1.1 The Archaeology of Large Game Hunting

The issues treated in this Element fall under the purview of social zooarchaeology: an approach that attends to the social dimensions of human–animal relations in the past (Russell, Reference Russell2012; Sykes, Reference Sykes2014a). Increasingly, zooarchaeologists are embracing some version of multispecies archaeology (Pilaar Birch, Reference Pilaar Birch2018), aligned with a broader multispecies movement across disciplines that seeks to treat humans and other life forms as entangled agents shaping each other’s lives (Burton & Mawani, Reference Burton and Mawani2020; Cielemęcka & Daigle, Reference Cielemęcka and Daigle2019; George, Reference George2021; Kirksey & Helmreich, Reference Kirksey and Helmreich2010; Peggs, Reference Peggs2018; van Dooren et al., Reference van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016). A multispecies approach lends itself to large game hunting, especially stalking, in which the successful hunter engages in mimesis, identifying so deeply with their prey that they are in danger of losing their humanity (Guenther, Reference Guenther2020; Hell, Reference Hell, Descola and Pálsson1996; Morris, Reference Morris1998; Willerslev, Reference Willerslev2007).

Social and multispecies approaches draw on the same basic data as other kinds of zooarchaeology: the species, body parts, mortality profiles, traces of butchering and cooking, and other basic data gathered from the careful study of animal remains (chiefly bone fragments) from archaeological sites (Gifford-Gonzalez, Reference Gifford-Gonzalez2018). These approaches pay special attention to the archaeological context of these remains, which can illuminate the social context of practices involving animals (Russell, Reference Russell2012). They also integrate information from other materials, such as artifacts related to human–animal interactions, and especially depictions of animals. As always, archaeologists studying human–animal relations draw on all available sources of information, including art, historical documents, oral traditions, and specialized scientific studies when available.

1.2 Scope

The hunting and consumption of large game is laden with symbolism and ritualization in most societies. The aspects of this ritualization (Bell, Reference Bell1992) – practices that mark events as out of the ordinary and laden with meaning – form one theme running though this Element. Hunting is often strongly gendered, although frequently this is through careful definition of what counts as hunting. Gender is dealt with most thoroughly in Section 4 but forms another thread running throughout the volume. The third major theme is the use of hunting and game to build prestige and consolidate power.

Almost all societies practice hunting to varying degrees, from the central focus of their livelihood to a sport practiced by a few. Hunting therefore takes quite diverse forms in different times and places. However, the three themes of ritualization, gender, and power apply widely but in varying manners across nearly all cases. I will try to give a sense of these variations on themes through case studies drawn from around the world, from a wide range in time, and from quite different societies: mobile to urban, egalitarian to class-structured, forager to farmer to royalty.

The remainder of the Element consists of five thematic sections followed by a brief conclusion. Each thematic section contains a general discussion of the theme and two case studies that explore it in differing contexts. Section 2 examines the identification hunters often experience with their prey, and the rituals of respect hunters owe their quarry. Section 3 focuses on the role of large game in feasting, whether the feasts act to unite the group or elevate the elite – or often some of each. Section 4 considers the gendering of hunting, as well as complicating the linkage of hunting to masculinity. Section 5 explores the connections between hunting and power more generally, with a focus on the royal hunt. Section 6 foregrounds aspects of hunting as a multispecies collaboration, often not just of human hunter and prey but also involving hunting companions of other species (dogs, horses, raptors, etc.). Section 7 concludes by returning to and amplifying the main themes in light of their exploration in the preceding sections.

2.1 Case Study: The Bear in Northern Societies

Even in foraging groups with animist ontologies, in practice some species receive more careful treatment than others. In much of Indigenous North America and northern Eurasia, the bear is such an animal (Hallowell, Reference Hallowell1926). Bears tend to be identified with humans since they are similar in size, can stand upright, and have some anatomical similarities. Bear bones are fairly similar to those of humans; in particular, bear feet without the claws are sufficiently human-like that forensic scientists are routinely trained to distinguish bear from human foot bones (Sims, Reference Sims2007) and bears differ from most carnivores in having five rather than four toes on the hind feet. Bears are omnivores like humans, and we share a taste for foods such as salmon and berries. At the same time, bears command respect because they are dangerous to humans – and vice versa.

Bears are also sources of tasty meat resembling pork, thanks to their omnivorous diet. Their hides are valued for the thick, warm fur. For foragers, they are especially important as a source of fat, which is relatively rare in wild foods, especially at some seasons (Speth & Spielmann, Reference Speth and Spielmann1983). Rendered bear fat stores well and has widely been considered of high quality for cooking as well as other uses such as cosmetic applications to the hair and skin, where it is an effective insect repellant, and as a base for medicinal salves (Altman et al., Reference Altman, Peres, Compton, Lapham and Waselkov2020; Waselkov, Reference Waselkov, Lapham and Waselkov2020).

Bears are rich in fat because they hibernate, and the fat stores sustain them through months without food. They are most often hunted by attacking them in the hibernation den, both because this is safer for the hunters and because their fat reserves are still high in the earlier part of the winter (Hallowell, Reference Hallowell1926; Waselkov, Reference Waselkov, Lapham and Waselkov2020).

Ethnography and archaeology provide much evidence of hunting bears, using bearskins, consuming their meat and fat, making bears the center of rituals and feasts, using bear body parts as costumes, and special treatment of bear remains. In animist societies, the dietary and practical use of bears and other animals is not separate from their symbolic and religious significance (Binford, Reference Binford, Tillet and Binford2002). Bears may be conceived as ancestors of humans, humans in disguise, or essentially the same as humans under the skin. The special respect due to bears may be manifest in using circumlocutions to refer to them (e.g., grandfather), speaking to them to ask permission before killing them, limiting hunting methods to direct combat analogous to warfare, consuming them in special feasts celebrating the bear or where the bear must be honored by eating it in its entirety in a single seating, and treating their remains with special care and disposing of them properly (Alekseenko, Reference Alekseenko and Diószegi1968; Brightman, Reference Brightman1993; Hallowell, Reference Hallowell1926). The special care is necessary so that the bear or its spirit master will not be offended and withhold future bears from hunters, and the proper treatment of remains enables them to regenerate into a new bear. Famously, the Ainu of Japan and some groups in northeast Siberia raised bears from cubs, treating them as honored and divine guests and then sacrificed them in ritualized bear festivals culminating in a feast, after which the bear skull was displayed on an altar (Batchelor, Reference Batchelor and Hastings1908; de Sales, Reference de Sales1980; Eddy, Reference Eddy2019; Hamayon, Reference Hamayon1990; Kimura, Reference Kimura1999; Kwon, Reference Kwon1999). On the other hand, groups such as the Ket (Yenisei Ostyaks, in Siberia) often raise bear cubs as surrogate children and release them when they become too hard to handle; they avoid killing such bears, which are marked with copper ornaments, if they encounter them later (Alekseenko, Reference Alekseenko and Diószegi1968).

Bears are closely identified with shamans. They are a prime animal familiar for shamans, a form often taken by shamans in trance, and bear skins or body parts are a frequent component of shamans’ costumes (Baldick, Reference Baldick2000; Berres et al., Reference Berres, Stothers and Mather2004; Kroeber, Reference Kroeber1907). The Khanty (Ostyak) of western Siberia consider the bear to be the personification of a deity (Figure 2). For them,

Human interactions with bears date at least to the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and the now-extinct cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). There is solid evidence from cut marks and bone distributions that Neanderthals sometimes killed, skinned, and consumed cave bears (Romandini et al., Reference Romandini, Terlato and Nannini2018; Wojtal et al., Reference Wojtal, Wilczyński, Nadachowski and Münzel2015). In light of increasing evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behavior, a series of cut marks on the axis (second vertebra) of a cave bear from Neanderthal levels of Pešturina cave in Serbia is presented as possibly symbolic in nature (Majkić et al., Reference Majkić, d’Errico, Milošević, Mihailović and Dimitrijević2018). There is no contextual evidence to support this, however, and the cuts could plausibly have been created by efforts to separate this tight joint. Such an operation would be aimed at removing the head, which might itself imply a symbolic motive, although it could also have facilitated cooking the head. Apparent placement of cave bear skulls, often in patterns (back-to-back, forming crosses), has been interpreted as ritual behavior by Neanderthals, although it is hotly debated whether these deposits are indeed anthropogenic (Lascu et al., Reference Lascu, Baciu, Gligan and Sarbu1996). If they were deliberately placed, they would be consistent with respectful behavior toward prey later practiced by modern humans (Homo sapiens), or reverent treatment of remains of cave bears that died in hibernation and were subsequently found by Neanderthals.

Figure 2 The honored bear’s head at a Khanty bear feast, decorated and with offerings to show respect.

Photographed in 2016 by Antti Tenetz and reproduced with permission from Stephan Dudeck’s Arctic Anthropology blog post “The Khanty Bear Feast revisited,” April 24, 2016 (https://arcticanthropology.org/2016/04/24/the-khanty-bear-feast-revisited/); the Surgut Khanty people performing the ceremony invited Tenetz and Dudeck to record it.

Cave bears persisted through the earlier part of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, when there is somewhat greater evidence that they were hunted by modern humans. As noted, most bears were probably killed during hibernation; this is supported by a projectile point embedded in a cave bear vertebra at Hohle Fels in Germany, the position of which shows that the bear was lying down when struck. The symbolic value of bears is clearly indicated in the Upper Paleolithic by figurines depicting them and bear teeth worn as pendants (Wojtal et al., Reference Wojtal, Wilczyński, Nadachowski and Münzel2015).

In the late Pleistocene and Holocene, the bears in question are brown bears (Ursus arctos), found across North America and Eurasia with numerous subspecies such as the grizzly bear, and in North America also the smaller black bear (U. americanus). There is considerable archaeological evidence for hunting bears for meat and fur, as well as for special treatment of bear remains throughout the northern parts of this range and beyond.

The cave of Montespan in the French Pyrenees has vivid evidence for a ritual related to bear hunting in the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic. A life-size crouching bear was modeled in clay deep within the cave, but without a head. A hole in the neck is thought to have served to attach a real head, perhaps with the skin attached to cover the body. Between the front paws was a real skull of a bear cub, perhaps fallen from the neck, or perhaps a later placement given that it would have been disproportionate to the large adult-size bear sculpture. The clay body was riddled with punctures from spears, showing that a hunt was reenacted in the cave, perhaps as part of an initiation ritual (Bégouën & Casteret, Reference Bégouën and Casteret1923).

