Archaeo-Ornithology: Towards an Archaeology of Human-Bird Interfaces

ABSTRACT

This editorial introduces Archaeo-Ornithology as a distinct field of inquiry and discusses its multidisciplinary background and potential contribution to a more nuanced characterisation of changing human-animal interfaces through time and space. We propose a new conceptual model – grounded in the analysis of ‘triangles of interaction’ – to elucidate the interactional dynamics which underpin varying human-animal relationships. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by exploring the example of anthropogenic space as a key context of human-bird figurations. Each contributing paper of the special issue, which will be introduced in more detail below, foregrounds different aspects and emphasises varying dimensions of the triangle, thus contributing in different ways to archaeo-ornithological research. As highlighted throughout the introduction, however, archaeo-ornithological approaches are not only capable of shedding new light on old questions about the past, they also have the potential of addressing some pressing contemporary quandaries, including continuing debates on the Anthropocene.

KEYWORDS:

• Human-Animal Studies
• birds
• humavian relations
• more-than-human archaeology
• Environmental Humanities
• interactionism
• co-determination
• agentive realism
• hybrid space
• Homo urbanus

This special issue of Environmental Archaeology endeavours to delineate an emerging field: Archaeo-Ornithology. We, the guest-editors, strongly believe that the multifaceted relationships that past humans maintained with the avian world deserve special attention, and that a focused and systematic investigation of these changing modes of interaction has great potential to enrich our narratives about the nature of human-environment interfaces in early human history. Past relationships between people and birds were certainly complex and more than just a matter of ecological adaptation. The synergetic tie between indigenous African people and the honeyguide, for example – which certainly ranges among the most intriguing forms of interspecies cooperation (Isack and Reyer 1989; Dean, Siegfried, and MacDonald 1990; Wood et al. 2014; Spottiswoode, Begg, and Begg 2016) – is believed to have shaped the human story for about 3 million years (Spottiswoode et al. 2011). The intricate interweaving of systematic scarlet macaw breeding and exploitation between 900 and 1200 CE (George et al. 2018) with the emergence of early socio-political complexity in the American Southwest (Watson et al. 2015) is another tantalising example for the marked diversity and often striking ‘nature-culture’ of past human-bird relations. Birds and humans undoubtedly share a long evolutionary history and, as the papers in this issue showcase, the avian world can open distinct windows and sometimes surprising perspectives on long vanished human cultures and lifeways. In other words, the study of past birds and their interactions with humans promotes new ways of addressing old questions but also enables the formulation of entirely new queries. Perhaps most notably, however, the avian lens promises to bring together some hitherto disparate themes in environmental archaeology, such as ‘environmental reconstruction’, ‘landscape’ and ‘human impact’ (cf. Carleton and Collard 2019, 3; see infra), and to add a critical deep-time perspective to emerging issues in the Environmental Humanities (Bird Rose et al. 2012; Küffer, Hall, and Fôret 2014; Adamson and Davies 2016; Emmett and Nye 2017; Heise, Christensen, and Niemann 2017).

In order to do justice to this integrated archaeo-ornithological project, we have opted for an unusual format of this editorial and present our preferred approach to past human-bird relations in some more detail than an introduction would normally allow for. We hope that our readership will recognise the larger merits of this undertaking and that our exploration will stimulate new research and fresh interpretations on the often underrated significance of avian others in the human past. The editorial is organised as follows: in a first step, we briefly outline the conceptual and multidisciplinary background of Archaeo-Ornithology and make an attempt to define it as an independent research endeavour situated within the larger field of Human-Animal Studies. We then present our relational approach to human-bird relationships – grounded in the reconstruction of ‘triangles of interaction’ – and illustrate its broader utility by scrutinising the evolution of anthropogenic space as a key context of archaeo-ornithological research. The final part of the editorial synthesises the findings of the seven contributing papers and locates them within the emerging sub-discipline of Archaeo-Ornithology.

Archaeo-Ornithology: Interdisciplinary Background and Research Proposal

Human-Animal Studies – also known under labels such as ‘Anthrozoology’ or simply ‘Animal Studies’ – delimit a burgeoning field of research with a vocal metadisciplinary ambition, a multitude of disciplinary manifestations, distinct publication venues, specific conceptual resources, and varying epistemological concerns (Balcombe 1999; Mullin 1999; Gerbasi et al. 2002; Rivto 2007; Kalof and Fitzgerald 2007; Arluke and Sanders 2008; Haraway 2008, 2016; DeMello 2010, 2012; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Weil 2010; Chimaira 2011; Ogden 2011; Digard 2012, 565–569; Gross and Vallely 2012; Hurn 2012; Ingold 2013; Taylor 2013; Waldau 2013; Marvin and McHugh 2014a; Krüger, Steinbrecher, and Wischermann 2014; Brucker et al. 2015; Spannring et al. 2015, 17–21; Borgards 2016; van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster 2016; Boyd 2017; Kompatscher, Spannring, and Schachinger 2017, 26–28; Breyer and Widlok 2018). The fundamental realisation of scholarship within this emerging academic field is that animals have always been, and continue to be, essential touchstones of human life, and that the examination of human-animal relations, therefore, should tell us much about what it means to be human (cf. Feinberg, Nason, and Sridharan 2013; Wilike 2013; Marvin and McHugh 2014b, 1–2). In principle, there is no necessary contradiction between this deeply anthropological aspiration and the call for a ‘post-anthropological’ research orientation that has been implicit in much recent exemplary work in human-animal studies (DiNovelli-Lang 2013; but see e.g. Piette 2002; Digard 2012, 564–565), for we can arguably learn much about the human by understanding its exposition and relationship to the non-human and the latter’s distinct ways of being and acting (e.g. Andersson Cederholm et al. 2014, 6).

Human-animal studies make productive use of dichotomizations – i.e. ‘humans’ vs. ‘animals’ – in order to examine the resulting interfaces, typically in terms of relationships and intersectionalities (cf. DeMello 2012, 4; Kompatscher, Spannring, and Schachinger 2017, 23–24), but they also problematise, criticise, and unsettle some of these distinctions (e.g. McFarland and Hedinger 2009; Boddice 2011; Birke and Hockenhull 2012; Roscher 2016). Ongoing attempts to overcome the human-animal polarity by invoking mixed or hybrid ‘humanimal relations’ (e.g. Lestel, Brunois, and Gaunet 2006; Guillo 2009; Taylor and Signal 2011), ‘anthrozootechnical agencements’ (Doré and Michalon 2017) or notions of ‘non-human personhood’ (e.g. Descola 2005; DeGrazia 2006; Hill 2013; Locke 2017; Morton 2017) illustrate the respective discursive dynamics. The vast scope of scholarship dedicated to human-animal configurations with all its promises and advantages remains difficult to navigate as a consequence. What, then, is the role of different modes of scholarship and sub-disciplinary specializations? How can we organise and sub-categorize the study of human-animal relationships? What is the kind of cognitive division of labour we should strive for in this rapidly growing field? How can we cultivate what we are good at but still profit from the excitements and benefits of transdisciplinary research?

A basic prerequisite to respond to some of these questions, we believe, is to be cognisant about the potential role of archaeology within the interdisciplinary nexus of human-animal studies, and to continually work on the refinement and clarification of this role. Given that more and more archaeological research is dedicated to the investigation of human-animal interfaces (e.g. Mithen 1999; Amkreutz and Corbey 2008; Serjeantson 2009; Shipman 2010; Albarella and Trentacoste 2011; Russell 2012, 2016; Hill 2013; Brittain and Overton 2013; Watts 2013; Overton and Hamilakis 2013; Sykes 2014; Poole 2015; Porr 2015; Hussain and Floss 2015; Betts 2016; Boyd 2017; Zakula and Zivaljevic 2018; Hussain 2018a; Overton and Taylor 2018), we should endeavour to flesh out more clearly what our contribution to the understanding of shifting human-animal architectures may be and specify why this contribution is significant.

