provide more detail than large-scale images. They are fantastic for studying ancient animals and human-animal relations. Animals are probably the most popular motif. A huge amount of real, mythological and hybrid animals are depicted, on their own, with human figures, or in a criss-cross of animal combat scenes.

British Museum 130691

British Museum 113887

Equids are usually depicted in chariot scenes, similar to what we saw on the Standard of Ur. These especially occur in the Early Dynastic III period, but do continue and change slightly during the second millennium BCE. In the Aegean, horses appear on seals from the early part of the Late Bronze Age.

British Museum 122538

Here, the fineness that makes seals so enticing is also what makes them challenging. The images are so small they can be difficult to see at all. It has even been suggested that some engravers were short-sighted. Added to this is common wear and breakage, and in some cases later re-cutting of the design. It is very difficult to take good photographs of a design, where resolution and light can make a big difference. Light from one side might miss certain details and the exact edge of the cut, and light from several angles or overexposure often means loss of depth. This loss of detail is an issue in many publications, and even more so in older ones.

To mitigate this, and to give a clearer image, drawings are made of the design. Drawings are also particularly useful for assimilating a single design when we have many partial ancient impressions of a seal, but not the seal itself. But they come with their own set of challenges, and there are many different styles of drawing. Details may again be lost, or even misrepresented.

A most admirable effort to comprehensively publish all Aegean Bronze Age seals and sealings has been made by the Corpus of Minoan and Mycenaean Seals project. This now also exists as a digital resource. In this case, every effort is made to take high resolution photographs of the ancient object, accompanied by drawings which are checked against the seal and corrected until every detail is satisfactory. The result is really quite wonderful, and it is entirely possible to use the database directly.

However, as a recent visit to the Ashmolean Museum reminded me, nothing beats seeing these objects directly, preferably with a magnifying glass at hand. This is where you get those little extra bits of information that can make all the difference – the shape of the ears and tail of an equid, for example. How the reins are attached or the position of the arms of a charioteer.

Equid on seals

Chariots and equids are sometimes engraved on seals. So we can learn more about the kind of chariots used, the harness and maybe even a bit about the situations in which they were used. The seal depicted above, another fine object from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, has two bands or registers. The lower register has equids in front of a four-wheeled chariot. This particular scene is very similar to the one on the Standard; it also has a row of what looks like soldiers with a prisoner, and a human body on the ground below the equids.

British Museum 89774

On another Near Eastern seal, we again have the four-wheeled vehicle, with each equid engraved separately. The charioteer is seated and the reins clearly go to the front of the animals’ muzzles, suggested the use of a nose or lip ring rather than a bit.

British Museum 1880,0428.1

Seals from the Aegean show the use of the new ‘true’ type of chariot. This is a two-wheeled spoked type, which makes for a much faster and lighter vehicle. Combined with a new way of communication with the equids with the use of two reins and a bit for each animal, this greatly improves manouvering. The charioteer stands rather than sits, and has a whip to encourage the equids – in this cases horses. The horses on this seal are walking or trotting. Together, all of these small details tells us a lot about how humans and equids interacted and how animals were managed and trained.

Till next time, here’s an altogether different class of miniature marvel:

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Notes
(1) Some seals may also have been used for other purposes, for example dipped in paint and rolled on cloth to make textile designs.

Image credits

• British Museum 1897,0401.1
• British Museum 1901,1016.2
• British Museum 1898,1201.198
• British Museum 140703
• British Museum 1874,0305.8
• British Museum 105159
• British Museum 1900,0521.1
• British Museum EA37644
• British Museum 130691
• British Museum 113887

 

A Game of Bones: Cambridge Science Festival 2018

 

Poster 1 for the festival

Poster 2 for the festival

EDIT: We are going to repeat the event this year, so come along on March 16, 2019!

This Saturday, March 17th, Jess Beck and I are going to have a stall with animal bones as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. What better way to spend St. Patrick’s Day than in the name of animals? Deer, to be more specific. The festival has the theme of Sense this year, and we’re focussing on the sense of touch in our display of deer bones. We’ve added colour, of course. This was a messy affair, but totally worth it.

We hope it will get kids (of all ages) an idea of some of the many things we can learn from studying bones. First of all, we want them to have lots of fun with it.

The display will have four different interactive activities, developed by Jess in her previous work (in other words, big thanks to her for sharing!) If you’re interested in how to set up something similar, check her upcoming detailed blog post on the topic. Jess tested me in all of these and I loved it (I may also have failed in one due my superpowers in anything related to numbers).

1. Guess the bone

One of the first things done when finding a bone in an archaeological context is to identify what part of the body it belongs to. The game is here to use the sense of touch to decide which bone is hidden in a box. It is one of three long bones: upper arm (ulna), thigh (femur) or foot bone (metatarsal). Each has a different shape and ends which help identify it.

 

2. Match the vertebrae

The spinal column has three types of vertebrae: cervical, thoracic and lumbar. This game is about grouping the three types. Cervical vertebrae are those nearest the head (they also include the atlas and axis) and have sort of a squarish/bulky shape. Thoracic vertebrae have a long part sticking upwards, like a dolphin’s dorsal fin. The lumbar vertebrae are those closest to the pelvis, and they can be recognised by their two ‘wings’. Unlike long bones, vertebrae cannot be sided, since the form the centre of the body. The number of vertebrae depends on species – for example, deer have seven cervical, 13 thoracic and six lumbar vertebrae, while humans have seven cervical, 12 thoracic and five lumbar vertebrae.