Kotias Klde, a Mesolithic site in Georgia (southern Caucasus), provides direct evidence for hunting in the early Holocene. This rock shelter, which contains remains of a series of visits by Mesolithic hunters, has an unusual faunal profile dominated by wild boar (Sus scrofa) and brown bear. The bears were skinned and consumed, but the long bones are substantially less fragmented than those of other species and apparently not broken for marrow in contrast to the ungulate remains (Bar-Oz et al., Reference Bar-Oz, Belfer-Cohen and Meshveliani2009). This is reminiscent of ethnographic prohibitions on breaking bear bones, which would prevent the bears from regenerating (Hallowell, Reference Hallowell1926). Guy Bar-Oz and colleagues, noting the unusual species profile focused on two dangerous animals, suggest that there may have been a performative aspect to hunting at this site, perhaps a test of courage as part of initiation.

Thomas Berres and colleagues (Reference Berres, Stothers and Mather2004) aggregate evidence from the upper Midwest and mid-Atlantic region of North America that supports a special relationship with black bears from at least the Late Archaic period. This includes concentrations of bear bones indicative of feasts, sometimes with holes broken into the skull to remove brains, historically consumed by warriors at bear feasts. These feasting remains are often heavily biased toward heads and feet, suggesting that most postcranial remains were taken out of the site, perhaps hung in trees or dumped in bodies of water as attested ethnographically (Brightman, Reference Brightman1993). Skulls and mandibles were sometimes buried, often near human graves, in large concentrations that may have been gathered from prior displays. Masks made from bear skulls with holes drilled to attach a bear hide (e.g., Abel et al., Reference Abel, Stothers, Koralewski, Prufer, Pedde and Meindl2001) were surely parts of costumes, for shamans or participants in historically attested bear dances. Figurines and ornaments, especially bear canines, may have been worn by Bear Clan members, people who had received power from a bear in a dream or vision, or others; these items may also have been part of the contents of medicine bundles.

Similar evidence can be found in other regions, more than can be enumerated here. Two widespread practices can serve as examples. Bear remains in graves have been considered among the traits identifying shamans in locations as disparate as prehistoric California (Richards et al., Reference Richards, Ojeda, Jabbour, Ibarra and Horton2013) and medieval England (Bond & Worley, Reference Bond, Worley, Gowland and Knüsel2006). Burials of bears are known from California, where at least three black bears were buried nearly intact (Heizer & Hewes, Reference Heizer and Hewes1940), and also in Saami contexts in Scandinavia (Zachrisson & Iregren, Reference Zachrisson and Iregren1974). The Saami practice is known ethnographically and is a form of respectful treatment of bear remains, at least in part to keep them from dogs. The ethnographic sources stress that the bones must not be broken and are placed in the grave in anatomical order after the feast following a bear hunt, with the skull placed on top. However, as is often the case, the archaeological bear graves reveal that actual practice differed. While the bones were less thoroughly processed than most, they were broken for marrow and were jumbled rather than carefully arranged in the grave. They do, however, demonstrate the practice of collecting and treating specially the remains of spiritually important animals eaten at feasts.

Bears are not the only animal given respectful treatment or whose remains and images carried power. Similar practices can be found applied to many different taxa around the world. The characteristics of bears have cast them in a special role almost anywhere they occur, however, making them a useful example of how hunting and eating animals can be and often is simultaneously consumption of an important food source and interaction with a powerful spirit.

2.2 Case Study: Hunting Shrines

The previous case study introduced the concept of respectful treatment of the remains of prey to avoid offending their spirits and maintain the good relations between hunter and prey that encourage animals to offer themselves to nourish humans. Here I consider an elaboration of this practice, where longer-term structures contain specific remains of hunted animals, to show proper respect to the animals and associated deities. These are more likely to occur in association with sedentary settlements, where key parts of game animals can be deposited regularly and formalized structures facilitate respectful treatment.

A somewhat impromptu version of what might be termed hunting shrines have been found in association with mass kills of bison (Bison sp.) and other animals by Paleoindians (late Pleistocene foragers) and later groups on the North American Great Plains. Some of these kill sites show signs of hunting ceremonies that followed the game drive, sometimes with ritual structures. Hunters collected the skulls of some of the prey nearby; some of these skulls were decorated, for instance, with lightning signs (Bement, Reference Bement1999; Frison, Reference Frison2004).

The sedentary and agricultural Puebloans of the American Southwest have long-term shrines outside their settlements marking the cardinal directions. The north shrine is linked to the mountain lion (Puma concolor); like the bear, a powerful predator and incarnation of a deity. (Bears were associated with the west shrine, wolves with the east, and, varying among pueblos, bobcat, lynx, or badger with the south.) Since mountain lions are powerful hunters, Puebloans prayed to their spirit for success in hunting and battle. The north shrines were constructed of piled rocks, sometimes with large carvings of mountain lions. The heads of mountain lions were sometimes buried in these shrines, and their other bones nearby. A north shrine excavated at Pecos Pueblo contained three mountain lion paws, perhaps the remnants of a skin placed there (Gunnerson, Reference Gunnerson and Saunders1997).

Like the Puebloans, pre-Hispanic Mayans were sedentary farmers with few domestic animals: dogs and turkeys. They also constructed hunting shrines to maintain good spiritual relations so that prey would continue to offer themselves. An ethnoarchaeological study of the hunting shrines of contemporary Maya in highland Guatemala sheds light on similar ancient deposits (Brown, Reference Brown2005; Brown & Emery, Reference Brown and Emery2008). Mayans consider prey animals to be persons with agency, with whom they interact in the hunt. These animals are watched over by an animal guardian spirit, who protects the animals and negotiates with hunters for animals to offer themselves as prey. Thus, to sustain a supply of game, hunters must behave well and treat both animals and their spirit guardian respectfully.

The animal spirit guardian appears in hunters’ dreams to give them permission to hunt. Afterward, hunters need to deposit bones of the prey in shrines to the spirit guardian to show that they hunted appropriately. The underground world is a place of spirits for the Maya, and places such as caves and rock shelters are thresholds to the realm of the animal guardian. So it is in these places, outside the settlement, where hunting shrines are located. Hunters visit the shrine before setting out on a hunt to make small offerings and seek the blessing of the animal guardian (Figure 3). After a successful hunt, selected bones of the prey are curated and cleaned in the hunter’s house. If others receive a share of the meat, they must return the bones to the hunter after consumption. This practice creates inversely skewed body part distributions at the settlement and the shrine, hence an archaeological indicator of interactions with the animal guardian. Skulls and mandibles are the bones most often taken to the shrine, but other parts such as scapulae or nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) carapaces may be deposited there. These bones have the power to regenerate animals of the same species. Most shrines have the bones of multiple species, but some are dedicated to a single taxon, such as deer.

Figure 3 Cache of bones from hunted animals at Pa Sak Man hunting shrine, Guatemala. A stone altar holds candles and a divination bundle.

Reproduced with permission from Brown & Emery, Reference Brown and Emery2008.

The bones are carefully arranged in the shrine and left in place by subsequent visitors. As is often the case, Mayans consider it disrespectful to let dogs gnaw on bones of prey. Contemporary Mayans bring their hunting dogs to the shrine to interact with the spirit guardian, as hunters depend not only on their hunting skills but also on the good behavior of their dogs to avoid offending the animal guardian. In addition to the bone deposits, the shrines have small altars for offerings, and open areas for ceremonies. Other rituals are also performed there, demonstrating the link between wild animals and spiritual power generally.

Hunting shrines such as those of Puebloans and Mayans show the more structured use of space that accompanies long-term settlements. They are also a sign of greater separation from natural areas among people who clear land and cultivate fields: the beginning of the creation of the wilderness as a distinct and somewhat threatening space (Brown & Emery, Reference Brown and Emery2008). The hunting shrines are placed in a liminal zone between the wild and the cultivated, as well as between humans and spirits.

2.3 Hunters and Their Prey

There is much in common between the ontologies of foragers such as those described in relation to bear ceremonies and those of agriculturalists without livestock such as the Maya and Puebloans. Both interact with their prey as sentient persons like themselves, who must willingly choose to be killed so that humans can live. Both understand the world as animated by spirits, in some cases including animal guardian spirits who mediate between hunters and prey. Both understand that hunters must behave properly, taking only those animals that offer themselves, offering these animals respect and appreciation, and treating their remains with care to sustain the game populations. Overhunting may be disrespectful, but so is rejecting the gift when an animal offers itself, as failing to kill the animal in those circumstances breaks the reciprocity between hunter and prey (Nadasdy, Reference Nadasdy2007).

We can also see some differences, with farmers relegating prey to a realm of the Wild apart from that of the settlement. Rather than placing key animal bones in trees or rivers near camp, they construct permanent shrines on the periphery that mediate between these spheres. However, their relations to game animals and the spirits that animate them seem not much affected.

Keeping livestock involves quite different human–animal relations and worldviews, with more rigid human–animal boundaries (Ingold, Reference Ingold, Manning and Serpell1994). But even in modern capitalist societies, hunters who stalk tend to identify with their prey. They may experience this as the bonding with nature that is much of the appeal of sport hunting, but at least in some cases it carries the danger of becoming too identified, too wild – becoming a beast. The hunter must carefully navigate the boundary between nature and culture, identifying with the prey but not too much (Hell, Reference Hell, Descola and Pálsson1996; Willerslev, Reference Willerslev2007).

3.1 Case Study: Mammoths and Other Pleistocene Megafauna

Animals on the scale of mammoths are not ideal staple meat sources. Obviously, they yield a huge amount of meat, but the quantity is so great that the small bands of foragers typical of the Pleistocene would rarely be able to use it all before it spoiled. Slow to reproduce and needing large territories (Lister & Bahn, Reference Lister and Bahn2007), mammoths could not be killed often enough to provide a steady meat supply. Hunting them would have been very dangerous, and small bands could not afford to lose hunters on a regular basis. And yet Pleistocene hunters did sometimes kill mammoths and other proboscideans (e.g., Basilyan et al., Reference Basilyan, Anisimov, Nikolskiy and Pitulko2011; Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al., Reference Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Kindler, MacDonald and Roebroeks2023; Moore et al., Reference Moore, Kimball and Goodyear2023; Nikolskiy & Pitulko, Reference Nikolskiy and Pitulko2013), perhaps an instance of the show-off hunting to be discussed in Section 4 (Lupo & Schmitt Reference Lupo and Schmitt2024; Speth et al., Reference Speth, Newlander, White, Lemke and Anderson2013). Or, as Howard Winter used to say, Pleistocene forager bands would kill a mammoth once in a generation and talk about it for three.Footnote ¹ Based on experiments with dead elephants and elephant culls by game managers, George Frison (Reference Frison2004) suggests that the best mammoths to target would be immature ones who wander from the herd, aiming behind the scapula to penetrate the lung. Large projectile points such as those used in the Paleoindian Clovis culture can achieve this if used on a spear-thrower (atlatl) dart (Frison, Reference Frison1989). He considers the stereotypical depiction of mammoth hunts (Figure 4), with hunters thrusting spears from close range and often a hunter killed or crippled in the process, to be unrealistic as such thrusting spears would not be able to penetrate the thick hide and small bands could not afford to lose a hunter or two every time they pursued mammoths (Frison, Reference Frison and Stiner1991). However, if mammoths were only rarely pursued in show-off hunts, perhaps such losses were not out of the question.