We would argue that archaeology, perhaps most importantly, offers a unique deep-historical perspective on the animal part in the human story and is capable of investigating human-animal dynamics on varying timescales – some available exclusively for archaeological analysis (cf. Hussain 2018a). With its privileged focus on material culture and skeletal remains, archaeology, moreover, finds itself in a highly favourable position to chart the intersections of and interdependencies between tangible things and – often less tangible – human-animal articulations, which in turn may contribute to the formation of what has been termed ‘anthrozootechnical relations’ (Doré and Michalon 2017). The synchronic interrogation of multiple lines of evidence is thus of central importance for working towards an integrated perspective on the changing significance of animal others within different past sociocultural contexts, under different ecological circumstances and in varying domains of human life.

Another arguably frequently overlooked opportunity of archaeological research consists in the potential for juxtaposing the prehistories of people with the prehistories of animal populations and to examine possible ties, tension, and/or co-evolution between the two. Exploring the specific long-term histories of waterbird colonies, for instance, may furnish new perspectives on how to interpret the changing significance of these animals in the subsistence behaviour and material culture of the human populations sharing the landscape with these non-human others for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. The development and eventual proliferation of a proper ‘archaeology of animals’, which looks into animal life not just as a source for comprehending human society but as a means for reconstructing the dynamics of animal evolution in its own right, would thus be an essential building block for a mature archaeology of human-animal figurations. The central realisation of this emerging optic is that the evolution of human behaviour is not only constrained by its own historicity, but also by the historical pathways of the various animal populations with which it is interwoven.

Finally, archaeology, with its propensity to reconstruct the long-term panorama of being and becoming human, promises to provide us with the means to explore the fundamental role of different animals in shaping, sustaining and re-negotiating the often-invoked human condition (cf. Shipman 2010; Porr 2015; Boyd 2017). As paradoxical as it may sound, the fact that humans became what they are today may in fact be a long-term consequence of the various relationships human groups have come to maintain with non-human others, among which animals, because of their animacy and sensitivity, were certainly of particular importance (cf. esp. Hussain and Breyer 2017). Quite ironically – given the long tradition of animal vilification in the West – being human, in this view, is at least partly rooted in the often marginalised yet pervasive ‘animal condition’ of human life and society. The comparative and global window into these deep-time issues opened up by archaeological inquiry also allows for a critical investigation of the specific consequences of the adoption of different lifestyles for the architecture of particular human-animal relationships. Key transitions in human evolution, such as the gradual rise of sedentary life, may in this way be re-interrogated with a renewed emphasis on their specific animal context(s). We may for example ask how key changes in human behaviour re-modelled specific human-animal interfaces or, alternatively, how these changes were catalysed and perhaps facilitated by particular regimes of human-animal interaction. In addition, scholars may pay specific attention to the ‘cyclic’ nature of human-animal configurations – i.e. the circumstance that changes in the organisation of behaviour in one implicated agent may affect the other and thereby elicit feed-back effects on the first agent (see infra). In this way, human-animal relationships may bolster path dependencies, i.e. ‘lock-in’ unfolding developmental trajectories or stabilise particular modes of life (cf. Mahoney 2000; Garud, Kumaraswamy, and Karnøe 2010). Needless to say, the role of the animal other in this equation is rarely ‘passive’ or ‘inert’ – there is almost always a distinct animal contribution to expose and acknowledge. More-than-human archaeologies offer the opportunity to throw this distinctive animal input in the making of human history into clearer relief.

We propose that these virtues and promises of archaeological research can most profitably be enforced if we organise our efforts – in a first step at least – around particular types of animals and scrutinise their place in the human story. Building on analogical proposals already issued for anthropology (Locke 2013) and some segments of prehistory (Hussain and Floss 2015), we suggest that archaeological attempts to understand human-bird relations can productively be brought together under the umbrella of Archaeo-Ornithology. The overarching objective of this new sub-discipline would be the longitudinal investigation of the full spectrum of bird life from an archaeological point of view in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of the significance of these animal others for human livelihoods and sociocultural development, including the evolution of the human-bird interface itself (cf. e.g. Albarella and Thomas 2002; Russell and McGowan 2003; Sturm-Berger 2003; Amkreutz and Corbey 2008; Mannermaa 2008; Serjeantson 2009; Prummel, Zeiler, and Brinkhuizen 2010; Serjeantson and Morris 2011; Overton and Hamilakis 2013; Martin, Edwards, and Garrard 2013; Godfredsen 2014; Morelli et al. 2015; Blasco and Peresani 2016; Frie 2017). Archaeo-ornithological research endeavours to take stock of the diverse range of human-bird assemblages encountered in the archaeological records, and to place them, if possible, into contemporary problem-contexts. This includes not only the exposure of possible links and similarities to current-day human-bird situations, but also the elucidation of radical contradistinctions, differences and ‘otherness’.

A natural point of departure for archaeo-ornithological inquiry are the visual, ecological, and behavioural specificities of different birds, motivating the question of how these features have shaped different human-bird relations under varying ecocultural conditions. Complementarily, we may ask for what distinguishes human-bird intersections from the relationships that humans uphold with other animals. In each of these cases, the ambition is to unravel the particularities and specificities of what we may provisionally term ‘humavian relations’. Since humans and birds have come to co-inhabit many different environments – a key aspect that will be explored in more detail below – we can possibly learn many lessons about bird conservation and, ultimately, our own (shared) future with these extraordinary creatures by consulting the deep-time archives furnished by archaeological investigations. The wider significance of archaeo-ornithological inquiry may, in other words, lie in its unique capacity to inform ongoing efforts to forge a sustainable future for the ecosphere at large and to overcome the ecological crisis of our age.

Towards a Conceptual Model of Human-Animal Relations: Triangles of Interaction

A common assumption in the study of human-animal interfaces in general (see e.g. Willis 1990 for a good overview), and human-bird relations more specifically (Dequerlor 1975; Rowland 1978; Grupe and Peters 2005; Rappenglück 2009; Mynott 2018), has been that for human societies the consequences of these interactions are mainly economic or symbolic (Mithen 1999) – or at least that the respective significations are most readily accessible to researchers (cf. Anderson 2009). As a consequence, animals, to paraphrase Lévi-Strauss (1962, 89; cf. Culler 2013), are typically analysed as either ‘good to eat’ or ‘good to think with’ (e.g. Hill 2014). While we acknowledge that the economic value and symbolic potency of many animals is important to take into consideration, we believe that a more modest, pragmatic approach to human-animal relations would benefit the current discourse and in fact promises to open up much-needed fresh research avenues. Our basic contention is that human-animal relations should not primarily be studied in terms of ‘cultural models’ or ‘styles of human thought’, but instead in terms of the fundamental interactional dynamics which coordinate and scaffold the specific engagements of humans and animals in time and space (cf. Hussain and Floss 2015; Hussain and Breyer 2017; Hussain 2018a). Re-framing our perspective in strictly interactional terms allows to sidestep both the pitfalls of culturalism and cognitivism and helps to take the specific contributions of animal others more seriously into account. The symbolic dimension of human-bird relations, for instance, can then come into view not as a totalising force subjugating the overall structure of interaction, but as a part of the various preconditions that shape and regulate situated modes of relating to one another. Cultural traditions, inherited cosmovisions and socially transmitted habitual practices can be re-conceptualised in similar terms. The result is an important shift in epistemological orientation: rather than targeting the economic and symbolic content of human-animal relations from the start, we can focus our attention on the various ways in which humans and animals ‘come together’ and ‘are apart’ (cf. Kirksey and Helmreich 2010), whether their actions influence each other and what the life-world implications for human societies are. Important aspects of human-animal relations such as ‘cultural representation’ or ‘belief’ may then be understood as emergent outcomes of particular dynamics of interaction, as something that is furnished by these interactions rather than something that pre-casts their nature and structure. In a similar fashion, tokens of animal-related material culture can profitably be re-analysed as potential concretisations of situated interactional dynamics, rather than simply being regarded as the mere expression of schemes and ideas residing in past peoples’ minds.

Figure 1 visualises the alternative conceptual model we propose in order to describe and interpret situated dynamics of human-animal interaction. The model highlights the ‘triangular’ configuration of most interactional contexts, motivating the analysis of situated ‘triangles of interaction’. Human-animal engagements, in this view, are effectuated by the specific intersection of the involved humans, the implicated animal others and the particular landscape-context in which the two come together or are drawn apart. The key point is that each of these poles is acknowledged as an active and potentially equally potent contributor to the total constellation of engagement and interaction. In other words, each pole is considered capable to enact some form of agency, even though this capacity may of course greatly differ among and between the interacting poles.

