Join us as we embark on another listener-requested episode topic, this time all about the zooarchaeology of animals used in warfare. From fiery pigs to Hannibal’s infamous elephants, we take a look at how animals from around the world have been integral to military operations from prehistory to World War I.
Links and Sources
Ameen, C., Benkert, H., Fraser, T., Gordon, R., Holmes, M., Johnson, W., ... & Outram, A. K. (2021). In search of the ‘great horse’: A zooarchaeological assessment of horses from England (AD 300–1650). International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 31(6), 1247-1257.
Anthony, D. W., & Brown, D. R. (2017). The dogs of war: A Bronze Age initiation ritual in the Russian steppes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 48, 134-148.
Bendrey, R. (2010). The horse. In T O’Connor and N J Sykes (eds) Extinctions and Invasions: a social history of British fauna, 10-16.
Dobat, A. S., Price, T. D., Kveiborg, J., Ilkjær, J., & Rowley-Conwy, P. (2014). The four horses of an Iron Age apocalypse: war-horses from the third-century weapon sacrifice at Illerup Aadal (Denmark). Antiquity, 88(339), 191-204.
Kveiborg, J., & Nørgaard, M. (2022). Early Iron Age cavalry? Evidence of oral and thoracolumbar pathologies on possible warhorses from Iron Age, Denmark. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
Mahaney, W. C. (2020). The Hannibal enigma of 218 BC: A forensic exercise of importance to historical archaeology. Sci. Cult, 6, 7-24.
Mayor, A. (2014). Animals in Warfare. In GL Campbell (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life. Oxford University Press, 282-293.
Nicholls, E. (2012) Specimen of the Week: Week Fifty-Seven. UCL Culture Blog.
Powell, E.A. (2013) Let Slip the Pigeons of War. Archaeology, 81(1303).
Rees, O. (2020). Dogs of War, or Dogs in War? The Use of Dogs in Classical Greek Warfare. Greece & Rome, 67(2), 230-246.
Romano, M., & Palombo, M. R. (2017). When legend, history and science rhyme: Hannibal’s war elephants as an explanation to large vertebrate skeletons found in Italy. Historical Biology, 29(8), 1106-1124.
Sala, R. (2017). The domestication of camel in the literary, archaeological and petroglyph records. Journal of Arid Land Studies, 26(4), 205-211.
Tsouparopoulou, C., & Recht, L. (2021). Dogs and equids in war in third millennium BC Mesopotamia. In L Recht & C Tsouparopoulou (eds) Fierce lions, angry mice and fat-tailed sheep: animal encounters in the ancient Near East. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 279-289.
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