Figure 4 Typical reconstruction of a Paleoindian mammoth hunt, but unlikely to bear much resemblance to an actual hunt.

Drawing by John Steeple Davis, frontispiece to Children’s Stories in American History by Henrietta Christian Wright, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1885.

Mammoths also provide other products, such as ivory from their massive tusks and bones large enough to serve as architectural material (Borgia, Reference Borgia2019; Gaudzinski et al., Reference Gaudzinski, Turner and Anzidei2005; Gelvin-Reymiller et al., Reference Gelvin-Reymiller, Reuther, Potter and Bowers2006; Iakovleva, Reference Iakovleva2015; Lbova et al., Reference Lbova, Volkov, Gubar and Drozdov2020). These skeletal materials could be scavenged from animals that died of natural causes, sometimes in large accumulations (Petrova et al., Reference Petrova, Voyta, Bessudnov and Sinitsyn2023; Pitulko et al., Reference Pitulko, Pavlova and Basilyan2016; Soffer et al., Reference Soffer, Suntsov, Kornietz and West2001), so need not always have occasioned a hunt. Indeed, people today use paleontological mammoth ivory for crafts, perceiving it as a more ethical practice than using modern elephant ivory (Hastings, Reference Hastings2025; Woods, Reference Woods2025). It can be difficult to estimate the contribution of mammoth meat to the diet because bones can be scavenged for craft or architecture, and because when people butcher animals of this size, with huge and weighty bones, they usually flense off the meat and leave the bones behind, usually with few cut marks (Yesner, Reference Yesner and West2001). Stable isotope studies have identified a few individuals in Middle and Upper Paleolithic Europe (i.e., Neanderthals and modern humans) who seem to have consumed substantial amounts of meat from megaherbivores such as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses (Bocherens, Reference Bocherens, Conard and Richter2011; Drucker et al., Reference Drucker, Naito and Péan2017), but in general Neanderthals seem to have focused on large game such as reindeer but not mammoths (Jaouen et al., Reference Jaouen, Richards and Le Cabec2019) and the same would be true of most Upper Paleolithic modern humans.

Interestingly, with Winter’s unpublished work as an exception, archaeological discussions of mammoths and other extinct megafauna have focused on them mainly as prey (dramatic hunt as mentioned earlier, or tragic victims of overkill) rather than as food. Even a young mammoth kill would provide a windfall of meat that would almost surely occasion a major and prolonged feast (Barkai, Reference Barkai, Lavi and Friesem2019). The feasters would include at least the members of the band that killed it, but they might well invite any other groups in the vicinity to join them. Such feasts are an important opportunity to create and renew social ties. In particular, finding mates is a serious challenge for members of small bands composed mainly of close relatives; periodic larger gatherings are essential (Wobst, Reference Wobst1974).

Thus, while Pleistocene people occasionally consumed mammoth meat (the evidence for mastodons is less clear and less frequent – Winter may have been correct that they were avoided as food; Speth et al., Reference Speth, Newlander, White, Lemke and Anderson2013) and a few people may have consumed a lot of it, the reasons for hunting them were most likely primarily social: a display of bravado, a desire to gather for a feast, or the need for ivory for implements and ornaments. Late Pleistocene hunting varied according to local circumstances and sometimes included substantial quantities of smaller animals (e.g., Da-Gloria & Larsen, Reference Da-Gloria and Larsen2017; Hill, Reference Hill2008; Real Margalef, Reference Real Margalef2020).

Other Pleistocene megafauna were less gigantic and probably less dangerous: bison, reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), ground sloths, extinct camels (Camelops hesternus), or horses (Equus ferus), for example. Many of these were hunted, and bison, reindeer, and horses were often staple meat sources and sometimes the target of mass kills (e.g., Bourgeon & Burke, Reference Bourgeon and Burke2021; Brasser, Reference Brasser2012; Bratlund, Reference Bratlund1996; Krasnokutsky, Reference Krasnokutsky1996; Turner, Reference Turner and Mashkour2006; Waters et al., Reference Waters, Stafford, Kooyman and Hills2015; Wheat, Reference Wheat1972; Wojtal et al., Reference Wojtal, Wilczyński, Bocheński and Svoboda2012). Even a single animal of this size might call for a feast beyond the household; mass kills surely would. These feasts were no doubt more frequent, but, as Winter memorably captured, mammoth kills and feasts would have been more notable because of their rarity and the difficulty and danger of taking down a mammoth.

3.2 Case Study: Feasting at Cahokia

The famous Mississippian period Cahokia site (AD 800–1400), in the American Bottom region of southern Illinois along the Mississippi River, is the largest prehistoric settlement in North America north of Mexico. Its most prominent feature, Monks Mound (named for a French Trappist monastery built on it in the early nineteenth century; it was originally topped with a temple) is the biggest earthen mound on the continent (Figure 5). More than 100 smaller mounds dot the site, which also included an impressive palisade and a woodhenge (Pauketat, Reference Pauketat2009; Schilling, Reference Schilling2012; Young & Fowler, Reference Young and Fowler2000). Usually viewed as the seat of a major chiefdom, there are clear signs of hierarchy, and it exerted some degree of control over neighboring settlements, the extent of which is debated and differed through time (Mehrer, Reference Mehrer1995; Milner, Reference Milner1990; Redmond & Spencer, Reference Redmond and Spencer2012).

Figure 5 Reconstruction of the central plaza area at Cahokia, looking toward Monks Mound in the background.

Used without changes under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en), uploaded from Flickr user Thank You (24 Millions) views.

Covering roughly 13 km² and with a population of more than 10,000, Cahokia would have relied on the surrounding villages to provision it with food (Pauketat, Reference Pauketat2009). Mississippian farmers practiced a maize-based agriculture, but the only animal domesticate was the dog and the dietary importance of maize varied. Thus, meat came from wild animals. The provisioning of Cahokia is evident in the body part distribution of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), the main meat source (while people in the smaller settlements ate mainly smaller species): few non-meaty parts are represented in the bones recovered. Forequarters went to commoners while the elite received the hindquarters. The Cahokian elite also ate a higher diversity of species, including more birds and rare taxa (Jackson, Reference Jackson, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Kelly, Reference Kelly, Dietler and Hayden2001; Yerkes, Reference Yerkes2005). In other words, food was a marker of social distinctions.

In this context, it is not surprising that there is evidence of feasting. Lucretia Kelly (Reference Kelly, Dietler and Hayden2001) provides an exemplary study of one such event, the remains of which were deposited in a borrow pit created by digging out soil for mound building as the settlement was rapidly increasing in size; this earth may have contributed to nearby Monks Mound. Fancy pottery, crystals, exotic arrowheads, beads made from marine shells, and a drilled alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) tooth (alligators are not native to southern Illinois) indicate that the feast was part of a larger ceremony. The mammal remains are virtually all deer, and almost entirely lack the heads and feet that would be removed in primary butchery; many bones articulate, indicating that this was a single, massive event. Insect remains point to the presence of raw meat on the bones, meaning meat was fileted from the bones before cooking, leaving some behind and thus wasted. The insects also mark the timing of the event in the warmer months. Bird remains derive from a narrower range of species than usual and feature significant amounts of swan (Cygnus sp.), a massive bird that is generally rare at Mississippian sites, but no swan wings (with little meat, although they may have been kept elsewhere for their feathers). The greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido), a species reserved for the elite, is also abundant. Fish are less common than in remains of ordinary meals, and are mostly large river fish, harder to catch than those from backwater sloughs that dominate household meals.

Kelly suggests that this feast served to redistribute food, as the pottery and plant foods suggest that both elite and commoners participated. Much of the food would have been brought as tribute, and some supplied by the Cahokia nobility. Consolidation of food and other materials and their presentation in a large, dramatic event would bolster the standing of the leaders who sponsored it. The feast may also have helped to organize labor for the massive mound-building, and perhaps served as an arena for elites to compete for prestige through generosity while building solidarity in the rapidly coalescing local community (Brown & Kelly, Reference Brown, Kelly, Morehart and De Lucia2015; Jackson, Reference Jackson, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Kelly, Reference Kelly, Dietler and Hayden2001; Pauketat et al., Reference Pauketat, Kelly and Fritz2002; Yerkes, Reference Yerkes2005).

Similar dynamics are apparent at smaller Mississippian sites, such as Lubbub Creek in Alabama, where a single platform mound sits among small farmsteads. Differences in ceramics, lithics, and faunal remains indicate that the mound was used for storage of both food and ceremonial items such as feathers and for feasting. These are seen as redistributive activities that buffered risk for all but also enabled leaders to build their followings and increase hierarchy (Blitz, Reference Blitz1993; see also Dye, Reference Dye, Nassaney and Sassaman1995; Scott & Jackson, Reference Scott and Jackson1998). Some of these feasts may also have been part of diplomatic ceremonies that forged alliances or made peace treaties (Dye, Reference Dye, Nassaney and Sassaman1995; Jackson, Reference Jackson, Arbuckle and McCarty2014). While serving these various purposes, many Mississippian feasts would fall into Dietler’s (Reference Dietler, Dietler and Hayden2001) diacritical category, where differential cuisine and artifact types mark and naturalize hierarchical groupings. However, some sites lack indications of both large-scale feasting and significant hierarchy (deFrance, Reference deFrance2009; Zeder & Arter, Reference Zeder, Arter, Reitz, Newsom and Scudder1996).

3.3 Feasting and the Hunt

Feasting and big game hunting go together because of the combination of large packages of meat and the prestige that attaches to such hunts. We can add the eat-all bear feasts described in Section 2.1 to the mammoths and deer in these case studies as a further example of the forms such feasts can take. The structure and effects of feasts in general, including hunters’ feasts, can be quite variable depending on the scale, the social context, and the political structure of the society. Of course, feasts depend on large amounts of food, which do not have to come from large animals but in some cases from an abundance of smaller ones (e.g., Claassen, Reference Claassen2010). However, since the topic of this Element is large game, a common centerpiece of feasts, that is the focus here.

