Extraordinary Creatures: The Role of Birds in Early Iron Age Slovenia

ABSTRACT

Depictions of birds are overrepresented in the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture, and appear on over a quarter of artefacts depicting animals. A wide variety of artefacts with birds have been found primarily in graves, and crosscut gender, status, and age. However, poor preservation of zooarchaeological remains has made reconstructions of lived human-bird interactions difficult. This study uses ecological and ethological data, combined with local imagery, to provide insight into prehistoric human-bird interfaces in this area, and the cultural conceptions surrounding these interactions. Birds would have been a constant presence in the lives of Dolenjska Hallstatt people; however, human relationships with them were based more on observation than direct interaction. Birds were ubiquitous in imagery, and it is proposed that this stemmed from Dolenjska Hallstatt conceptions of birds as important observers of human actions, ritual mediators, and possibly guides or guardians. Their differences from humans and other animals distinguished them – they were set apart, and depictions highlighted non-normative behaviours. Birds in the Dolenjska Hallstatt worldview were more than animals, ascribed extraordinary capabilities that made them ritually potent and richly symbolic creatures.

KEYWORDS:

• Early Iron Age
• Hallstatt period
• birds
• prehistoric art
• situla art
• human-animal relationships

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Adrienne C. Frie completed her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she investigated the place of animals in Early Iron Age southeastern Slovenia by analysing representations of animals and faunal remains from archaeological contexts.

ORCID

Adrienne C. Frie http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6759-5617

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee [grant number Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship]; Wenner-Gren Foundation [grant number 9038].