Figure 1. The ‘triangle of interaction’ as a conceptual model for characterising and understanding situated human-animal relationships. The triangle encapsulates the interactional dynamics between three constitutive poles of interaction: (A) human behaviour and sociocultural practice, (B) animal ethology and ecosystem position, (C) spatial setting and landscape structure. The nature of the dynamics as well as the importance of each active pole and its effects are context-specific. The ? denotes emergent qualities, for instance items or assemblages of animal-related material culture, which are hypothesised to result from the complex, multi-directional interaction of the three poles [Black silhouettes have been retrieved from phylopic.org].

The human pole can typically be described as the set of practices, technologies and knowledge that people bring to the table of possible interactions. This pole, therefore, may already encapsulate hybrid assemblages of humans and objects in which the materiality of the latter can be critical for the structure and nature of affordable interactions. The animal pole specifies, among other things, the behaviour as well as the visual and ecological characteristics of the animals participating in the interaction. Importantly, the activities and capacities of these animals are regarded to be efficacious in terms of their effects on human behaviour, the affordances they provide and how animal others expose themselves to human perception and conceptualisation. In this way, significant animal others can be analysed as potential historical actors in their own right. The landscape pole, finally, defines the geographic, physiographic, vegetative, climatic and atmospheric conditions under which humans and animals establish their various relationships and engage with one another. This spatial setting may also include built features, both those created by humans and those fabricated by animals. The agency of each of the three poles, then, simply consists in the general capacity to influence behaviour and/or inaugurate change in at least one of the other corresponding poles of the triangle.

The above considerations reveal that none of the difference-making propensities in question can be examined, let alone apprehended, in isolation. Instead, the agentive capacities of each pole and how these play out in a concrete scenario of interaction always depend on the entire tripolar configuration. This is the contextual quality of the proposed conceptual framework: the global dynamics of interaction must be understood as a function of the possibilities and constraints that emerge within a specific interactional context. Following Barad (2007), we may characterise the target relations as ‘intra-actions’ – they represent the links as well as associations that give texture and structure to the whole and thereby define the role and position of each pole within this whole. In total, the model thus highlights that each pole of interaction catalyses and calibrates the interactional consequences of each other pole in the triangle but that these consequences are nevertheless grounded in the inherent features and characteristics of the respective poles themselves.¹

A consequence of this way of framing human-animal relations is the ‘symmetrisation’ of agency as reflected in the isosceles triangle which visualises the advocated model of interaction. This symmetrisation of agency, however, is above all methodological (sensu Latour 1991, 91–96) and serves to emphasise the frequently underestimated role of non-human forces in the formation of human-animal interfaces (e.g. Descola 2005; Whatmore 2006; Ogden 2011; Kohn 2013). Thus, the purpose is primarily to level the landscape of preconceptions and to prevent potentially anachronistic concepts from dictating the examination of spatiotemporally removed human-animal relations, which may, as a result, be stained in much difference and alterity. The primary goal is indeed to ‘let the evidence speak’ and to assess the changing articulations of humans, animals and environments in different contexts with regard to shifting power relations, hierarchies, tensions, contrasts, distinctions and associations (cf. Olsen 2003, 2012; Shanks 2007; Webmoor 2012; Olsen and Witmore 2015). Most empirically encountered triangles of interaction are therefore expected to be skewed to some extent. Nonetheless, each encountered living triangle still represents a ‘functioning’ or ‘working’ whole, in which the relevant human, animal and environmental agencies are coordinated in some meaningful way. Any triangle of interaction, in other words, registers the meeting points of the behaviours, affordances and constraints issued by its three poles of interaction. Borrowing a concept from American philosopher Stepen C. Pepper (1942), human-animal relations hence appear to be tempered by the ‘nexuses’ of their respective constituents² – each pole of interaction brings into play its own agencies, tendencies, potentials and standpoints and to examine the global configuration of poles therefore entails the assessment of how their respective ‘nexuses’ tangle, fuse and resonate with one another or repulse, contradict, block and override each other. Methodologically, we may refer to the interpretive procedure which is required to resolve the relevant ‘nexuses’ – i.e. to determine their specific meeting points – as a form of ‘triangulation’.³

The perhaps central message of the ‘triangle of interaction’ approach is that human-animal interfaces are almost always co-constructed by heterogeneous agents. The implication is that we need to better understand how human and animal behaviours and basic modes of living actively mould key dimensions of human-animal engagement and interaction. Some of the relevant aspects can only be explored comparatively since contrasting interactional contexts need to be juxtaposed and important transitions in the respective behavioural regimes examined. Two illustrations will nonetheless be provided here in order to illustrate some of the respective dynamics of co-determination.

The first illustration concerns the relationship between human and animal spaces. A key lens into this field of inquiry is offered by ‘animal geography’, the study of the complex interweaving of human-animal interactions with place, location, time, and landscape – that is, the examination of where, when, how and why humans and animals intersect in space (cf. Bennett 1960; Wolch and Emel 1998; Philo and Wilbert 2000; Urbanik 2012). A key dimension of these entanglements is ecological and pertains to the position and function of different agents, human and animal, in larger ecosystems or smaller-scaled habitats; accordingly, some of these interrelationships may be analysed and interpreted with the help of ‘zoonotic’ diagrams (Lynteris 2017). Yet, the question here is not just what the ecological interlink, if any, between humans and animals is, whether the two actually meet in their living environment and whether this constitutes a rare event or not; it also, and perhaps more importantly, concerns what people precisely do and feel when these engagements occur, whether their actions modify and perhaps change the mode of interaction and whether the prominence and significance of the implicated animals is transformed in the course of these actions.

The second illustration concerns the cross-pollination of human and animal behaviour. The fact that the effective meeting points of humans and animals depend not just on the behaviour of the animals in question but equally so on the actions and technologies employed by their human counterparts is for instance showcased by the ancient art of navigating the ocean. Seafaring is a technology-aided mode of transportation that presumably played a key role in the initial colonisation of Oceania (e.g. Anderson 2008, 2018; Bell et al. 2015) and the Hawaiian Islands (e.g. Carson 1951). Adopting this practice certainly modulates the exposure to non-human others, especially birds who traditionally assume important functions in navigation and open-sea wayfinding (cf. Gladwin 1970; Lewis 1972, Part Four). In fact, some remote places such as the Hawaiian Islands are thought to have been discovered only with the help of seabirds (Carson 1951) and the same may also be true for a number of Polynesian and Pacific islands. The significance of birds in this context of interaction is by no means simply ‘given’ but instead derives from the specific demands of ocean navigation and the kind of expertise and knowledge it requires (cf. Leskiw 2008). This role of birds in early maritime dispersal may even explain why there are some notable inconsistencies between the archaeological record of Oceania and the most parsimonious computer-simulated dispersal routes (Montenegro, Callaghan, and Fitzpatrick 2016). The specific intersection of humans and birds in this context may even help to elucidate part of the importance of avian others in the creation myths of many indigenous cultures of the region. It is legitimate to speak of ‘cross-pollination’ here because it has been shown that many of the relevant seabirds in fact benefit from human island colonisation – especially from practices of deforestation and the creation of new predictable food sources – and thus prosper themselves as a result of their relationship with humans (e.g. Johnson and Nakamura 1981; Leskiw 2008; Johnson, Connors and Pyle 2018).

In sum, we believe that scholars should pay more attention to the fundamental interactional dynamics that underpin the varying human-animal relationships they are interested in. The careful analysis of how the various poles of interaction – humans, animals and environments – enable, constrain and influence each other has great potential to simultaneously extend, deepen and enrich our understanding both of the nature of the respective interactions as well as their material and immaterial consequences. The conceptual model we have outlined facilitates this type of analysis and helps to place it on firmer epistemological grounds. The following section will provisionally apply the ‘triangle of interaction’ to the question of evolving anthropogenic spaces in order to demonstrate its propensity to promote new insights and interpretations of human-bird relations in the past and deep past.