We have explored two cases of feasting in quite different societies without livestock, where wild animals are the only possibility for the meaty portion of a feast. We have seen that selections of species and of portions often mark these meals as special, in addition to their abundance. Those who raise livestock appear to have a constant source of meat at hand, but often eat less meat than foragers, because the flocks are their wealth, so they are reluctant to kill them (Ingold, Reference Ingold1980). A feast might be the only occasion when they do, but they may also turn to wild game for feasts, sparing their flocks while adding the savor of an unusual food and the prestige of a successful hunt. In stratified societies, where hunting is often associated with the elite (see Section 5), wild game may be one of the ways of marking a diacritical feast (Sykes, Reference Sykes, Arbuckle and McCarty2014b; Wright, Reference Wright and Wright2004; Zeder et al., Reference Zeder, Bar-Oz, Rufolo and Hole2013). In either case, the feast is tied to the hunt. Both events are dramatic and symbolically laden, in ways that reinforce each other.

4.1 Case Study: Female Big Game Hunters in the Archaic Andes

Man the Hunter models of human evolution (Dart, Reference Dart1953; Washburn & Avis, Reference Washburn, Avis, Roe and Simpson1958) posit a gendered division of labor in which men hunt and women gather as fundamental to human evolution. As noted earlier, however, there is a good case for relatively low divergence in gendered subsistence roles until sometime in the Holocene. Much of the discussion has focused on Africa and Eurasia, where earlier hominin species occurred. Here I shift the focus to early Holocene modern human inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, and particularly the Andean highlands, where a recent study provides strong evidence for female participation in big game hunting.

Current research indicates that humans first ventured into the high Andes in the late Pleistocene, but initially only for brief logistical forays as the warming climate made these harsh environments more amenable (Troncoso et al., Reference Troncoso, Pascual and Escudero2025). Permanent occupation seems to start ca. 7500–7000 calBC (Lindo et al., Reference Lindo, Haas and Hofman2018; Osorio et al., Reference Osorio, Capriles and Ugalde2017). Use of the Early Archaic Wilamaya Patjxa site, at ca. 3900 masl in southern Peru, begins at about this time. The site has a surface scatter of artifacts and fifteen pits, five of which contain burials. Some of these date to later in the Holocene, but two contain Early Archaic artifacts. Femoral and cranial robusticity and proteomic analysis of sexually dimorphic amelogenin peptides in the tooth enamel identify one skeleton as male, the other as female. Only the female skeleton, from a young adult, was sufficiently well-preserved to yield a direct radiocarbon date, placing her death in the early seventh millennium calBC; stable isotope analysis indicates that she was a permanent resident of the local high-altitude zone. Her grave goods included six projectile points (the male burial had two). Faunal remains from the site suggest her main prey were probably vicuña (Vicugna vicugna) and a local deer called taruca (Hippocamelus antisensis). The excavators interpret the burial evidence as indicating her active participation in hunting (Figure 6); a male burial with the same attributes would generally be interpreted in this way (Haas et al., Reference Haas, Watson and Buonasera2020).

Figure 6 Reconstruction of Warawara (“Star” in Aymara) hunting, based on burial WMP6 from Wilamaya Patjxa.

(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Image by Matthew Verdolivo, in consultation with Randall Haas. Used without changes under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Randall Haas and his colleagues bolster this interpretation with a survey of 429 individuals buried at 107 Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites in the Western Hemisphere. In this group, there are twenty-seven sexed individuals from eighteen sites accompanied by artifacts interpreted as implements for hunting large game, of which eleven individuals from ten different sites are female (including the Wilamaya Patjxa burial). This is at least suggestive of considerable female participation in big game hunting, although they concede that the reliability of the sexing, the dating, and the security of the association with hunting tools is variable.

This case illustrates the difficulty of establishing who participated in hunting (or other activities) in prehistory but also shows that there is a plausible case to be made that many of these hunters were female. The Wilamaya Patjxa female burial offers at least as much evidence for hunting participation as the roughly contemporary male burial at the site, and this does not appear to be an isolated occurrence. This similarity in treatment suggests that relatively undifferentiated gender roles in subsistence may have been the norm in much of the world until some point in the Holocene. Ethnographic studies are useful in fleshing out the past, but archaeology can also reveal when ancient practices differed.

4.2 Case Study: The Aurochs in Neolithic Southwest Asia

The now-extinct wild ancestor of domestic cattle (Bos taurus), the aurochs (B. primigenius), was an impressive and dangerous animal. Bulls could stand as much as two meters tall at the withers, with huge, long horns. They ranged across much of Eurasia and through Southwest Asia into northern Africa. In much of this territory, they were the largest game animal available. This was true in the Fertile Crescent region where livestock (sheep [Ovis aries], goat [Capra hircus], cattle, and pig [Sus scrofa]) were first domesticated. Aurochsen were hunted throughout this region around the time of domestication but are almost always a small percentage of the faunal assemblage (Conolly et al., Reference Conolly, Manning, Colledge, Dobney and Shennan2012). Due to their size, their meat contribution would have been greater. However, their large size also meant that the meat came in big packages that almost necessitated feasting, and their remains are often found in feasting contexts (Goring-Morris & Horwitz, Reference Goring-Morris and Horwitz2007; Kansa & Campbell, Reference Kansa, Campbell, O’Day, Van Neer and Ervynck2004; Pöllath et al., Reference Pöllath, Dietrich and Notroff2018; Twiss, Reference Twiss2008). They also carried symbolic value and were frequently depicted (Helmer et al., Reference Helmer, Gourichon and Stordeur2004; Kodaş, Reference Kodaş2019; Kozłowski & Lasota-Moskalewska, Reference Kozłowski and Lasota-Moskalewska2004; Özdoğan, Reference Özdoğan2022; Peters & Schmidt, Reference Peters and Schmidt2004). Their body parts, especially the skulls, horns, and scapulae, often received special treatment as displays, foundation deposits, and the like, suggesting that they retained power after death (Becker, Reference Becker, Buitenhuis, Choyke, Mashkour and Al-Shiyab2002; Bocquentin et al., Reference Bocquentin, Khalaily, Boaretto, Khalaily, Re’em, Vardi and Milevski2020; Campbell & Baird, Reference Campbell and Baird1990; Cauvin, Reference Cauvin1977; Coqueugniot, Reference Coqueugniot and Guilaine2000; Dunand, Reference Dunand1973; Gündem, Reference Gündem2019; Helmer et al., Reference Helmer, Gourichon and Stordeur2004; Mallowan, Reference Mallowan1946; Rosenberg et al., Reference Rosenberg, Nesbitt, Redding and Peasnall1998; Russell, Reference Russell, Laneri and Steadman2023; Simmons & Najjar, Reference Simmons and Najjar2006; Stordeur, Reference Stordeur and Guilaine2000; Yartah, Reference Yartah2004).

Central Anatolia is now recognized as a western prong of the Fertile Crescent in that it participated in the early development of agriculture in Southwest Asia (Ibáñez Estévez et al., Reference Ibáñez Estévez, González Urquijo, Teira-Mayolini and Lazuén2018; Özdoğan, Reference Özdoğan2011). In the Konya Plain region of Central Anatolia, the first early Holocene communities obtained their meat mostly or entirely from wild animals, mainly aurochsen and wild boar (Baird et al., Reference Baird, Fairbairn and Jenkins2018). Special treatment of the remains of both these animals suggests they held spiritual power. By ca. 8300–7800 calBC at Boncuklu Höyük, aurochs horns and skulls were built into houses (Baird et al., Reference Baird, Fairbairn and Martin2017). Slightly later at Aşıklı Höyük and its adjacent and associated site of Musular in Cappadocia, east of the Konya Plain, there is strong evidence that aurochsen, especially bulls, were the centerpiece of communal feasts (Buitenhuis, Reference Buitenhuis, Peters, McGlynn and Goebel2019; Buitenhuis et al., Reference Buitenhuis, Peters, Pöllath, Özbaşaran, Duru and Stiner2018).

Çatalhöyük, in the Konya Plain very near Boncuklu but slightly later, resembles Aşıklı Höyük in that caprines (sheep and goats) dominate the animal bone assemblage and daily meals, but cattle (and again, especially bulls) feature in feasting (Russell & Martin, Reference Russell, Martin and Hodder2005; Twiss & Russell, Reference Twiss and Russell2009). Although domestic sheep and goats – but mostly sheep – were herded in large numbers throughout the occupation, the cattle are all wild (aurochsen) until the end of the Middle levels, when a few domestic cattle appear in one area of the site; in the Late levels domestic cattle become more common, although wild cattle are still hunted, but at the same time the numbers of sheep increase substantially (Russell et al., Reference Russell, Twiss, Orton, Demirergi and Hodder2013; Twiss et al., Reference Twiss, Wolfhagen, Demirergi, Mulville and Hodder2021; Wolfhagen et al., Reference Wolfhagen, Twiss, Mulville, Demirergi and Hodder2021). In addition to providing the basis of feasts, the symbolic significance of aurochsen is ostentatiously marked at Çatalhöyük. Cattle are depicted in figurines and wall paintings, and cattle body parts, especially skulls and horns, are placed in a variety of special deposits and built into architectural installations in houses such as bucrania (skulls and horns with faces modeled in clay) and horns set into pillars (Figure 7) and benches (Russell, Reference Russell, Wright and Ginja2022; Russell et al., Reference Russell, Martin, Twiss, Arbuckle, Makarewicz and Atici2009; Russell & Meece, Reference Russell, Meece and Hodder2006; Twiss & Russell, Reference Twiss and Russell2009). Other animals receive similar treatments, but cattle predominate.

Figure 7 Aurochs horns set in clay pillars, northeast corner of Building 77, Çatalhöyük.

Photograph by Jason Quinlan, Çatalhöyük Research Project; used with permission.

Male cattle are featured in these ritualized contexts. While the sex ratio is even in deposits derived from daily meals, cattle remains in feasting deposits and other special contexts are biased to males by 2:1. Cattle horns are biased toward males in general, but more so in special contexts, and the horn installations are nearly all from males. Female horns may not as often have been brought to the site, or without special treatment in deposition may have crumbled to the point they could not be sexed. Bulls might have been preferred for feasts because they were larger, although an aurochs cow would still provide a very substantial amount of beef. The horns, as generally in bovids, were disproportionately larger in males, and differently shaped; aurochs horns were also larger and longer than most domestic cattle and would make a more impressive display. Nevertheless, the masculinity of the aurochsen seems to be marked as important, and many have linked both bulls and dangerous wild animals to human masculinity in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia and especially at Çatalhöyük. For example, Jacques Cauvin (Reference Cauvin1994) saw the bull as the male principle paired with the Goddess (in human form, based on figurines and other depictions), with the bull bringing a special energy that propelled farming societies out of their core area in the Fertile Crescent. Ian Hodder and Lynn Meskell (Reference Hodder and Meskell2011) argue that in the Southwest Asian Neolithic and specifically at Göbekli Tepe in southeast Anatolia and at Çatalhöyük, the dominant symbolism is not that of a beneficent Mother Goddess as some have proposed, but rather emphasizes masculinity linked to dangerous wild animals, mainly aurochsen at Çatalhöyük.

