Initiating ZooMAP: the Zooarchaeology of Mycenaean Artisans Project
"Initiating ZooMAP" is a project that aims to combine archaeological and digital analysis methods to elucidate how animal and human lives of the Mycenaean people in ancient Greece were connected to those of the wider Mediterranean region during the Late Bronze Age.
For the initial phase of this project, undergraduate students will collect and visualize a variety of data in map form, including animal symbolism evidence, ancient texts about herds and sacrifices, and evidence of the animals that lived and were used at the sites based on the remains of the individual fauna. With this data, students will decenter the perspective of human-animal interactions at Mycenae, which is currently largely based on exceptional finds of animal art in elite contexts. Ultimately, the online publication of the repository as an open-access webpage will encourage others to address a variety of anthrozoological questions using the assembled information. Understanding human-animal interactions during a time of unprecedented inter-regional connectivity in prehistory will lead to a better understanding of the processes that led to increasing globalization and the associated environmental crises of the current day.
Faculty Project Leader
Dr. Jacqueline Meier is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. She is a zooarchaeologist and her research focuses on the remains of animals from archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region. She studies human-animal interactions at archaeological sites, spanning from the time of the Neanderthals to that of the Romans.