The Proliferation of Anthropogenic Space: A Key Context for Archaeo-Ornithological Research

The utility of the approach to past human-animal relationships outlined in the previous section can be illustrated by adding some more flesh to its admittedly fairly abstract ossature. As a reminder, the core insight around which the approach is built is that human action, past and present, moulds and often profoundly changes the dynamics of human-animal relations as well as the contexts in which they develop, take place and flourish. Human-bird relations are of course no exception. Some ramifications of this basic condition, including its interpretive potentials, can be clarified by using the example of the gradual proliferation of sedentary life in human history, from its tentative and warily beginnings to the emergence of villages and large-scale urban hubs. There is indeed no question that a key pathway – perhaps even a driving force – in human evolution is the still ongoing process of carving out anthropogenic spaces in nature, furnishing entirely artificial worlds in which the human species may thrive and prosper (Paquot 1990; Oberzaucher 2017) or succumb and utterly perish (cf. e.g. Tainter 1990; Diamond 2005; Stone 2006; Cook et al. 2012; Penny et al. 2018). Humans, at any case, have come to create their own (built) environments, learned to adapt to them and thereby profoundly changed the evolutionary dynamics to which they are subjected. Often-discussed watershed events in early human history, such as the ‘Neolithic Revolution’ (Childe 1936; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1999; Diamond 2002; Bellwood 2004) or the ‘Urban Revolution’ (Childe 1950; Adams 1966; Trigger 2003; Lefebvre 2003; Smith 2009) call attention to this consequential yet often underrated evolutionary trajectory.

Modern ecological theory has framed the tendency of the human species to author its own adaptive environment as a fundamental process of niche construction (e.g. Fuentes 2015; Eriksson 2016; Downey 2016; Fogarty and Creanza 2017). The fully developed urban spaces of our time, for example, can then be understood as human-crafted ecosystems in which adaptive constraints and interspecies relations follow a logic of their own (Rees 1997; Collins et al. 2000; McKinney 2002; Alberti et al. 2003; Alberti 2005; Ellis 2015; Johnson and Munshi-South 2017). The origins of this long-term development fostering augmented dependencies on built structures and permanent places can be traced back at least as far as into the Late Pleistocene (Zubrow, Audouze, and Enloe 2010; Hodder 2012; Testart 2012; Maher et al. 2012; Gaudzinski-Windheuser 2013; Julien and Karlin 2014),⁴ and the crystallization of anchoring extra-somatic milieus of material culture is even more ancient (e.g. Leroi-Gourhan 1945, 1993; Stout 2011; Boëda 2013; Stout and Hecht 2017; Hussain 2018b). The point is that this accruement of anthropogenic biomes not only changed the course of human evolution, but also affected the development and behaviour of many other species (McKinney 2002). There is now robust evidence that urban spaces constitute distinct behavioural contexts, and that animal and plant populations often experience divergent selection between urban and non-urban environments (Johnson and Munshi-South 2017).

From the point of view of Human-Animal Studies, envisaging these spatial settings as ‘anthropogenic’ is thus somewhat ironic. Human-altered biomes and early villages or cityscapes represent privileged platforms of multispecies encounter, a meeting place where humans and non-humans are variously drawn together (Wolch, West, and Gaines 1995; Whatmore 2002; Hovorka 2008; Atkins 2012; Joshi 2015; Ingram, Sethna, and Dean 2017; Kheraj 2017). Human world-shaping, in other words, not only creates niches, possibilities and opportunities for humans, but equally so for non-humans (e.g. Alberti et al. 2003; Clucas and Marzluff 2011; Poliquin 2017). This ‘cosmopolitical’ potential of anthropogenic space is often overlooked when the myriad modes of interaction between humans and animals in the past and deep past are investigated (but see e.g. contributions in Pilaar Birch 2018). Especially in the study of human-bird relations, the specific context of human-shaped biomes may be of key importance. Urban, suburban and agricultural environments have indeed become critical habitats for many bird species (Marzluff 2001, 2014; McKinney 2002, 2008; Aronson et al. 2014; Isaksson, Rodewald, and Gil 2018), some of which have developed behavioural, cognitive and physiological adaptations as a response to the specific requirements and challenges of living in these environments (e.g. Marzluff and Angell 2012; Gil and Brumm 2014). The emerging field of ‘urban avian ecology’ deals with some of these consequences (Marzluff, Bowman, and Donnelly 2001; Gil and Brumm 2014; Isaksson, Rodewald, and Gil 2018).

Anthropogenic spaces are attractive to birds because many of them offer shelter and nesting opportunities; they also provide new foraging possibilities or at least tend to increase the availability and predictability of relevant food sources (Isaksson, Rodewald, and Gil 2018). As a result, birds can be abundant in human-shaped environments, and some studies have even reported a positive correlation between hotspots of human population and bird richness (Luck et al. 2010). Although extreme levels of urbanity typically lead to the reduction in overall avian diversity and richness (McKinney 2002), moderate rates of urban life and especially suburban-urban interfaces as well as mature suburban and agricultural contexts can afford unique bird compositionalities (Batáry et al. 2018; Morelli 2018). Many of the latter human-shaped contexts are particularly significant for our understanding of prehistoric human-bird relations. The transition from foraging to farming and the gradual crystallization of more and more anthropogenic landscapes in the past should therefore be expected to coincide with major modifications or re-organizations of the attendant human-bird interfaces.

In general, however, there can be no question that different patterns of landscape anthropogenisation and various processes of place-making, city-building and urbanisation often have varying effects on different bird species and these changing interrelations should be considered an important locus of archaeo-ornithological investigation. With their notable adaptability and behavioural flexibility, corvids, for example, are known to profit from human-shaped ecosystems and to have developed unique skills in order to exploit them and benefit from them (Nihei and Higuchi 2001; Mukherjee, Ray-Mukherjee, and Sarabia 2013). Marzluff and Angell (2005, 2007) have argued that an intimate co-evolutionary bond exists between humans and many crows and raves, and that this is most likely a result of the specific entanglement of the two parties in human-shaped environments. This conspicuous co-evolutionary alignment of humans and corvids may indeed be very old; in Europe it can probably be traced back to at least the Upper Palaeolithic, during which ravens were sometimes depicted in portable art, for example at the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf (Bosinski 2008, Tafel 139). Strikingly, Upper Palaeolithic campsites which are suspected to reflect elevated levels of residentiality often yield numerous corvid remains (Street and Turner 2013, 2016; Wertz, Wilczyński, and Tomek 2015, 2016; cf. Hussain 2019). A punctuated increase in the relative abundance of corvid bones at human occupation sites from the Mousterian to the Epipalaeolithic has also been recorded in the Eastern Mediterranean Levant (Tchernov 1993, esp. Figure 2) – a finding that is consistent with extant evidence for the positive demographic influence of human habitation on proximity-dwelling corvids (Marzluff and Neatherlin 2006). Complementary data on the use of anthropogenic landfills by contemporary ravens in arctic environments are also available (Restani, Marzluff, and Yates 2001). It is therefore possible that corvids were among the first birds who took systematic advantage of the many affordances and opportunities created by more durable human occupations.⁵ The general pattern of bird-related material culture furnished by archaeology similarly indicates that human-bird relations experienced a profound caesura when the human species became a serious landscape-scale force (cf. Nicolau-Guillaumet 2008). Mynott (2018) rightly points out that from a macro-historical perspective birds emerged as a notable theme in visual culture and art only with the dawn of Neolithic life, adding further credibility to the notion that human-built environments helped promote a new significance of the avian world in human history.