Cauvin (Reference Cauvin1994) notes that around the time of livestock domestication in the Fertile Crescent, when there was presumably less hunting than previously, projectile points become more elaborate than needed for functional purposes: the idea of hunting becomes more prominent as the practice of hunting diminishes. A similar process is evident through time at Çatalhöyük. The stratigraphy has been divided into Early, Middle, Late, and Final periods (Hodder, Reference Hodder2020). The transition from the Middle to the Late periods was a time of many changes at the site (Hodder, Reference Hodder and Hodder2013; Hodder & Doherty, Reference Hodder, Doherty and Hodder2014), with the end of the Middle period marked by apparent contestation that played out with the deliberate burning of many houses, among other things. There were many social changes around this time, one of which is the appearance of a few domestic cattle (which had been available for some time both to the east and to the west) here and elsewhere in central Anatolia (Arbuckle et al., Reference Arbuckle, Kansa and Kansa2014; Arbuckle & Makarewicz, Reference Arbuckle and Makarewicz2009). With increased sheep herding and some of the cattle also herded, hunting became less important economically, as did aurochsen. However, special deposits and installations of aurochs horns and scapulae not only become more numerous in the latest level of the Middle and earliest levels of the Late period, but the individual deposits have larger numbers of horns and scapulae while earlier ones had only one or two (Russell et al., Reference Russell, Twiss, Orton, Demirergi and Hodder2013). The two definite depictions of cattle in wall paintings date to the Late period (Mellaart, Reference Mellaart1966, Reference Mellaart1967; Russell & Meece, Reference Russell, Meece and Hodder2006) and are often described as hunting scenes. Each shows an outsized cattle figure (one is marked as a bull) surrounded by disproportionately tiny human figures, most marked as male by their beards in one of the paintings, carrying bows and quivers. Here again, the hunt takes on greater symbolic importance as it becomes economically less significant and may act most powerfully to construct masculinity.

4.3 Gender and Hunting

Big game hunting has often been an arena for the enactment of gender roles and the construction of masculinity. As we have seen, however, there is a reasonable argument that gender roles in hunting were not established until after the early Holocene, as some groups became larger and more settled – at least in the Western Hemisphere. If this model is borne out, it calls into question models of human evolution that place differentiated gender roles at the heart of what made us human (Isaac, Reference Isaac1978; Lovejoy, Reference Lovejoy1981).

Although it may not go back to our earliest ancestors, there is good archaeological as well as ethnographic evidence for the frequent association of big game hunting with masculinity (Potter, Reference Potter2004; Speth, Reference Speth2010). In recent years, this phenomenon has been referred to as show-off hunting (Hawkes & Bliege Bird, Reference Hawkes and Bliege Bird2002) and explained through costly signaling theory (Oommen & Shanker, Reference Oommen and Shanker2021). Human behavioral ecology (HBE) first entered discussions of ancient human hunting in the form of optimal foraging theory: organisms, including humans, will be selected to minimize costs in acquiring food while maximizing nutrients by strategically balancing these costs and benefits (Winterhalder, Reference Winterhalder, Winterhalder and Smith1981). Archaeologically, this was often simplified in the context of hunting to a preference for larger animals, because the big package provides a better pay-off, other things being equal. However, other things are often not equal, and careful studies showed that in many cases targeting large animals is less productive than focusing on smaller ones (e.g., Bliege Bird, Reference Bliege Bird2007; Jones, Reference Jones and Jones2016; Speth, Reference Speth2010). Yet often hunters, especially men (and sometimes especially unmarried men), would pursue big game instead of the more easily acquired alternatives. As this doesn’t make sense in terms of optimal foraging, it has been attributed to costly signaling, another realm of HBE theory. Rather than optimizing subsistence, costly signaling is meant to demonstrate fitness to potential mates through success in challenging circumstances (Zahavi, Reference Zahavi1975); that is, it is a reproductive, rather than a dietary, strategy. Hunting Pleistocene megafauna, as discussed in Section 3.1, has been interpreted in this light (Speth et al., Reference Speth, Newlander, White, Lemke and Anderson2013), and big game hunting in general is increasingly seen as costly signaling (Bliege Bird et al., Reference Bliege Bird, Smith and Bird2001; Hildebrandt & McGuire, Reference Hildebrandt and McGuire2002). Others caution that big game hunting is only occasionally less productive than hunting smaller game and hence only rarely needs to be explained by costly signaling rather than optimal foraging (Grimstead, Reference Grimstead2010; Smith, Reference Smith2004).

Costly signaling theory is important in discussions of gender and big game hunting because it is chiefly a male strategy. Costly signaling, by definition, involves risk; in the case of big game hunting, this can be risk of death or injury as well as risk of failure. HBE expects that mothers with young offspring will avoid risk (and so may fathers, hence unmarried men are more likely to engage in costly signaling). James Conolly (Reference Conolly2017) notes that costly signaling should be more effective in larger groups, where people do not know everyone else well and therefore rely on such cues. This intersects with the suggestion that gender roles cannot be pronounced in small bands because rigid roles would doom a group that happened to be unbalanced in gender and age composition (Haas et al., Reference Haas, Watson and Buonasera2020) to support a relatively late origin of gendered big game hunting. However, it leaves open the question of why some Pleistocene hunters occasionally killed animals such as mammoths, putting themselves at considerable risk to obtain prey that was difficult to butcher and provided more meat than they could use. Perhaps in humans costly signaling (a.k.a. seeking prestige) is directed not only at potential mates but toward larger groups, via both the hosting of feasts and the glorious stories of the hunt.

The phenomenon of increased symbolic stress on hunting, which might be seen as another kind of showing off, at times when hunting becomes less important economically occurs at places other than Çatalhöyük. For example, in middle Holocene California populations grew and resources such as acorns and shellfish, ethnographically collected and processed mainly by women, became the staple foods. At the same time, big game hunting increased relative to smaller prey, although hunting was overall less important in the diet. Hunting scenes also became prominent in rock art, and hunters started making fancy obsidian projectile points. On the coast, fishers began to seek out large pelagic fish, notably swordfish, and a burial of a human wearing a headdress made from a swordfish skull ornamented with shells attests to the performance of the historically known swordfish dance. These changes are interpreted as male hunters shifting their effort from provisioning to the pursuit of prestige as hunting loses its key subsistence role (Hildebrandt & McGuire, Reference Hildebrandt and McGuire2002).

Human large game hunting is always laden with symbolism, and so are gender relations. It is not surprising that the two are intertwined, but it is intriguing that the gendering of hunting may become stronger as groups become larger and as hunting becomes less calorically important.

5.1 Case Study: Royal Hunts in Late Shang China

Animals, both wild and domestic, played important spiritual and practical roles in the Bronze Age Shang culture in China (ca. 1600–1050 BC). Livestock provided meat for both ordinary meals and royal feasts. Sacrificed cattle, horses (Equus caballus), pigs, sheep, dogs (Canis familiaris), and sika deer (Cervus nippon) are found in the Anyang area, the capital of the Late Shang kingdoms (ca. 1250–1050 BC). Many of these were also used in divination, notably cattle scapulae and turtle plastra that were heated to create patterns of cracks. These cracks were interpreted as responses to the questions asked by the sacrificer; in some cases, the questions and answers were inscribed on these famous oracle bones (Campbell, Reference Campbell, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Fiskesjö, Reference Fiskesjö2001; Flad, Reference Flad2008; Yuan & Flad, Reference Yuan and Flad2005; Figure 8). This practice has roots in the Late Neolithic of northern China and Mongolia from ca. 3300 calBC and was elaborated during the Shang culture, especially by the royalty (Flad, Reference Flad2008).

Figure 8 Oracle bone on cattle scapula, Shang culture, twelfth century BC.

From the British Library.

Horses and chariots arrived in the Late Shang and became central to warfare and also to the royal hunt, which seems to emerge with them (Campbell, Reference Campbell, Arbuckle and McCarty2014). Our knowledge of the Shang royal hunt comes largely from the Anyang oracle bone inscriptions, more than 10 percent of which relate to the hunt and some of which record the results of a hunting expedition (Keightley, Reference Keightley1978), as well as the zooarchaeological remains from Shang sites. Additionally, most animals portrayed on Shang bronze objects are wild and belong to species that were hunted (Childs-Johnson, Reference Childs-Johnson and Childs-Johnson2021). On these royal hunts, game would be driven by beaters or fire to the elite hunters in chariots and then shot with arrows or driven into traps or pitfalls. Sometimes these hunts also killed “wild” (non-Shang) humans; these wild people were equated to game, and “tamed” by their capture. Some of them were sacrificed, a ritual otherwise restricted to domestic and tame animals (Fiskesjö, Reference Fiskesjö2001). This is an instance where the frequently claimed link between hunting and warfare was made explicit; indeed, the boundary between the two was blurred by treating humans as game.

Magnus Fiskesjö (Reference Fiskesjö2001) argues that these royal hunts were critical to the state formation occurring in the Late Shang; they decline in subsequent periods but are also found in other early states with similar features. In them, the monarch performed state formation by enacting control of the wild: wild lands, wild beasts, wild people. These royal hunts were held as part of the ruler’s travels around his kingdom, providing a pageant for his subjects and symbolically reestablishing his claim to the territory.

5.2 Case Study: Deer in Medieval Europe

In Europe, hunting was seen as a noble pursuit in ancient Greece and Rome, but royal hunts of the kind described for Shang China were very rare in the Classical period (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006). However, they flourished in medieval temperate Europe, perhaps because mounted warfare became more important at this time and thus connected better to the royal hunt (Figure 9), usually conducted from chariots or horseback (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006), perhaps because in this time of political ferment new states or new dynasties were frequently established (Fiskesjö, Reference Fiskesjö2001). Hunting became a key part of elite identity and was seen as good training for warfare, with success in both hunting and battle indicating fitness to rule (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006; Goldberg, Reference Goldberg2020; MacKinnon, Reference MacKinnon and Campbell2014; Pluskowski, Reference Pluskowski, Sidéra, Vila and Erikson2006).

Figure 9 The Stag at Bay, from Incidents in a Stag Hunt, Dutch tapestry woven ca. 1495–1515.

