The Art and Archaeology of Human Engagements with Birds of Prey

From Prehistory to the Present

Robert J. Wallis

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781350267985
• eBook ISBN: 9781350268012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History of Art
• Index: Social Sciences

Of all avian groups, birds of prey in particular have long been a prominent subject of fascination in many human societies. This book demonstrates that the art and materiality of human engagements with raptors has been significant through deep time and across the world, from earliest prehistory to Indigenous thinking in the present day. Drawing on a wide range of global case studies and a plurality of complementary perspectives, it explores the varied and fluid dynamics between humans and birds of prey as evidenced in this diverse art-historical and archaeological record.

From their depictions as powerful beings in visual art and their important roles in Indigenous mythologies, to the significance of their body parts as active agents in religious rituals, the intentional deposition of their faunal remains and the display of their preserved bodies in museums, there is no doubt that birds of prey have been figures of great import for the shaping of human society and culture. However, several of the chapters in this volume are particularly concerned with looking beyond the culture–nature dichotomy and human-centred accounts to explore perspectival and other post-humanist thinking on human–raptor ontologies and epistemologies. The contributors recognize that human–raptor relationships are not driven exclusively by human intentionality, and that when these species meet they relate-to and become-with one another. This 'raptor-with-human'-focused approach allows for a productive re-framing of questions about human–raptor interstices, enables fresh thinking about established evidence and offers signposts for present and future intra-actions with birds of prey.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I The Materiality of Human Engagements with Birds of Prey
• 1 Raptors as Companions: Deep-Time Forays in Multispecies Archaeology
• 2 Gods, Kings and Offerings: Raptors in Ancient Egypt
• 3 Ghosthawk Worldings: Raptor Haruspicy during the North European Bronze Age
• Part II Visualizing Human Relations with Raptors
• 4 Golden Eagles: Raptor Imagery Biographies in Kazakhstan during the Early First Millennium bce
• 5 Visual Hybridity, Political Power and Cultural Contest: Kitan Liao (916–1125 CE) and Jurchen Jin (1115–1234 CE) Textiles with Falconry-Related Imagery
• 6 ‘The Falcon-Cloak Whistled’: Bird Fibulae, Falconry and Powerful Women in Seventh-Century Scandinavia
• Part III Posthumanist Ontologies of Human–Raptor Relations
• 7 Relating to Raptors: The ‘upper part of a hawk’s head and beak’ in a Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age ‘Beaker’ Grave, Driffield, East Yorkshire
• 8 Raptors in Pre-Columbian North America: An Ontology of Art
• 9 Birds of Prey in Ancient Amazonia: Predation and Perspective in Ceramic Iconography
• 10 ‘Now I Am a Bird, and Now I Am a Man’: Posthumanism, Raptors and the Rus’
• Part IV Indigenous Knowledges of Birds of Prey
• 11 Birds of Prey, ‘Our Mothers’ and Women of Power: The ‘Spirit Bird of Night’ Masquerade in Yorùbá Art and Thought
• 12 Pouākai: Rock Drawings of Haast’s Eagle or New Zealand’s Legendary Bird?
• 13 Ancestors, Messengers and ‘Good Country’: Birds of Prey, Rock Art and Indigenous Knowledge in the Kimberley, Northwest Australia
• Index
• Plates
• Copyright