At home, with the good horses : relationality, roles, identity and ideology in Iron Age Inner Asia
As an overarching theme, this thesis is concerned with investigating archaeologically the relationships between humans and horses within the Iron Age Inner Asian society of the Pazyryk archaeological culture. Prior archaeologies of horses in Iron Age Eurasia have approached them in a segmented fashion: in either cultural/economic, social/ideological or ritual/cosmological realms. Horses have been objectified as parts of âmaterial cultureâ or the âenvironment,â significant only as commodities exploited for culinary or technological purposes, or as symbolic proxies for human attributes and meanings. Within these narratives, I argue, lie faulty anthropocentric meta-theoretical assumptions about both the nature of âcultureâ and the domination of horses by humans. This thesis, then, challenges traditional archaeological and anthropological understandings of animals as absent referents within human societies, unidirectionally acted upon by humans. I adopt an alternate âhuman-animal studiesâ approach, which considers animals as partners in the interspecifically co-created, embodied worlds they share with humans. In doing this, I argue that a consideration of horses, themselves, and how they come together
Argent, Gala
At home, with the good horses : relationality, roles, identity and ideology in Iron Age Inner Asia. As an overarching theme, this thesis is concerned with investigating archaeologically the relationships between humans and horses within the Iron Age Inner Asian society of the Pazyryk archaeological culture. Prior archaeologies of horses in Iron Age Eurasia have approached them in a segmented fashion: in either cultural/economic, social/ideological or ritual/cosmological realms. Horses have been objectified as parts of âmaterial cultureâ or the âenvironment,â significant only as commodities exploited for culinary or technological purposes, or as symbolic proxies for human attributes and meanings. Within these narratives, I argue, lie faulty anthropocentric meta-theoretical assumptions about both the nature of âcultureâ and the domination of horses by humans. This thesis, then, challenges traditional archaeological and anthropological understandings of animals as absent referents within human societies, unidirectionally acted upon by humans. I adopt an alternate âhuman-animal studiesâ approach, which considers animals as partners in the interspecifically co-created, embodied worlds they share with humans. In doing this, I argue that a consideration of horses, themselves, and how they come together
home good horse relationality role identity ideology iron_age inner asia overarch_theme concerned investigate archaeologically relationship human horse within iron_age inner asian society archaeological culture prior archaeology horse iron age eurasia approach fashion either cultural_economic social_ideological ritual cosmological realm part material_culture environment significant commodity exploit culinary technological purpose symbolic proxy human attribute meaning within narrative argue lie faulty anthropocentric meta_theoretical assumption nature culture domination horse human challenge_traditional archaeological_anthropological understanding animal absent referent within human_society act_upon human adopt alternate human_animal study_considers animals partner created embodied world share human argue consideration horse come_together