Open access from the Metropolitan Museum of Art under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

In most of temperate Europe, deer, especially red deer (Cervus elaphus), were the major game species throughout the Holocene (Vigne, Reference Vigne, Desse and Audoin-Rouzeau1993). In the Middle Ages, especially the later medieval period, deer became the focus of aristocratic hunting. Medieval lords hunted many other animals, but only deer, and to some extent wild boar, conveyed the nobility of the hunt (Pluskowski, Reference Pluskowski, Sidéra, Vila and Erikson2006). For most of temperate Europe, the native deer in the Holocene were red deer (a large deer similar to American elk [C. elaphus canadensis]) and the sheep-size roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) with small spiky antlers. In northern Europe Eurasian elk (Alces alces, similar to moose in North America) and reindeer also occur but will not be discussed here. Fallow deer (Dama dama) are native to the eastern Mediterranean but were brought to Cyprus in the Neolithic and to Crete in the Bronze Age, and introduced to the western Mediterranean by the Phoenicians and to much of temperate Europe by the Romans, although they seem then to have died out in most places until reintroduced in the later Middle Ages (Pluskowski, Reference Pluskowski, Sidéra, Vila and Erikson2006; Sykes, Reference Sykes and Pluskowski2005; Vigne, Reference Vigne, Desse and Audoin-Rouzeau1993). Fallow deer are intermediate in size between red and roe deer, have palmate antlers like elk/moose, and are adapted to more open country and grazing (vs. browsing) than most deer.

Red deer seem to have become the iconic medieval game species because they were the largest deer in most areas, they have impressively large antlers that are pointy and dangerous, and they came to be laden with Christian symbolism (MacKenzie, Reference MacKenzie1988; Sykes, Reference Sykes and Pluskowski2005; Thiébaux, Reference Thiébaux1974). Their antlers were valued as raw material and also as a symbol of regeneration. However, the focus of the elite hunt shifted among red, roe, and fallow deer through time in some areas.

Royal game parks are known in Southwest Asia from the Late Bronze Age Hittites in Anatolia (with fallow deer) and the Early Iron Age Assyrians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia (with red and possibly fallow deer). They were also widespread among the Hellenistic and Roman elites, where they often included imported exotic taxa such as axis deer (Axis axis) from South Asia. In the Middle Ages, these game parks spread to temperate Europe, mainly inhabited by fallow deer, which became semi-domesticated as park deer, exhibiting multiple coat colors (Vigne, Reference Vigne, Desse and Audoin-Rouzeau1993). Throughout Europe, medieval hunting appears to be largely confined to the elite (Pluskowski, Reference Pluskowski, Sidéra, Vila and Erikson2006).

Medieval England is a particularly interesting illustration of the changing nature of the deer hunt. Throughout the Middle Ages wild animals are always more frequent at elite sites than others in England. Prior to the Norman Conquest in AD 1066, elite hunting occurred mostly in enclosed wooded parks populated by roe deer; other people had the right to hunt on their own properties. After the conquest, William the Conqueror imposed the Forest Law that gave the Norman nobility exclusive hunting rights to open forest. They also brought a preference for red deer as quarry, but introduced fallow deer, which displaced roe deer from the enclosed deer parks.

As a result, the proportion of wild game at elite sites shoots sharply upward and tends more to red deer, while urban sites shift in the opposite direction from red to roe deer. Moreover, while before the conquest all sites had even body part distributions indicating that whole deer were brought to them, after the conquest the elite sites have low proportions of pelves and upper forelimbs, while feet, especially hind feet, are overrepresented. This is linked to the introduction of a new butchery ritual in hunting, known as the unmaking of the deer: the deer was carefully skinned, gutted, and dismembered in a stylized fashion. The pelvis was left at the kill site for the ravens, the left shoulder was given to the forester (the official in charge of maintaining and guarding the forest), and the right shoulder was often given to the best hunter. Mastery of this elaborate ritual and its French terminology was a mark of nobility; although the terminology was French, the unmaking ritual seems to come from Norman Sicily, which was also the source of the fallow deer (Sykes, Reference Sykes and Pluskowski2005). With the forest claimed by the Normans, the fallow deer in parks became the game of the surviving Anglo-Saxon nobility (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2011).

One effect of the Forest Law, which appropriated hunting rights for the incoming Norman elite that had previously belonged to all property owners, was that it largely created the crime of poaching by making game off-limits to the local people. (While new to Britain, medieval laws appropriating varying degrees of royal hunting rights over forested areas were propagated in continental Europe through much of the Middle Ages [Goldberg, Reference Goldberg2020].) Indeed, the Forest Law included heavy penalties for poaching, although the more drastic ones seem to have been rarely used, with enforcement mainly through fines (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2011).

Just as the general pattern of species and body part distributions document archaeologically the Norman restriction of game to the elite, archaeological deposits also reveal the existence of poaching. Foresters were not supposed to sell the left shoulders they received, but they sometimes did, and these parts appear in urban sites as a result. However, remains of all deer body parts at urban sites where they were marketed indicate poaching. There are also cases of red or fallow deer butchered skeletal remains concealed in hidden places on urban or village sites that are almost surely waste from the clandestine sale of animals poached from forests or parks (Holmes, Reference Holmes, Baker, Carden and Madgwick2014; Sykes, Reference Sykes, Arbuckle and McCarty2014b). Peasants poached stealthily and the Anglo-Saxon barons poached openly in large hunts. In both cases, the motivation was likely less nutritional than political, a show of resistance to the oppression of an initially foreign elite (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2011; Sykes, Reference Sykes, Arbuckle and McCarty2014b).

5.3 The Power of the Hunt

There are many ways in which power can intersect with big game hunting. This section has focused on the symbolic power of elite hunting in stratified societies. Such hunts are efficacious for the establishment and maintenance of power in several ways. Killing large and often dangerous animals demonstrates a power over nature and threatening forces that can be extended to a right to power over commoners (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006; Goldberg, Reference Goldberg2020; Price, Reference Price2020; Sykes, Reference Sykes and Pluskowski2005). This effect is strengthened by the equation of hunting and warfare, so that successful royal hunters prove their ability to wage war and thus both protect and suppress their subjects. They may represent themselves as serving their subjects by removing dangerous wild animals that threaten humans, crops, and livestock, thus legitimating their rule. Hunting rights gave royalty and nobility rights over land in their domain: either the right to hunt freely on land belonging to others, or to set aside substantial hunting preserves scattered throughout the realm that serve as reminders of their power. As we have seen in the Shang case, travel among these hunting grounds provided an opportunity for display that connected subjects to their ruler in the context of a performance of power and fitness. To make full use of this opportunity, and also to manage the hunt so as to minimize, although not eliminate, the risk to the royal hunters, such expeditions typically had casts of thousands. Military units often formed an important part of these massive hunting parties, again linking hunting to warfare as well as providing an intimidating display of military might (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006).

Royal hunts were widespread because they offered these various ways to bolster power, which also allowed them to be adapted to the needs of different rulers by emphasizing particular aspects. In addition to the cases reviewed here, royal hunts were especially prominent in ancient Egypt and Persia, for example. Perhaps because of the centrality of domestic equids to the royal hunt, as mounts or pulling chariots, it does not seem to occur in full-blown form in the Western Hemisphere, even in the Andes where the presence of livestock might move hunting more into the political realm (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006). Even where hunting parks and preserves or giant royal hunting expeditions are absent, however, in stratified societies hunting is often associated with elites for some of the reasons enumerated (Hamilakis, Reference Hamilakis, Kotjabopoulou, Hamilakis, Halstead, Gamble and Elefanti2003). Hunting by members of the lower classes is often constrained, rendered as poaching, and does not carry the same prestige. To the extent it occurs, the motivation of non-elite hunting is mainly for subsistence and, perhaps, resistance to elite power.

6.1 Case Study: Dingoes

Dingoes are a variety of dog that has both free-living and tame populations in Australia (Figure 10). They are genetically, morphologically, and behaviorally distinct from most populations of domestic dogs, and are most closely related to the New Guinea singing dog, also known as the New Guinea dingo (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Miller and Wolf2024; Crowther et al., Reference Crowther, Fillios, Colman and Letnic2014; Smith et al., Reference Smith, Appleby, Cairns, Convery, Davis, Lloyd, Nevin and van Maanen2023). Beyond these facts, there is little agreement among scholars on the origin and nature of dingoes; a recent spate of scientific investigation has so far mostly produced contradictory interpretations; we may hope that further research, especially in zooarchaeology, may resolve some of this murkiness before long. Some consider them a separate species from both wolves (Canis lupus, the ancestor of domestic dogs) and dogs: Canis dingo (Cairns, Reference Cairns2021; Crowther et al., Reference Crowther, Fillios, Colman and Letnic2014). Others regard them as a subspecies of the wolf: C. lupus dingo (Ardalan et al., Reference Ardalan, Oskarsson and Natanaelsson2012). Many consider them part of C. familiaris, the domestic dog species (e.g., Jackson et al., Reference Jackson, Groves and Fleming2017). These terminological differences reflect in part disagreement over whether dingoes are feral dogs or a truly wild species derived either from a dog lineage that separated from wolves prior to domestication or directly from wolves (Ballard et al., Reference Ballard, Gardner, Ellem, Yadav and Kemp2022). These alternative origins are in turn linked to arguments about the timing of the arrival of dingoes in Australia, or the timing of their separation from wolf/dog lineages elsewhere in the region, variously placed at points between the Last Glacial Maximum in the Pleistocene and ca. 3500 BP. Moreover, historically and ethnographically there is no evidence that Indigenous Australians kept populations of dingoes; domestication depends on a sustained human–animal relationship through generations (Clutton-Brock, Reference Clutton-Brock1992). Rather, they regularly captured puppies from the free-living (wild/feral) dingoes and raised them in camp; these might depart as adults and those that remained apparently did not breed (Balme & O’Connor, Reference Balme and O’Connor2016). However, this may have produced a population of dingoes habituated to humans, similar to village dogs (Brumm, Reference Brumm2021). Fascinating as these debates are, they are not of great concern to our discussion here. Much of the disagreement about the status of the dingo can be resolved by understanding domestication as a process rather than an event (Shipman, Reference Shipman2021), with debate focused on what kind of human–dingo relationship existed when they were introduced, and how this may have changed afterward.

Figure 10 Dingo near Glen Helen Gorge, Northern Territory, Australia.

Photo by Jarrod Amoore, cropped by Mark Marathon. Used without changes under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).