The preceding observations certainly lend support to the idea that human space-transforming behaviours often change the dynamics of human-bird engagement. The effects, however, are not merely unilateral. Different culture-mediated attitudes and habits towards urban birds, for example, have been shown to impact the latter’s behaviours, strategies and tactics (Clucas and Marzluff 2012), affirming the view that the dynamic agency of birds is indeed highly relevant and that human practices are often consequential for bird behaviours which, in turn, may feed back onto human action and cognition. That birds must be regarded as full-blown historical agents is further demonstrated by a remarkable case of human-bird (re-)engagement in the Finnish city of Espoo, located at the fringe of the rapidly expanding metropolitan area of Helsinki: here, an anthropogenic waste-water treatment pond has (unintentionally) created an important locus of biodiversity, attracting various bird species (Leino, Karppi, and Jokinen 2017); the birds gathering at this entirely artificial place in turn draw notable numbers of bird watchers and other interested people to the site, thereby contributing to the sociocultural significance of the waste-water pond for the larger area (idem). The result is a ‘hybrid’ place co-created by humans, technologies and birds (sensu Swyngedouw 2006): the Espoo pond is a human artefact but simultaneously offers a suitable habitat for a number of rare wetland species during the breeding and migratory season. Most notably, it currently harbours the second-largest breeding population of the common black-headed gull in Finland (Lammi and Nironen 2011). The site showcases the propensity of human-altered environments – especially internally differentiated cityscapes – to modify the climatic constraints and distribution of migrating and wintering birds (cf. e.g. Zuckerberg et al. 2011). From the point of view of archaeo-ornithological research, the circumstance alone that peoples’ actions can substantially change amplitude, distribution and behaviour of birds is enough to warrant a closer inspection of the possible ramifications for situated human-bird relations, if only to better understand how the birds concerned were probably perceived and conceptualised by past humans.

The mediating role of human practices, places and technologies in the construction of human-bird relations can additionally be illustrated by some general examples which are of potential relevance for archaeo-ornithological research. A potent landscape-transforming force in early human history, for instance, was the ‘domestication’ of water: it enabled the emergence of ‘hydraulic technologies’ (Wittfogel 1957; Mays 2008; Mithen 2013) – a key prerequisite for many agricultural practices such as e.g. rice cultivation. Constructing fresh water reservoirs, canals, small-scale irrigation systems as well as wet agricultural fields generates new habitats and plenty of food affordances for birds, often attracting cranes, storks, as well as other waterbirds and waders (cf. Ma et al. 2010). Similarly, the erection of durable architecture whose functionality is not directly linked to human habitation creates nesting and dwelling opportunities even for more elusive species such as the barn owl. Similarly, the construction of monuments and other buildings, but also various occupation-specific modes of dwelling, may afford particular perceptions of the avian world (Jones 1998), sometimes entirely transforming one’s visual and/or auditory access to different types of birds. Furthermore, human-built cemeteries and other burial grounds, especially those furnishing anthropogenic structures on the surface, as well as human-shaped parkland environments are known to support avian diversity and can attract selected bird species (cf. Morelli et al. 2018). Perhaps most importantly, intensified human occupation and higher levels of site fidelity typically lead to an increased availability of waste dumps and piles of edible leftovers, which, in turn, can modify the home ranges and subsistence behaviours of different bird species (e.g. McGrady et al. 2019).

Human-induced alterations of animal spaces and geographies may also change the relationships and interactional dynamics among and between various non-human animals, including birds. For example, deploying fire on a landscape-scale, a common practice in many non-Western societies (Scherjon et al. 2015), can substantially modify the ecology of animal co-dwellers and their interrelationships (e.g. Ogden 2011; Bliege Bird 2019). The introduction of livestock (York and Mancus 2013) and the early domestication of dogs (Pierotti and Fogg 2017) probably had similar ecosystem-transforming effects.⁶ The deliberate economic and sociocultural management of wild animals, often facilitated by latent structures (e.g. Bar-Oz, Zeder, and Hole 2011; Zeder et al. 2013; Betts and Burke 2015), and early forms of ‘low-level’ food production (sensu Smith 2001, 2011) may be added to this panorama of factors potentially altering or modulating critical interspecies relationships.

The relative position of different bird species within human-shaped ecosystems may thus be much more variable than we tend to assume, and we should expect the ecological ‘slot’ of birds in many archaeological cases to deviate from their known ecological niches of today. Unravelling the interrelationships between different animals in past human-shaped landscapes can thus help to elucidate the structure of human-bird relations and charting these interspecies dynamics in some detail must be one of the objectives of archaeo-ornithological research. We similarly need to take into account that bird-plant mutualism is a key ecological factor (e.g. Dehling et al. 2014; Blondel and Desmet 2018, Chapitre 5) and that changes in human-plant relationships may therefore have had substantial effects on the exposure, interaction and entanglement of humans and birds in the past. Hence, how various people have operated in their environments, what they have done there, with whom and where, and how they have changed the surface of the earth in the course of their doings is of key importance if we seek to establish a comprehensive and more realistic picture of past human-bird interfaces.

To sum up, the here enumerated examples illustrate that archaeo-ornithological inquiry must acknowledge both the varying standpoints of humans and the shifting agencies of birds. Our understanding of past human-bird relations can thus only be truly ‘ecological’ if we bring the interrogation of interrelations, intersections, and ‘intra-actions’ (sensu Barad 2007) to the centre stage. Only then, we argue, is it possible to illuminate why the evolving human ecological fingerprint slowly but surely transformed the significance of birds for human societies.

The exploration at least affirms that the evolution of anthropogenic spaces offers a unique opportunity for holistic, relational and ecologically-oriented approaches in archaeo-ornithology and probably provides a key context for the study of human-bird relations in the past (cf. Clucas and Marzluff 2011). We have shown that an entire universe of co-evolutionary human-bird dynamics likely awaits its exposition, and that the emerging human capacity for place-making and the creation of artificial environments of various sorts was probably a potent catalyst for the construction, mutation and transformation of past human-bird interfaces. Put differently, the evolutionary context of the developing Homo urbanus (Paquot 1990; Oberzaucher 2017) greatly promises to shed new light on the complex and certainly erratic long-term history of human-bird interaction. Far too easily, scholars tend to forget that even in today’s urban contexts birds are virtually everywhere. Despite the banality of their presence, which renders them fairly invisible to some, birds undeniable contribute to our basic sense of belonging and ‘home’ (Whitehouse 2015, 2017a, 2017b). As the foregoing discussion has demonstrated, however, it is crucial to recognise that our relationship with avian others always depends on one’s ‘being-in-the-world’.⁷

The survey has also made sufficiently clear that archaeo-ornithological knowledge is likely to remain incomplete if we fail to integrate multiple perspectives on the intersection of human and bird lives. As Hill (2019) rightly stresses, archaeo-ornithologists, in addition to their archaeological expertise, need to seriously engage with natural history knowledge as well as key findings from bird ethology, and should learn to cultivate the attitude of a true naturalist. We would like to add that they should also adopt the stance of a bird ecologist and conservationist. These standpoints can be crucial touchstones for the development of more nuanced approaches to the inter-constraining effects of different human-bird constellations in the past. We would indeed suggest that extant observations from avian ecology and conservation can provide some general frames of reference for the study of past human-bird interactions. Some of the respective lessons might even assist us in devising a specific body of ‘Middle-Range Theory’ (sensu Merton 1968) to more confidently juxtapose and interrelate human action with bird behaviour. Yet, archaeo-ornithological evidence must also be treated as a valuable source of insight in its own right, potentially extending our knowledge on the ecological consequences of human action, including human-mediated environmental change, on bird populations of the past and deep past. In this way, Archaeo-Ornithology can presumably make an important contribution to contemporary bird conservation efforts. After all, the patterns of today are, to various degrees, a product of the past.

The Special Issue

The seven contributions gathered in this special issue share a deep concern with ‘humavian’ affairs and the intricate entanglement of human and bird lives in the past – they are exercises as well as case studies in Archaeo-Ornithology. Although each contribution charts its own empirical territory and puts forth different ideas and visions of the past, all of the papers emphasise the importance of the avian world for human societies and call attention to the great diversity of human-bird relations in early human history. Each contribution foregrounds different aspects of these relations, but all studies demonstrate that they can only be properly elucidated if placed into their wider social and ecological contexts, showing that archaeo-ornithological inquiry is capable of carving out invaluable insights especially when human-bird relations are examined as windows into larger systems of eco-cultural functioning. Archaeo-ornithological findings therefore not only inform us about birds themselves, they also bespeak of the sociocultural logic and the environmental enmeshments which have configured human-bird relations in the past. The seven contributing papers illustrate, in other words, that human-bird relationships should come into view as historical artefacts and history-makers at the same time – they are tempered by contextual factors and always situated to this effect, yet under particular conditions they may also become potent drivers of societal change.

