Both subject and object: herding,

inalienability and sentient property

in prehistory

David Orton

Abstract

This paper advocates a social approach to domestic animals in prehistory, one which situates herding
practices in their (human) social context while also recognizing the status of animals of social beings
in their own right. Domestic animals, it is argued, represent sentient property in the sense that,
despite being incorporated as ‘objects’ into property relations between humans they remain subjects
whose social world overlaps with that of humans. This tension between the status of domestic
animals as subject and as object is played out in highly context-specific ways, being linked both to
human social organization and to material/geographical aspects of herding practices. These ideas are
used to develop a model for the role of cattle in a process of social change that took place during the
later Neolithic Vin!ca period in the central Balkans.

Keywords

Human-animal relations; Vin!ca; Neolithic herding; domestication; enchainment.

Introduction

Humans engage with animals in a wide variety of ways. Non-human species have played
the roles of companion, resource, competitor and threat to human groups. They have
provided material resources such as meat, milk and fur, and less tangible benefits including
labour and protection. They have participated in human social relations in various
capacities, and have constituted a rich source of symbolism. Equally importantly, they
form an active and often highly visible part of the physical environment in which humans
live. Non-human animals are a ubiquitous element of human life, and as such constitute
an important subject of archaeological study. Unfortunately, archaeological approaches
to animals have traditionally been one-dimensional, focusing either on the role of animals

World Archaeology Vol. 42(2): 188–200 Humans and Animals

ª 2010 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online
DOI: 10.1080/00438241003672773
 Both subject and object 189

as material resources or on their symbolic and/or religious importance to human groups,

but in either case reducing them to objects (Ray and Thomas 2003). This paper aims to
avoid both pitfalls by advocating a fundamentally social approach to domestic animals in
prehistory.
Two main shortcomings can be identified within the dominant archaeological approach
to domestic animals. The first concerns the context of human interactions with animals.
Whether giving explanatory emphasis to economic imperatives or to symbolic schemata,
zooarchaeologists have typically situated their reasoning at a settlement or even regional
level, acknowledging only in passing that decisions are likely to have been made on a
smaller scale (although see Halstead 1999 for a worthy exception). Even from a strictly
rational-materialist perspective the scale at which decisions are made affects their
cumulative outcome, but this top-down approach also obscures a whole suite of potential
social motivations behind husbandry strategies – prestige, exchange obligations and so on.
Placing human-animal relations in their proper social context is vital not only to under-
stand husbandry practices, but also to grasp their implications for society more widely.
The second shortcoming concerns human-animal relations more directly. Archaeologists
and anthropologists typically view animals as objects rather than persons, a viewpoint
which can be attributed to the fundamental Cartesian separation between human and non-
human. This separation is unlikely to have characterized the worldviews of prehistoric
people (see Jones 2009: 76). While the question of animal consciousness and intentions
remains a moot point (see Irvine 2007), animals certainly possess the external attributes
associated with personhood: they are active, autonomous and exhibit individual
behavioural characteristics. Most importantly, some animals appear capable of entering
into intersubjective relationships with individual humans, a phenomenon whose implica-
tions are just beginning to be explored (Hobson-West 2007; Knight 2005a; Oma 2007).
A truly social approach to animals in prehistory must tackle both of these issues,
addressing human-animal sociality alongside the role of animals in relationships between
humans. This paper attempts to take such an approach by developing a nuanced
understanding of domestication. This is applied to the Vin!ca period of the central Balkans,
where it is used to analyse the role played by cattle, in particular, in wider processes of
social change.

Domestication

An exclusive concentration on domesticates may be surprising given the recent tendency to

deconstruct the wild:domestic dichotomy, a movement with which the author has some
sympathy. Excessive reliance on the wild:domestic distinction has served to obscure the
variety of situations subsumed under each label. However, the view is taken here that the
term ‘domestic’ retains an analytical utility, domestic animals differing meaningfully from
their wild counterparts in their ability to play an active role within human society.
In order to justify this position, it is necessary to review what exactly may be meant by
‘domestic’. We are not interested here in the processes of initial domestication but rather in
what is understood about the relationship between an animal and a human community
when we describe that animal as a domesticate. The traditional approach within
190 David Orton