The archaeological evidence is somewhat scant, with the earliest directly dated dingo remains at ca. 3300–3000 BP (Balme et al., Reference Balme, O’Connor and Fallon2018); this roughly coincides with some, but not all, suggested dates based on genetic analysis (Oskarsson et al., Reference Oskarsson, Klütsch and Boonyaprakob2012; Savolainen et al., Reference Savolainen, Leitner, Wilton, Matisoo-Smith and Lundeberg2004). The Australian landmass, which with lower sea levels in the Pleistocene included New Guinea and Tasmania, has not been connected by land with Southeast Asia since before the Pleistocene (hence its unique marsupial fauna), so it is highly likely that dingoes were brought by humans. Since they did not occur in Tasmania, which was separated from Australia about 14,000 years ago, they probably arrived in the Holocene. Indirect evidence of their arrival may be seen in a shift to smaller prey at archaeological sites but not at a paleontological site, since dingoes tend to hunt small-medium prey, and in the extinction of the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) around 3000 BP (Balme & O’Connor, Reference Balme and O’Connor2016). The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was a marsupial predator that occupied the wolf niche in the native Australian fauna; its extinction is usually linked to competition from the introduced dingo and perhaps also direct predation of the smaller female thylacines (Fillios et al., Reference Fillios, Crowther and Letnic2012; Wroe et al., Reference Wroe, Clausen, McHenry, Moreno and Cunningham2007), although their demise has also been attributed to climate change (White et al., Reference White, Mitchell and Austin2017).

Here the focus is on the use of dingoes in hunting, a topic that is also not without controversy but more easily approached. Some have disputed whether dingoes assisted human hunters at all, as opposed to the domestic dogs brought by European colonists that are now usually preferred for this purpose (Hamilton, Reference Hamilton1972). Historical and ethnographic materials document, however, the participation of dingoes in human hunts, and as noted, zooarchaeological evidence of a shift in prey size has been interpreted as evidence of reliance on dingo hunting partners (Balme & O’Connor, Reference Balme and O’Connor2016; Cahir & Clark, Reference Cahir and Clark2013; Hayden, Reference Hayden1975). Others acknowledge that dingoes hunted with humans, but suggest they were in actuality of little use (Meggitt, Reference Meggitt, Leeds and Vayda1965). While they hunted with humans over most of Australia, careful studies indicate that they were of greater value in some environments than others (temperate and subtropical rather than arid), and that only some tame dingoes were useful hunting companions (Balme & O’Connor, Reference Balme and O’Connor2016; Doherty et al., Reference Doherty, Davis and Dickman2019; Koungoulos, Reference Koungoulos2017). Dingoes were the only nonhuman animals that were buried, but only especially valued animals, for their hunting skills or companionship, received this treatment historically; this probably also applies to archaeological burials (Cahir & Clark, Reference Cahir and Clark2013; Koungoulos et al., Reference Koungoulos, Balme and O’Connor2023).

Dogs generally, but dingoes more so, are productive hunting companions only under some circumstances. They are at least sometimes helpful in running down kangaroos, but if game is scarce human hunters may do better without dogs (Hayden, Reference Hayden1975). Dingoes seem generally to have been adept at hunting smaller game but could be very useful in obtaining large game through drives (Balme & O’Connor, Reference Balme and O’Connor2016; Koungoulos & Fillios, Reference Koungoulos and Fillios2020).

I have deliberately chosen this case at the margins of big game hunting because it is useful to point up both variation and similarities in interactions with hunting companions of other species, and in the symbolic power of hunting, especially big game hunting. Deer hounds and other specialized breeds of hunting dogs are clearly more effective at increasing hunting success than are tame dingoes. Nevertheless, we see here as with many animal hunting companions that humans encourage these other species to take on larger prey than they might on their own. We also find that the value and affection that accrues to good hunting dogs is as great for these somewhat marginal dingo hunters as it is for members of fancy hunting breeds, and is consistently expressed, often with special burial treatment, in many places and many very different societies around the world (e.g., Lupo, Reference Lupo, Albarella and Trentacoste2011; Morey & Jeger, Reference Morey and Jeger2022; Ojoade, Reference Ojoade and Willis1990; Perri, Reference Perri2016; Sykes et al., Reference Sykes, Beirne and Horowitz2020; Trantalidou, Reference Trantalidou, Snyder and Moore2006). With or without humans – and probably some of each – dingoes’ hunting proficiency appears to have been sufficient to drive the thylacine into extinction and probably to shape Australian fauna more generally, and to contribute to the apparently rapid adoption of the dingo across the Australian continent.

6.2 Case Study: Falconry

Raptors hold a special fascination for humans, as is evident today in the number of nations, military units, and other organizations that feature eagles on their flags, seals, or logos. The symbolic weight of raptors is ancient. Recent work has shown that Neanderthals targeted raptors, especially the largest ones such as vultures and golden (Aquila chrysaetos), Spanish imperial (A. adalberti), and white-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla), with an apparent interest in their feathers and talons (Finlayson et al., Reference Finlayson, Brown and Blasco2012, Reference Finlayson, Finlayson, Giles Guzman and Finlayson2019; Fiore et al., Reference Fiore, Gala and Romandini2016; Frayer et al., Reference Frayer, Radovčić and Radovčić2020; Laroulandie et al., Reference Laroulandie, Faivre, Gerbe and Mourre2016, Reference Laroulandie, Morin, Soulier and Castel2020; Rodríguez-Hidalgo et al., Reference Rodríguez-Hidalgo, Morales and Cebrià2019; Romandini et al., Reference Romandini, Fiore and Gala2016); Shumon Hussain (Reference Hussain and Wallis2023) traces these relationships on through the Neolithic in Europe and Southwest Asia. Eagles and other raptors continue to have symbolically laden interactions with humans in Eurasia through the Bronze and Iron Ages, classical, and medieval periods (Evans, Reference Evans2013; Goldhahn, Reference Goldhahn2020; Holmes, Reference Holmes2018, Reference Holmes2020; Lewis & Llewellyn-Jones, Reference Lewis and Llewellyn-Jones2018; Makowiecki & Gotfredsen, Reference Makowiecki and Gotfredsen2002; Negro, Reference Negro, Sarasola, Grande and Negro2018; Sten, Reference Sten, Ekroth and Wallensten2013). In the Western Hemisphere as well, raptor remains that received special treatment are recovered archaeologically and raptors are attested as spiritually important ethnographically (Heizer & Hewes, Reference Heizer and Hewes1940; Hill, Reference Hill2000; Kensinger, Reference Kensinger, Reina and Kensinger1991; Krech, Reference Krech2009; López Luján et al., Reference López Luján, Chávez Balderas, Zúñiga-Arellano, Aguirre Molina, Valentín Maldonado, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Murray, Reference Murray2011; Parmalee, Reference Parmalee1977; Sugiyama et al., Reference Sugiyama, Pérez, Rodríguez, Torres, Valadez Azúa, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Tyler, Reference Tyler1979; Watson, Reference Watson2020).

Why have raptors drawn so much attention? They are widespread, occurring everywhere humans live. While some owls and falcons are tiny, most raptors are on the large side and some are huge – so they are usually easily visible (the more so since they spend much time flying or perched in the open on the watch for prey) and often quite striking. Probably more important, they are predatory (leaving aside the vultures, which include some of the largest raptors). Lions of the air, they strike fear in other species and draw human admiration for their ferocity. Like lions, in hierarchical societies they tend to be equated with the ruling class.

One manifestation of this human connection with raptors is falconry: the use of tamed birds of prey as hunting aids. Until recently, these birds were always captured from the wild; legal restrictions now oblige many falconers to breed their birds in captivity (Negro, Reference Negro, Sarasola, Grande and Negro2018). A wide variety of raptors have been used in falconry, comprising multiple species of falcons, hawks, and eagles; I will refer generically to these birds as hawks. As with favorite hunting dogs, and no doubt intensified by the more elaborate training and care required (Michell, Reference Michell1900), the hawk is highly valued and regarded with deep affection, in a pet-like relationship. Most of the time, the hawk bonds with the human so that it returns and surrenders the prey. Falconry provides game for human consumption, but the amount of care needed to maintain the trained hawk would normally outweigh the yield in prey (Serjeantson, Reference Serjeantson2009). The point of falconry is the mastery of an intricate sport, the thrill of controlling a free-flying bird and setting it on the prey, and the intimate relationship with the hawk (Figure 11). One intriguing feature of falconry is that hawks and eagles are often trained to hunt much larger prey than they would in the wild and often considerably bigger than they are, such as herons, cranes, deer, gazelle, antelope, and wolf (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006; Dobney, Reference Dobney, Buitenhuis, Choyke, Mashkour and Al-Shiyab2002; Pegge, Reference Pegge1773; Salisbury, Reference Salisbury1994). Indeed, the raptor species favored for falconry are generally those that hunt at high speed and have large beaks and talons, suiting them to take larger prey (Gamauf, Reference Gamauf, Gersmann and Grimm2018). It is also noteworthy that women often participated fully in this form of hunting, given that, as noted in Section 4, they are often forbidden or discouraged from participating in activities defined as hunting. Medieval women’s participation in hunting seems to have been variable and mostly cloistered in game parks; the mediation of the kill via another species seems to have made falconry a more acceptable feminine hunting method (Jennbert, Reference Jennbert and Wallis2023; Sykes, Reference Sykes2014a).

Figure 11 Raja Dhian Singh, wazir of the Sikh empire, setting out on a hawking expedition on the Punjab Plain.

Painted ca. 1830–1835, displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The intensity of the human–bird relationship in falconry and the prestige associated with it in many places where it is practiced have inspired both historians and archaeologists to trace its roots. The origins of the practice remain murky. Keith Dobney (Reference Dobney, Buitenhuis, Choyke, Mashkour and Al-Shiyab2002) has suggested that finds of raptors and smaller bird and mammal species at Qermez Dere in northern Iraq and other early Holocene sites in Southwest Asia indicate that falconry was employed to take some of the smaller prey that typify what Kent Flannery (Reference Flannery, Ucko and Dimbleby1969) termed the Broad Spectrum Revolution (a switch to a larger number of species of smaller size) at this time. Dobney also notes that dogs appear in the region around this time and suggests that both are newly relevant as hunting aids in a broad-spectrum subsistence economy. This intriguing argument is hard to evaluate, although it raises interesting questions. If this was indeed early falconry, was it stimulated by the switch to smaller prey, or is the apparent Broad Spectrum Revolution created by keeping sacred raptors for falconry (as Dobney describes for recent Kyrgyz nomads), which targeted smaller game? This would parallel arguments made for the effect of dingo participation in hunting when they were introduced to Australia (see Section 6.1). However, the Broad Spectrum Revolution is seen around the world in the early Holocene, so the link, if any, must be more complex. Stronger evidence for falconry comes from much later depictions in Southwest Asia: petroglyphs showing birds on the arms of hunters, often mounted, on the Persian Plateau may be as early as 2000 BC (Kolnegari et al., Reference Kolnegari, Jamali and Naserifard2021). Bas-reliefs that seem to depict raptors sitting on human fists, in some cases with the same hand holding a dead hare, appear at Hittite sites in central Anatolia ca. 1500 BC, and at Assyrian Khorsabad in northern Iraq in the late eighth century BC (Dobney, Reference Dobney, Buitenhuis, Choyke, Mashkour and Al-Shiyab2002). Further artistic and textual evidence comes from Mesopotamia from the thirteenth and seventh centuries BC respectively (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006), all of which casts some doubt on the conventional location of the origin of falconry in Central Asia at around this same time but with weaker evidence (Epstein, Reference Epstein1943). Classical Greeks and Romans practiced a crude version of falconry, in which human beaters flushed birds from the brush, and tame hawks were released to drive the birds back to the ground where they could be captured (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006).

