HUSBANDRY, DIETARY TABOOS AND THE BONES OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST: ZOOARCHAEOLOGY IN THE POST-PROCESSUAL WORLD

BRIAN HESSE

INTRODUCTION1 The study of animal bones from archaeological sites in the Near East began in an intellectual matrix which emphasized historical, both documentary and aesthetic, and zoological approaches to their interpretation. These avenues produced important synthetic results, but bones remained peripheral to the central interests of the archaeologists of the day. Then, beginning in the second quarter of this century, a different set of archaeological perspectives took hold in some sectors of Near Eastern archaeology. These were materialist and self-consciously scientific (later often called 'processual') in outlook. They emphasized, in varied and nuanced ways, that social and political institutions and processes were embedded in ecological and economic relations. Processual accounts of the past were depersonalized. Perturbations in the working of cultural systems replaced an understanding of choices made by human actors in an historical context as the mode used to account for innovation. Further, processual accounts focussed on the comparative efficiency of cultural systems in explain• ing change. The relations between humans and their environ• ment and the productivity of different adaptive systems in generating energy were treated as especially significant, while the relations between individuals and the social and ideologi• cal value of things were considered less, if at all. While origi• nally focussed on such questions of prehistory as the 'neolithic revolution,' this non-historical approach gradually spread to the archaeology of the earliest literate 'civilizations.'

' This paper had its origin in one entitled 'Post-Processual Zooarchaeology: Zoo-Ideology and Zoo-Politics in Ancient Canaan' given by the author and Paula Wapmsh at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archae• ology in April, 1989. 198 HESSE

The new way of thinking put a premium on the collection and interpretation of biological remains from archaeological sites. The number of zooarchaeologists, many from anthropo• logical backgrounds, working in the region sharply increased and a body of descriptive and interpretive accounts in this mold has been produced. Now, however, in the late l 980's and 90's, the ecological paradigm in turn has come under sharp attack and a shift to what are called 'post-processual' themes that emphasize, among other things, relativistic, volitional, gender sensitive, histori• cal, Marxist or symbolic accounts, has been advocated. A question is whether zooarchaeology can adapt to these changes and con• tribute to the discourse about the past without returning to its previous position on the fringe. Following a brief survey of animal related studies in ancient Near Eastern history and archaeology, two problems are explored, one a traditional 'processual' question, the advent of animal domestication, the other a traditional 'historical' question, the biblical tradition of pig avoidance, to suggest that both the new archaeology strategy still has utility and that a post-processual Near Eastern zooarchaeology is possible.

BACKGROUND Examined at a global scale, zooarchaeology's intellectual roots have drawn more sustenance from external demands for a method than they have from any theories about the past that have been generated within the discipline. As can be argued as well for the companion specialists, paleobotanists, zooarchaeologists find self-definition within the society of ar• chaeologists through the class of material remains we are com• petent to study. Bone fragments are often the second most common find in Near Eastern excavations, and it can be argued that the right to discover carries the companion responsibility to study. On a crude level, therefore, since bones are found, zooarchaeologists exist. As biological specialists, zooarchaeologists have sprung into existence to exploit the niche that has formed between the temporal boundaries that separate paleontologists, whose interest fades as the Pleistocene comes to an end, from neontologists, whose primary focus is on living populations of animals, and the division of labor among biologists that determines what zoologists, focussed on wild species, and animal scientists, tar-