In what follows, we briefly outline the main findings of each individual paper and evaluate their broader significance for understanding human-bird relations in the past. Naturally, this assessment is somewhat subjective and hence does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the authors. That said, our aim is to highlight some of the overarching commonalities between the different archaeo-ornithological approaches and to underscore in what sense they may be seen as complementary. The presentation of the individual papers proceeds in chronological order.

Overview of Individual Contributions

Hussain (2019) takes a fresh look at human-owl relations in the Middle Upper Palaeolithic of East-Central Europe. He shows that humans and owls seem to have developed a meaningful mode of co-habitation, positing that the distinct set of owl-shaped material culture in the form of small clay figures and ivory pendants of the area’s earlier Gravettian is likely the result of an intimate link between the two agents. The author argues that the recurrence of the owl theme in the archaeological record of the Pavlovian Hill region is the product of the unique intersection of humans and owls, created by the particularities of early Gravettian behaviour and settlement practice, owl presence and ethology and the distinct eco-environmental conditions of Southern Moravia in this timeframe. By synthesising the available environmental data sets, it is demonstrated that the area has featured a relatively tree-rich glacial landscape – a non-analogous ‘forest steppe’ – offering favourable living conditions for many owls, especially boreal species. This elevated ‘owl-potential’ of the Pavlovian Hill landscape is then shown to coincide with an intensified and unusually long-lived complex of human occupation with clear traces of heightened domesticity and objects of reduced mobility. The paper contends that this increased stationarity of human settlement must have created a significant exposure between humans and strigiformes since many of the documented owl species are philopatric and seem to have been highly active in the area, probably leaving a distinct mark on its soundscape. The paper’s relevance lies in the fact that it showcases how particular aspects of bird behaviour may become significant for human groups under particular conditions. Under conditions of elevated human presence and domesticity, philopatric owls emerged as vehicles of Pavlovian identities and became a point of reference for human place-making practices. The study strongly suggests that different animals can be expected to emerge as meaningful others within different contexts of human landscape habitation and that changes in settlement practices have the potential to fundamentally alter the dynamics of human-bird interaction.

Russel (2019) directs the attention to the importance of ancient bird lives for the large Neolithic tell settlement of Çatalhöyük in Central Anatolia. Her zooarchaeological study of the bird remains recovered from this site indicates that birds, contrary to earlier periods in the region, had little nutritional value and their significance was thus probably tied to the realm of symbolism and cosmology. The analysis suggests that feathers rather than meat was the primarily sought-after bird product. Two bird species seem to have been of particular importance for the inhabitants of the tell agglomeration: cranes and vultures. Both are prominently displayed in the art and material culture of Çatalhöyük and their bones have been found in disproportional numbers in special depositional contexts whose taphonomic profile clearly suggests intentional discard. Crane representations often emphasise their dancing posture and a modified crane wing unearthed from the construction of Building 1 on the northern lobe of Çatalhöyük may have been part of a crane costume, pointing to the importance of mimicking this bird in ritual activities and possibly other practices of interspecies communication. The prominence of cranes and vultures as well as their contexts of evocation strongly suggest that they played key roles in the cyclic renewal of people and society. Other birds, most notably waterbirds, are implicated in several human burials, notably infant and neonate depositions. It is striking that only special body parts of birds were included in these depositions, often those which are particularly characteristic of the birds in question. The association between early deceased humans and waterbirds in burials in the foundation layers of houses indicates that these birds were believed to have some protective or consecrating potency. Russel explicitly discusses whether the entanglement of individuals who have probably not yet entered the ranks of society and birds which are often considered messengers or mediators between the human and the spirit worlds may have had particular significance in this context. The placement patterns of wings at least suggest that bird-related behaviours at Çatalhöyük had to respect specific social norms, most notably matching-rules according to which only wings from the same side or in the case of multiple deposited species only wings of the same colour should be discarded together. Russel’s paper draws attention to the fact that early sedentary life often took special notice of the avian world, perhaps because arrangements of houses and other built structures attracted various bird species and also afforded their everyday observation. The spatial shackles of early village life, anchoring human behaviour in a particular piece of land, may then have created a meaningful tension between humans and birds since the latter were able to freely roar the land, without being bound to specific locales.

Lazarich and colleagues (2019) re-visit the bird-rich rock art of Tajo de las Figuras located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula in order to expose some focal aspects of ancient bird life in this region. They show that the unusual quantity of bird depictions, probably dating to the Bronze and Iron Age of the region, is situated in an ancient lagoon landscape – a now diminished wetland ecosystem that certainly belonged to Europe’s biodiversity hotspots – and still serves as an important stop for migrating birds crossing the Straits of Gibraltar. The authors’ analysis indicates that the image corpus of the rockshelter documents clear affinities with the characteristic ‘Schematic’ style regime of the wider region, yet also exhibits a number of idiosyncrasies and particularities, i.e. the rather naturalistic and often highly detailed bird representations which suggest that the imagery reflects a unique set of experiences and observations, most likely tied to the ancient lagoon environment and its notable birdscapes. The rock art depicts waterbirds, seabirds and other migratory birds of varying sizes, most notably bustards, gulls, herons/egrets, cranes and flamingos. It attests some first-hand, proto-ornithological knowledge including the relationship between particular bird species and other co-existing mammals such as deer and goat. The authors observe that many paintings are charged with seasonal significance: both the depicted mammals and birds evince that the prehistoric painters wanted to convey especially the period between spring and late autumn, suggesting that ideas of fertility may have played a role in the creation of the art. The favourable position of the rockshelter of Tajo de las Figuras in the wider landscape, providing a good visual overview of the surrounding environment and its inhabitants would thereby have afforded early practices of birdwatching, especially when non-human life was particularly vibrant and incoming bird flocks would overpopulate the lagoon. The archaeological and zooarchaeological data of the respective time frame is consistent with this reading. In total, the example of Tajo de las Figuras reminds us of the circumstance that the avian world probably fascinated humans from very early on and people began to observe birds already in prehistoric times.

Frie (2019) examines bird depictions in the material repertoire of the Dolenjska Hallstatt culture of southeastern Slovenia. She reports on 118 items of visual culture bearing bird imagery, most of them deriving from high-status grave contexts. Birds, in comparison to other non-human animals, are frequently depicted and are virtually ubiquitous in the toreutic art of the early Iron Age of this region. A key feature of the representations, however, is their schematic form, setting them apart from other animals which are more readily identifiable on the species level. The author points out that the birds are also rarely shown in isolation but were usually depicted in the company of other wild and domestic animals or humans instead; they are typically embedded in quasi-narrative pictorial scenes. Frie argues that especially in the prominent situla art, birds – despite their omnipresence – are hardly involved in the main action of the scenes, occupying the roles of observers or denoting even more esoteric functions as mediators of interaction or guardians of society. The scenic composition of the Dolenjska Halstatt imagery suggests that early Iron Age people wanted to highlight the tension between the experienced omnipresence of birds as well as their latent category-transgressing companionship on the one hand and their aloof nature on the other. The stylistic as well as scenic characteristics of bird depictions primarily emphasise the significance of these animals as witnesses of events and action, both human and non-human. Frie interprets this representational logic as strong indication for the perception of birds as ‘extraordinary creatures’ – a hypothesis that is consistent with the re-imagination of avian features such as e.g. wings in the context of mythical animals without life-world corollaries. The author also ponders upon the possibility that the bird images, because of the clear representational contrast to other animal depictions, may imply a categorisation of living birds as ‘more-than-animal’, potentially as a category of their own somewhere in-between the human and animal realms. This conceptual liminality may in fact explain why birds are so important in the context of situlae, large communal drinking vessels which were probably used for serving alcohol – a substance which, too, can quickly alter the conscious state of its consumer. Tracing overarching patterns in Dolenjska Halstatt avian imagery, Frie’s paper showcases how a transition in lifestyle, reflected in increasing social differentiation, population aggregation at large hilltop settlements, the adoption of iron technology and the construction of monumental burial sites, can transform the cultural significance of a well-established category – the bird – and infuse it with new meanings, some of which are in turn reinforced through specific human practices and the power of images. It is for example worth considering whether the emergence of the hilltop mode of life caused a consequential shift in the perspective of early Iron Age humans on the avian world: large-scale hilltop settlements would not only have provided behavioural affordances for many bird species, gulls and corvids among them, they would also have brought people into a position from which the surrounding land could be inspected and grasped from an entirely new and certainly elevated perspective. This ‘hilltop perspective’ may have also enforced the recognition that birds are omnipresent and in an important sense ‘dominate’ the land. Living in large hilltop settlements, in other words, may have accentuated the tension between human-bird attachment and detachment, cementing the role of birds as autonomous and perhaps ancestral custodians of the wider landscape.⁸ All of this suggests that human-bird relations must be studied in their dynamic co-adjustment, and that it is typically the intersection between human behaviour and bird presence that emerges as the key locus of meaning-making.