Falconry as we know it seems to have arrived in Europe in the Middle Ages, at which point it was widespread in Asia. Although it already existed in western Europe from the fifth century AD, apparently diffused from Southwest Asia, it became much more popular in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries as returning Crusaders shared their experiences of it in the Holy Land (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006). During the medieval and post-medieval periods there is widespread archaeological evidence for its practice, including raptors outside their natural range, a bias to female raptors (larger than males in most raptor species and preferred for falconry), damage to other bird bones that appears to result from hawk beaks and claws, association with high-status sites, and the inclusion of hawks in human graves (Bocheński et al., Reference Bocheński, Tomek, Wertz and Wojenka2016; Boev, Reference Boev1996; Cherryson, Reference Cherryson2002; Crabtree & Campana, Reference Crabtree, Campana, Arbuckle and McCarty2014; Dobney & Jaques, Reference Dobney and Jaques2002; Makowiecki et al., Reference Makowiecki, Tomek and Bocheński2014; Poole, Reference Poole, Gersmann and Grimm2018; Price, Reference Price and Wallis2023; Prummel, Reference Prummel, Gersmann and Grimm2018; Serjeantson, Reference Serjeantson2009; Sten, Reference Sten, Ekroth and Wallensten2013; Walker et al., Reference Walker, Hufthammer and Meijer2019).

Medieval nobles seem to have loved falconry because it required great skill and careful training, and it relied on multiple species working together. To bring down large prey such as cranes with hawks, the human hunter might dispatch two hawks to bring a flushed crane to the ground, then send greyhounds to dash in for the kill. The human hunter would arrive, probably on horseback, to claim the prey, and would feed prescribed bits to the animal helpers, such as heart and marrow to the hawks and innards to the dogs, binding the three species together in mutual consumption, but structured to mark each in their appropriate place (Salisbury, Reference Salisbury1994).

6.3 Companions in the Chase

The intense experience of hunting can forge close relationships among humans and between humans and other species. This is probably least true of hunting based on drives, and most so of stalking, but in all cases, there is some need to understand the prey, which can generate the feelings of cross-species kinship described in Section 2. But hunting, with its elements of chance, danger, skill, and often cooperation, tends to generate bonds of affection and admiration among its participants, whether fellow humans or members of other species. These bonds unite our two case studies, which otherwise can be seen as roughly at opposite ends of a spectrum of care and investment in hunting companions. It may not be surprising that falconers love their birds, whom they come to know as individuals through long and careful training and use. Indigenous Australians have valued dingoes for reasons other than their hunting aid, but despite dingoes’ indifferent contribution to hunting success, the better hunters among them were consistently valued for that quality and accorded quasi-human status as marked by burial. Another curious feature that unites the two case studies is the tendency of human hunters to “train up” their animal helpers to attack larger prey than they would in the wild. This may result from a combination of human interest in larger prey, especially on elite hunts, and the entertainment value of watching smaller animals take on outsize prey, thus demonstrating their ferocity and introducing an element of animal combat.

Many other animals have aided humans in the hunt. I have already mentioned horses as another widespread example. Most of these, but especially more exotic animals such as cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) and caracals (Caracal caracal), feature mainly in elite hunts (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006); the prestige value of their rarity was surely as important as their hunting prowess. Hunting was often explicitly linked to war and seen as good training for battle for both humans and animals, especially horses and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), the latter used mainly in its native range in South and Southeast Asia (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006).

In addition to tamed wild animals, the importance of animal hunting companions is marked by the development of specialized breeds of hunting dogs and, to a lesser extent, horses. Many of the dog breeds are selected to excel at the pursuit of particular prey taxa (wolfhounds, dachshunds) or at particular kinds of hunts or hunting tasks (greyhounds to chase down prey, bloodhounds to track). While most dog breeds were developed in the last few centuries, elites in early states developed hunting breeds such as the ancient greyhound-type dogs of Egypt and Southwest Asia, with the Romans creating most of the main hunting types. During the European Middle Ages with the elaboration of elite hunts, nobility developed a dog breed for virtually every kind of prey (Clutton-Brock, Reference Clutton-Brock and Serpell1995; Salisbury, Reference Salisbury1994).

Before the days of laser sights and night vision scopes, humans extended their sensory and physical abilities in hunting by drawing on those of other species; many of these remain useful even with contemporary technology. It is not always clear that such animal companions really increase the yield enough to justify the time and energy devoted to their care and training; in some cases, they clearly do not. Yet the companionship, pageantry, and excitement of hunting with other species have put a high value on animal co-hunters across a wide range of societies, just as hunting itself is usually about more than just the protein and calories.

7.1 Ritualization

Ritualization (Bell, Reference Bell1992) has been a useful concept for archaeologists because it shifts the focus from whether or not we have excavated the remains of a ritual to the ways in which the behavior whose traces we find has been ritualized. Devices such as repetition, elaboration, overemphasis, and framing that mark acts as special are key to ritualization, which also involves performance and display. Hunting, especially large game hunting, is well-suited to ritualization as it involves life-and-death drama, happens outside the settlement, and relies on equipment that can be displayed and elaborated. Permanent houses/settlements and domestic animals add a further dimension as they create a zone of the Wild outside and apart from much of daily life, automatically providing strong framing for the hunt.

In societies that do not keep livestock, we are more likely to see the kind of ritualization discussed in Section 2, where the emphasis is on respectful treatment of the prey and its remains, to maintain ongoing relationships that sustain both hunter and hunted, who are equally endowed with personhood (Hill, Reference Hill2013). As wild is separated from domestic, hunting often persists but mainly as a venue to perform and affirm masculinity – an aspect that is present but usually less central when hunting is key to subsistence (Morter & Robb, Reference Morter, Robb and Whitehouse1998). In hierarchical societies, hunting (usually strongly linked to warfare) often becomes a display of elite power, carried out on a grand scale with elaborate equipment, practices, and etiquette, as we saw in Sections 5 and 6.2–3.

7.2 Gender

The evocative symbolic power of large game hunting lends itself to the construction of identity. In the recent history of East Africa, ethnic identity could depend on whether a person or group hunted or herded or farmed (Mace, Reference Mace1993; Sobania, Reference Sobania, Galaty and Bonte1991). More often, hunting serves to mark elite identity by reserving some or all hunting for nobility (Section 5). But gender identity is probably the most frequently tied to hunting as a marker or proving ground for masculinity, as explored in Section 4. The need to define real hunting as a masculine activity often means defining many forms of killing wild animals for food out of hunting (Cartmill, Reference Cartmill1993).

Although the lines are drawn differently and with varying degrees of emphasis, the association of large game hunting with masculinity is virtually ubiquitous in recent societies. It is, therefore, intriguing that Haas and colleagues (Reference Haas, Watson and Buonasera2020) argue plausibly that this gendering of hunting may have been rare or absent among mobile foragers of the Pleistocene and early Holocene (see Section 4.1). As noted in Section 7.1, hunting may become largely about the construction of masculinity in farming societies. That is, show-off hunting, which may have existed in foraging societies but not as the standard practice, may become more important in societies with domestic livestock. There are other reasons for herders to hunt: consuming wild meat to avoid slaughtering valuable livestock, or eliminating livestock predators or competing herbivores, for instance. Elite hunts usually stress masculinity as well, but the competition between gender privilege and class privilege often created space for noble women to participate; sometimes alongside the noble men, sometimes in separate or modified forms of hunting, such as falconry with bird species considered suitable for women (Allsen, Reference Allsen2006; Jennbert, Reference Jennbert and Wallis2023).

7.3 Power

Power is at issue in hunting in all societies. Egalitarian foragers must rigorously maintain equality by preventing good hunters from parlaying their success into prestige and power. They achieve this through strong requirements for sharing in general but especially of meat, and above all the meat of large animals (Kent, Reference Kent1993). They may also employ tactics such as insulting the meat: the more magnificent the kill, the more mercilessly the hunter is teased about the poor quality of the animal he bagged (Lee, Reference Lee1993).

Other societies are less reluctant to link the hunt to status, and may reserve hunting for the nobility alone, creating the new crime of poaching for acts that would otherwise simply be farmers hunting on the side. Elite hunts are elaborated with exotic animal aids, arcane practices, and complex rules, so that knowledge of the procedures and the wealth to assemble and maintain the support network are necessary for success.

The hunt can also provide meat for magnificent feasts, made special by its wildness (Section 3). The hosts are often able to use such feasts to build and maintain power. In mid-range societies with only moderate ranking, this may be through indebting the guests, who now owe the host unless and until they can reciprocate with an equal or greater feast of their own (Hayden, Reference Hayden, Price and Feinman1995). In more stratified societies, diacritical feasts, which often feature game, are held by the elite for the elite and are an important way of marking their social superiority (Dietler, Reference Dietler, Dietler and Hayden2001).

7.4 The Lure of the Hunt

Although some people, including myself, do not find hunting appealing, those who practice it generally find it highly enjoyable, and a powerful bonding experience for the participants. This applies at a minimum to the human members of the hunting party. Often it applies even to the humans and their prey, with at least the humans feeling a bond with the animals they stalk. An array of other species may be brought in to aid the human hunter, including some that are not predators such as horses and elephants. Animal companions who distinguish themselves in the hunt are also held in high esteem by the human hunter (Section 6). Such multispecies hunts, especially, are often seen as ennobling, both politically and morally (Eyerbediev, Reference Eyerbediev, Gersmann and Grimm2018).

The hunt is a powerful experience that tests wits and builds bonds across species. We have seen how the intensity of the hunt and the many opportunities it offers to mark both similarities and differences create myriad opportunities for strong symbolic statements. Wild meat is a food that carries values well beyond its nutrition, laden with all the meaning of the hunt.