IMC 2011: Sessions

From earliest times, animals have been used to represent prestige and status or the absence of status by people. Ownership of rare or exotic animals conferred status as did the right to hunt or use special breeds. Most of the population had to make do with eating meat from older animals that had seen better days. Meat from young animals would have been too expensive to eat on a daily basis. Hunting rights were the prerogative of a chosen few. Sometimes status was signalled by the presence of animals whose very uselessness made them the province of a special few as they signalled that the owner had time for frivolity in their life. Attitudes toward animals as pets or useful animals also could change depending on who was using and writing about them. Differences were also evident in the diet. The diet of the elite, as represented in images and texts may have been meat-heavy but the meat they consumed tended to come from young tender animals. The very poor would have had only very limited access to meat, and general poor quality meat. In this session these themes will be explored from multidisciplinary sources including archaeozoology, texts, and images.