Kost (2019) presents an integrated re-interpretation of an exceptional assemblage of kingfisher figurines from Eastern Han-dynasty China. Her point of departure is the observation that this notable set of bronze objects exhibits a spatiotemporally confined distribution, occurring only in the southwestern corner of what is today the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and spanning a period from the late Western Han to late Eastern Han (ca. 1st cent. BCE – 2nd cent. CE). The author argues that this pattern can be understood as a consequence of changing centre-periphery dynamics during the Eastern Han period which substantially re-configured human-kingfisher relations across the realm. It is shown that the stylistically somewhat heterogeneous group of objects is associated with particular segments of society, occurring in elite burials in the southwestern periphery of the Eastern Han empire. Kingfishers are displayed generically and are recurrently associated with coins, evoking the possibility that the birds played a role in local belief and cosmologies, especially with reference to the cult of the so-called ‘Queen Mother of the West’ that became influential in the southwestern areas at roughly the same time. Drawing on various complementary lines of evidence, the author then shows that in the same timeframe, the northern heartland of the realm experienced a population expansion and became increasingly urbanised, with large-scale infrastructure projects rendering the human-inhabited landscape ever more anthropogenic. A key feature of this transformation was the ‘normalisation’ of waterways and the construction of canals of different sizes and for various purposes. Since available ethological and ecological data on extant kingfisher species in the PRC indicates that these birds rely on natural, healthy waters with riparian vegetation and suited nesting substrates, the result of these building projects was a profound modification of human-kingfisher interfaces. In combination with the shy nature of kingfishers and the fact that they are easily disturbed by human presence, the result was probably that the birds became increasingly elusive and intangible in human life-worlds further north, certainly promoting notions of ‘exoticism’. The southern peripheries with their comparatively reduced anthropogenic fingerprint, by contrast, offered a variety of favourable kingfisher habitats, comprising plenty of water bodies and some notable biodiversity hotspots, hence rendering the bird a much more integral part of human lived experience. Kost contends that this structural polarity between centres and southern peripheries gained historical significance in the very moment in which the Eastern Han rulers sought to tighten their grip on the south, sending groups of ordinary people and higher-ranked Han officials into the respective regions. The encounter with foreign lands and peoples, whose local customs were deeply enmeshed with these environments and its non-human animals would have generated a new matrix of meaning-making, enabling the kingfisher to emerge as an emblem of southern lifestyle and ecological particularities. The appearance of kingfisher-shaped objects in grave contexts of a newly forming elite is thus interpreted as an expression of re-negotiated local identities, signalling overarching affiliations to Eastern Han orthodoxy while at the same time emphasising local belonging by calling upon historically specific connotations of the kingfisher. Kost’s analysis illustrates the ‘cyclic’ and often extremely fragile nature of past human-bird relations as well as the fact that the significance of birds often derives from intraspecific differences and contrasts in the associated life-world contexts. Her study showcases how human-induced environmental alterations can affect birds and thereby in turn influence the ways these are perceived and conceptualised. Heightened levels of urbanity therefore not always bring humans and birds closer together, but may also lead to increasing alienation and mystification.

Hill (2019) addresses human-bird relations among Indigenous Alaskan people in the historic and prehistoric Western Arctic. She argues that especially waterbirds were considered economic and cosmological resources and that the two were in fact often complementary. A key feature of human-bird interfaces in this specific context is the potential permeability, interchangeability and transposability of human and avian traits and capacities, and both archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence indicates that hunters and shamanic practitioners have consistently tried to acquire or mimic the distinct abilities of different bird species. Thus, humans and birds were probably not regarded to be categorically different and birds were likely considered potential persons or at least ‘near-persons’. The general architecture of Alaska Native-bird interfaces, in other words, bespeaks of a relational understanding of the world and stands in sharp contrast to the Cartesian construction of human-animal relations which remains popular in today’s Global North. Hill makes a strong case for the fact that especially mortuary contexts are intimate relational spaces in which the intersection, if any, between humans and animals can be productively charted. She re-visits the multi-component type-site of Ipiutak (modern Point Hope) on the northwest coast of Alaska in order to expose some intricacies of the early historic relationship between humans and birds in this region. The examination reveals that loons have played important roles in the lives of Alaskan Native people, who appear to have paid special attention to various facets of embodied vision that the birds afford. The perhaps most complex burial at Ipiutak also yielded a loon skull whose eye sockets contained ivory eyeballs with jet inlay. Similar eye substitutes were recovered in two human skulls from nearby burials. The author suggests that these unique mortuary contexts provide evidence for the co-optation of loon capabilities, agencies and affordances by the inhabitants of the site. Ultimately, it is proposed that the respective human-loon relations reference perspectivist ontologies in which humans, animals and spirits are thought to have the same ancestral ‘essence’ and the perceptive differences in physical appearance are contingent, with physical bodies being predisposed to change and transform. All of this indicates that hunters and shamans tried to exploit the superior vision of loons by acquiring their unique perspective on the world via hybrid bodies and items of material culture. Hill’s paper illustrates that the intimate tie between ancient people and their animate environments should be expected to have promoted sophisticated systems of knowledge helping human agents to interact with animal others and to make use of some of their faculties. Bird goods, in other words, were typically more than just ‘raw materials’, they may have had a significance of their own, carrying on the potentials and inborn capacities of their former animal selves. Bird-related objects and material culture could in this way develop an agency and lived efficacy of their own, and part of the wider significance of birds may have been rooted in this charged materiality. As a result, economic and cosmological significances were often intertwined and non-distinguishable. Hill’s paper again shows us that the kinds of behaviours and capabilities which thereby become salient typically depend on the adopted mode of life, on how the animal world is experienced, accessed and exploited. It may be more than mere coincidence, for example, that loons with their expert diving capacities and exceptional predatory vision became so compelling for societies in which hunting played an essential role. A complete understanding of human-bird relations therefore likely requires the careful analysis of the conceptual relationships between key human practices and the distinct capacities and behaviours of the involved bird species. As Hill rightly points out, scholars must therefore learn to deploy natural history knowledge and detailed ethological information and to juxtapose them carefully with the archaeological evidence.

Corbino and Albarella (2019) assess the changing role of wild birds in the Italian Middle Ages. The authors combine legacy data sets and newly derived information on wild bird remains from 13 key sites in Italy spanning from the early to the late Middle Ages. The goal of the paper is to examine trends and long-term developments in wild bird exploitation during this time span. The results of their analysis show that apart from chicken bones which dominate most avian assemblages, partridge, goose, duck and pigeon are the best represented birds independently of site type or period. In early Medieval times, the majority of bird remains, including such commensal species as sparrows, seems to derive primarily from the consumption of these animals but there is also some evidence for hawks and buzzards. The mid-Medieval period is distinguished by an increase in pigeon and dove remains and the introduction of crane-like birds to the record which are not present before. Birds of prey remain rare in this time frame. In the late Middle Ages, the overall diversity of represented bird taxa greatly increases, and the relative frequencies of many species are profoundly modified. The bones of goose and duck-like birds, for example, become less important while the remains of perching birds and song birds as well as birds of prey increase in numbers. Owls, represented by several species, make their first appearance in the record and corvids play an important role in many assemblages. Corbino and Albarella interpret this overall shift in the structure of bird assemblages throughout the Medieval period in Italy as a reflection of the differential role of birds as markers of social status as well as changing urban-rural dynamics. It is notable, for instance, that the majority of non-chicken birds are most common at rural sites in the early Middle Ages, whereas in later periods the greatest diversity and frequency of these birds is encountered in urban contexts. The authors suggest that the marked diversification of wild bird remains in Italian sites throughout the Medieval period corresponds to an increasing value of birds, in contrast to other animal, in high-status and elite diets, especially in urban and military contexts. The late Middle Ages, moreover, have seen the intensification of falconry and other bird hunting and fowling techniques, for instance involving owls as decoy and possibly leading to the notable accumulation of corvids which are known to have been valued for their meat to a much lesser extent than other wild birds. In total, Corbino and Albarella’s study illustrates how archaeo-ornithological research can throw fresh light on the sensible articulation of different historical processes operating on varying timescales. The data they present showcases how the expansion of urban spaces, the modification of natural environments and the social differentiation processes tied to these developments motivating the maturation of new bird-related practices resonated with one another and thereby created the encountered avian patterns. The simultaneous surge of corvid remains and the available evidence for falconry practices, for example, may indicate that the latter gained momentum at a time when human urban and agricultural environments, which naturally attract corvids, would have already harboured high numbers of these birds. The data further elucidates that, taken together, all of these processes seemingly contributed to an existential decline in a number of wild bird species, most notably cranes and eagles, partly due to over-exploitation and partly because of human-induced transformations of their habitat. Studying human-bird relations in the past can therefore contribute to a better understanding of the mutual impact that varying long-term processes exert on one another, and ultimately illuminates the tenacious interconnection of human and avian worlds.

