This volume provides fresh insight into northern human–animal relations and illustrates the breadth and practical utility of archaeological human–animal studies. It surveys recent archaeological research in northern North America and Eurasia that frames human–animal relations as not merely economically exploitative but often socially complex and deeply meaningful, and attuned to the intelligence and agency of nonhuman prey and domesticates. The case studies sample a wide swath of the circumpolar region, from Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland to northern Fennoscandia and western Siberia, and span sites, finds, and scenarios ranging in age from the Mesolithic to the twenty-first century. Many taxa on which northern lives hinged figure in these analyses, including large marine mammals, polar bear, reindeer, marine fish, and birds, and are variously approached from relational, multispecies, semiotic, osteobiographical, and political economic perspectives. Animals themselves are represented by osteological remains, harvesting gear, and depictions of animal bodies that include zoomorphic figurines, petroglyphs, ornamentation, and intricate portrayals of human–animal harvesting encounters. Far from settling the problem of how archaeologists should approach northern human–animal relations, these chapters reveal the irreducible complexity of northern worlds and highlight the diversity of human and nonhuman animal lives. This book will be of particular interest to northern archaeologists and zooarchaeologists, and all those interested in the possibilities of a multispecies approach to the archaeological record.

In Spirit Unleashed, Anne Benvenuti uses analysis of real encounters with wild animals to take us on an intellectual tour of our thinking about animals by way of biological sciences, scientific psychology, philosophy, and theology to show that we have been wrong in our understanding of ourselves amongst other animals. The good news is that we can correct our course and make ourselves happier in the process. Drawing us into encounters with a desert rattlesnake, an offended bonobo, an injured fawn, a curious whale, a determined woodpecker, and others, she gives us a glimpse of their souls. Benvenuti strongly makes the case that to change the way we think about animals--and our way of relating to them--holds the possibility of changing all life on Earth for the better.

Animals are conscious beings that form their own perspective regarding the lifeworlds in which they exist, and according to which they act in relation to their species and other animals. In recent decades a thorough transformation in societal research has taken place, as many groups that were previously perceived as being passive or subjugated objects have become active subjects. This fundamental reassessment, first promoted by feminist and radical studies, has subsequently been followed by spatial and material turns that have brought non-human agency to the fore. In human–animal relations, despite a power imbalance, animals are not mere objects but act as agents. They shape our material world and our encounters with them influence the way we think about the world and ourselves. This book focuses on animal agency and interactions between humans and animals. It explores the reciprocity of human–animal relations and the capacity of animals to act and shape human societies. The chapters draw on examples from the Global North to explore how human life in modernity has been and is shaped by the sentience, autonomy, and physicality of various animals, particularly in landscapes where communities and wild animals exist in close proximity. It offers a timely contribution to animal studies, environmental geography, environmental history, and social science and humanities studies of the environment more broadly.

This book situates sociological research as a vital tool for understanding, and responding to, the multispecies entanglements that cause, inform and arise from states of crisis involving the environment, climate and zoonotic disease transmission. Considering the consequences of a range of multispecies engagements that challenge the perceived distinction between the social worlds of humans and other animals, it explores the themes of crisis through a range of studies, including ecological disturbance, consumer culture, intensive farming and interspecies relations in urban life. With attention to central questions about life in ‘the now normal’, including the extent to which a human–animal perspective can contribute to our understanding of pandemics, the ideological foundations of mainstream norms for human–animal relations and the scope of current and emerging social movements for reshaping human–animal relations, this volume represents a timely and important call for a sociological vision to embrace the implications of a multispecies planet and to expand the concepts of inclusion and justice. A reconsideration of the human–animal relation that seeks both to revise sociology’s past and inform its future, Human–Animal Relationships in Times of Pandemic and Climate Crises will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in human–animal relations and the environment.

Dogs provides a comprehensive account of the origins and development of the domestic dog over the past 15,000 years.

From the origins of the Arctic to its contemporary life, this book is an intriguing survey of human achievement in a place relatively unknown to the rest of the world. For more than 25,000 years, Arctic peoples have made warm and hospitable homes in diverse and innovative ways out of ecosystems of ice. For the first time in their long history, however, Arctic communities are facing the real possibility that the foundations of their way of life—sea ice and permafrost—will soon disappear. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the British Museum, Arctic: culture and climate presents the history of the Arctic through the lens of climate and weather, and features a variety of fascinating objects, many of which are published here for the first time, including sealskin kayaks, drums used by shamans, traditional costumes, and contemporary art. This remarkable book explores the origins of Arctic peoples, early trade relationships between cultural groups, and relationships with animals, weather and their environments. It examines the strategies that indigenous people have used to deal with rapid transformations brought about by European explorations and colonial governments and sheds light on how these same strategies are being utilized today to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Bringing together indigenous and non-indigenous interdisciplinary scholars, this book is an arresting insight into the ways of life and material culture of Arctic peoples.