 

3. Solve the puzzle

The first activity is about age. There are various ways of trying to determine age using bones. One is the presence or absence of fusion. For example, a long bone consists of a shaft (the long part, technically the ‘diaphysis’) and ends (‘epiphysis’). At birth, the shaft and the ends are not completely fused. This happens at different stages depending on the type of bone and the human/animal. Osteoarchaeologists and zooarchaeologists have developed precise tables for the species and type of bone, and the time interval at which they fuse. Fusion usually happens fairly early in life (within the first three years, again depending on the animal and bone), so if a bone is found unfused, we can say that it came from a very young individual.

Fusion estimates for donkeys. After Wilkens’ Archaeozoologia

So, in this activity, we have several sets of long bones (ulna, femur and tibia) that have not fused yet. The game is to fit the unfused ends (in green) to the shaft. A simple but fun puzzle.

4. Guess the number

The second activity is a numbers game. In archaeological contexts, we rarely deal with complete animal skeletons – and even human remains are often found all mixed up (commingled). But it is still very useful to know how many individuals are represented by the bones that do survive or are present. For this, two basic ways of counting are used: the number of bones (NISP, Number of Identified Specimens), and the minimum number of individuals (MNI) represented by those bones.

The first one is fairly easy. Just count all the bones. The second can be trickier. All limbs bones can be assigned to either the right or the left-hand side of the body. Of course, any one individual can only have one right thigh bone and one left thigh bone. We can use this to count how many individuals were present. For example, if there are five thigh bones of the same type, you might initially say that we have five individuals. But if three of the bones are from the left side, and two from the right, we can instead say that in fact several of the bones belonged to the same individuals, and so the minimum is three.

 

For the purpose of this activity, we have tried to keep it simple by only counting in this way. However, the numbers can be further fine-tuned by taking into consideration the age of the bones, and compare to other bones from the same kind of animal. Remembering the idea of fusion, if one of the right thigh bones has not yet fused (but all the others have), we instead have a minimum of four individuals. Various other factors can help in this kind of calculation. It is extremely useful because it can make a world of difference to how we interpret a site whether we can see that 50 or 100 cattle were brought to a site (say, for a big feast). The bones used here are the heel bones (calcaneum); Jess has a super useful blog on siding of this particular bone.

If you’re around Cambridge, do come visit! There will also be displays on pottery, stone tools, ancient food and much, much more. It’ll be lots of fun, and I promise there will also be green to celebrate the day.

Newmarket: A town run by horses

So I went on one of my wonderful research visits to Newmarket, a town known as ‘The Home of Horseracing’. It is completely dominated by horses. I brought photographic evidence:

The bars are run by horses (obviously)

 

The roads are made by horses

The trees are planted by horses

The stable agents are horses

The bins are made (and probably filled) by horses

The parks and playgrounds are known as ‘the Gallops’.

Bad jokes aside, it is clear that in Newmarket the racing industry is part and parcel of the life of the town. With my ancient Near Eastern-tinted glasses, this hub of all things equine made me think of Tell Brak (again!). Tell Brak – ancient Nagar in the late third millennium BCE – was famous for its equids. The archives in Ebla records how they procured equids from Nagar, sometimes even including their personnel, such as equine veterinarians. Nagar may also have had a caravanserai where equids could be stabled. Those equids were not used for racing (as far as we know), but speed is sometimes mentioned as a much desired quality of fine horses and donkeys.

Apart from a very interesting consultation with a vet, my main reason for visiting Newmarket was to see Pot8o and Hyperion. They are both equine legends. I’d been told they can be seen in the relatively new National Heritage Centre for Horseracing & Sporting Art in Palace House.

Hyperion was a small chestnut stallion, aptly named after the mythological Titan who gave birth to the sun and the moon (confusingly, Hyperion the horse’s mother was called Selene, the name of the moon goddess). He was born in 1930 and had many wins on the racecourse. But he is particularly famous as a sire of other great sires and dams. He died in 1960. His skeleton is on display in the Heritage Centre.

Hyperion had what is now commonly called ‘kissing spines’ (the spinal processes of the vertebrae touching each other, which can cause a significant amount of pain), visible here on the thoracic vertebrae.

Pot8o (or Potoooooooo or Potatoes) was another chestnut racehorse. He was born in 1773. He was very successful both as a racehorse (winning 34 of 40 races) and as a sire. A skeleton found under a tree in Hare Park Stud and excavated in 2010 is thought to belong to the champion and can now also be seen in Palace House.

 

 

My favourite part of the Heritage Centre was probably the retraining programme. Flat racehorses typically have a very short career. They start as two-year olds and often only run a couple of years. Racehorses have a reputation for being difficult, too spooky and eager for any other purpose than running. However, most racehorses can be retrained and have a long lifespan as dressage, jumping or companion horses. The RoR (Retraining of Racehorses) does this, and they currently have four horses at Palace House. I was fortunate enough to meet two of them – Danbul (who only has one eye) was being trained in the new outdoor arena, while Jonnie Skull was hanging out in his box, getting ready to be lounged. Both beautiful horses.

Jonnie Skull

Buldan

 

To finish off, one of the displays in the Heritage Centre serves as a literal reminder of just how big a heart a horse has:

Horse and human hearts

Stay tuned for next week’s Festival of Science, where we will have a stall with various animal bone games. More about this soon!

 

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Image credits. Unless otherwise stated, images are by the author.

The Gallops: Bob Jones [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Hyperion with jockey: Wikimedia Commons

Potoooooooo: Public domain