Altogether, the contributing papers demonstrate the potential of archaeo-ornithological inquiry and collectively make a strong case for the importance of comparative and diachronic investigations of the human-bird interface. The different approaches certainly make clear that past human-bird relations can only be adequately understood if the ‘coming together’ of both protagonists – humans and birds – is seriously taken into consideration and examined in some detail – if the ‘nexuses’ of human-bird engagement, in other words, are properly charted (see supra). The papers affirm the idea that the development, consolidation and differentiation of sedentary and urban lifestyles constitute key contexts of evolving human-bird relations, often accompanied by major transformations of the implicated human-bird interfaces. They also showcase that birds are highly suited to inform on the long-term environmental effects of human behaviour. Any deep-historical account of changing human-bird relationships has to take these basic observations into account.

Conclusion and Future Directions

This special issue of Environmental Archaeology addresses the vital question of how past human societies engaged with their bird ecology, a subsidiary of their wider animate environment. Although each of the contributing papers tackles human-bird relations in its own productive way, we have suggested here that a promising way forward is to focus on the contextual intersections between humans, birds and environments. Firmly grounded in Human-Animal Studies, this perspective looks at birds not merely as a portion of the inert, environmental backdrop of human society, but portrays them as dynamic historical agents in their own right, with the propensity to influence, afford and change human practice and cognition. Epistemologically, this approach to human-bird relations is based on the tenets of ‘agential realism’ (Barad 2007), acknowledging that entities do not exist independently of relations and interactions – they are always borne out of these relations – and that each of these ‘entities’ possesses some sort of agency and can thus enact changes and effects in other such entities. We have proposed that the concept of the ‘triangle of interaction’ provides a useful starting point for analysing the shifting ‘agential’ meeting points of humans, birds and the various landscape settings in which their engagement was situated. We have baptised the respective approach to past human-bird relations Archaeo-Ornithology and noted that a key challenge of such inquiry is to better understand the specific entanglement of human behaviour and bird ethology under different historical and ecological conditions. By discussing the evolution of anthropogenic spaces as a potential key context for this type of analysis, we have shown that the study of human-bird relations in the past and deep past would greatly benefit from the integration of archaeological evidence with insights derived from natural history, bird conservation and the wider field of ecology. Archaeo-ornithological research can then contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the long-term dynamics of human-bird relations which, in tandem with the knowledge produced by other disciplines, can help us come to grips with some of the pressing ecological issues of our time. The long-term perspective of Archaeo-Ornithology may for instance be crucial for assessing the non-predictable effects of particular developmental trajectories – e.g. urbanisation – on the lives of birds and the environment at large. In this way, an integrated approach to past human-bird relations can be indispensable for averting a lurking, primordial fear of the Anthropocene – the prospect that in cities and other anthropogenic spaces on our planet birds will ultimately run silent (Carson 1962; Whitehouse 2015).

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the participants of the stimulating thematic session ‘Archaeo-Ornithology: Figurations of Human-Bird Interfaces in Prehistory and Early History’ held at the 2016 annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Vilnius, from which the here presented collection of papers derives. We are grateful to all final contributors for their cooperation, effort and patience as well as their insightful research which, we have no doubt, will make this special issue valuable for a variety of readers. We also wish to give credit to the many anonymous reviewers who read and commented on the papers of this volume at various stages. They helped bring this special issue to a satisfactory conclusion and certainly improved its overall quality. Last but not least, we remain indebted to Timothy Mighall, the main editor of Environmental Archaeology, for his enduring support and kind assistance with any technical issues. We dedictate this introduction to Mimi.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Catrin Kost is currently Assistant Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China. Originally trained in Chinese studies, in particular the Archaeology of Pre-Imperial and Early Imperial China, her research, which covers multifaceted themes such as cultural appropriation and exchange, Eurasian steppe dynamics, landscape perception, conceptions of personal hygiene and human-animal relations, seeks to transcend well-established disciplinary boundaries and is deeply interdisciplinary in orientation.

Shumon T. Hussain received his PhD in Palaeolithic archaeology from Leiden University, the Netherlands. His emphatically interdisciplinary research endeavours to cross-cut the sciences and humanities. He is an expert in lithic analysis, especially the theory and epistemology that underpins it, and conducts research under the metadisciplinary umbrella of Human-Animal Studies and in the emerging Environmental Humanities.

ORCID

Shumon T. Hussain http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6215-393X

Notes

1. For a detailed exploration of the notion of ‘catalysis’ in the context of physical environments, see e.g. Morsink (2019).

2. Following Pepper (1942, 291f.), a ‘nexus’, in the present problem-context, defines the totality of predispositions, tendencies and possibilities of a potential interactor to come into interactional contact with another interactor. Hence, a ‘nexus’ captures the fact that the interactor has not yet realised its relative interactive potential, yet its constitution makes a crucial difference in how it may interact. A meeting point of ‘nexuses’, then, simply describes a particular configuration of interactors, in which some meaningful inter-action is established and at least one aspect of the ‘nexus’ of each interactor realized to this effect.

3. This form of ‘agentive triangulation’ should not to be confused with data, method or theory triangulation as often practiced in the social sciences in order to circumvent epistemological issues of incompleteness, distortion, and/or systematic error (e.g. Denzin 1970, 1989; Moran-Ellis et al. 2006; Flick 2011).

4. For a basic argument in favour of the deep-history of processes of urbanisation substantially predating the formation of typical modern cities, see e.g. Thomas (2012).

5. See already Tchernov (1984) for a useful discussion on the interrelationship between increasing sedentarism and the evolution of human-nonhuman commensalism.

6. For the possible interspecies effects of the introduction of dogs in the Late Upper Palaeolithic of Scandinavia, albeit from a niche construction perspective, see Riede (2009, 2011). A more global account of the potential implications of evolving human-dog bonds for our understanding of early human evolution is offered by Shipman (2017). An interesting argument for the possible role of domestic dogs in bird-hunting practices during the PPNA is presented by Yeomans, Martin, and Richter (2019).

7. With the notion of ‘being-in-the-world’, following Whitehouse (2015, footnote 24), we intend to emphasise a relational sense of life grounded in the recognition that each organism, whether human or non-human, is indivisible from its environment and that the interrelationships between the two create emergent, non-trivial outcomes. ‘Being’, therefore, cannot be separated from the specific ‘world’ in which it occurs.

8. The entanglement of birds and hilltops as residential spaces of paranormal power within the quest for social legitimacy and human authority over the land in Iron Age Central and Southern Africa is for example pointed out by Wilmsen (2014). Hilltops emerge as spaces that literally reduce the distance between the human and avian world, spaces where humans can reach out to the sky. Birds, in these African contexts, became metonyms or signifiers of royal authority, but they were also seen as heavenly messengers – as a ‘vital and vitalizing force in mythology and rainmaking’ (Wilmsen 2014, 411).