zooarchaeology, now somewhat out of favour but still often implicit, is best summed up by
Bökönyi: ‘the capture and taming by man of animals of a species with particular behavioral
characteristics, their removal from their natural living area and breeding community, and
their maintenance under controlled breeding conditions for profit’ (Bökönyi 1969: 219).
The assumption of deliberate human intentionality is problematic, but in any case this
definition says little about what it is to be domestic, other than existing in isolation from a
wild population. One might ask how this differs from non-anthropogenic cases of
population isolation and – in what is at least partly a backlash against anthropocentrism –
some have indeed argued that domestication should be seen simply in terms of symbiosis
and anthropogenic niche colonization (Budiansky 1992; O’Connor 1997).
While the latter approach is unassailable on its own, ecological, terms, it neglects the
aspects of domestication of most anthropological interest. An alternative well-established
view that sees domestication as fundamentally social stresses the ability of living
domesticates to act as vehicles of relationships between humans. For Ingold (1984: 4)
domestication is a process of appropriation, and domesticates are set apart from wild
animals by their status as property. This echoes an earlier definition from the
zooarchaeologist Ducos: ‘Domestication can be said to exist when living animals are
integrated as objects into the socio-economic organization of the human group, in the
sense that, while living, those animals are objects for ownership, inheritance, exchange,
trade etc.’ (Ducos 1978: 54). This is perhaps the clearest criterion of domestication, and fits
well with archaeological usage of the term. The appropriation of animals as property
represents a ‘quantum shift . . . a difference not only of degree but of kind’ (Russell 2002:
294). The same simplicity which makes it a solid basis for a definition, however, also limits
its utility for understanding the place of domesticates within human society. To describe
the complex and varied relationships between humans and domestic animals purely in
terms of interactions among the former would be reductionist to say the least.
By focusing instead on forms of relationship between humans and animals, some
authors have acknowledged the status of domesticates as subjects rather than merely
objects. Ingold, in his later work, describes domestication as a shift from trust between
humans and animals to domination of the latter by the former, and draws an explicit
analogy with human slavery, animals remaining ‘subject-persons’ rather than ‘object-
things’ (1994: 17–18). Whereas for Marx (1964: 102) animals were unambiguously capital
– mere tools in the hands of human owners – Tapper (1988) treats them as labour and
analyses forms of human-animal interaction accordingly. Herd animals in traditional
pastoralism are seen as analogous to serfs – subject to a relationship which is unequal and
coercive but not without reciprocity – while only in modern industrial societies do animals,
in the eyes of some at least, become reduced to objects.
A more recent wave of studies stresses personal and psychological elements of the
human-domesticate relationship over more structural aspects. Whereas hunter-gatherers
may speak of trust between themselves and their prey on a generic level (Ingold 1996), the
repeated contact that domestication permits between individual humans and individual
animals can lead to the formation of genuine interpersonal relationships in which trust
does play a part (Knight 2005b). Oma (2007: 64) uses this reasoning to reverse Ingold’s
‘trust to domination’ model, characterizing the human-domesticate relationship in terms
of trust and reciprocity that cannot truly be established through hunting. The idea of
 Both subject and object 191

reciprocity is developed by Theodossopoulos (2005), while others have explicitly described

the relationships between domesticates and their keepers in terms of kinship (Campbell
2005; Ray and Thomas 2003). There is a danger of romanticizing the place of animals in
traditional farming systems, and domination certainly plays a role alongside intimacy.
Russell (2007) points out that the same ambiguity exists within human kinship relations,
and accordingly suggests that contemporary feminist theory should be extended to the
place of domesticates in society.
Taking the role of domestic animals as vehicles of human-human relations together with
the potential for human-animal relationships in the strictest sense, domestication can be
seen as a state of sentient property. Rather than reducing animals to mere possessions,
domestication sets up a tension between their affinity with and separation from humans,
underlain by their status as social beings and as property respectively. This tension is
dynamic since neither aspect of domestication is a fixed quantity, and will be played out
differently across species, cultures and social contexts.
The potential for intimacy stressed by Knight, Oma and others is by no means uniform
across traditional farming contexts, depending not only on human cultural factors but also
on the practicalities of herding systems. Intensive, small-scale stock-keeping offers more
opportunities for interspecific familiarity than do very loose, extensive management
systems. At the extreme of this scale, ranching arguably ceases to be a form of ‘domestic’
human-animal relationship at all. The extent to which animals are used for secondary
products is also important for the development of social relations between herds and
herders (Tapper 1988: 53), and the form and frequency of contact with animals is unlikely
to be the same for all members of a given community. Meanwhile, the ‘quantum shift’
represented by the extension of property rights to animals should not obscure the diversity
of forms that this may take: property is by no means a straightforward or singular
concept. There is a world of difference, for example, between the deeply embedded
exchange of inalienable possession and the free, detached circulation of commodities.
These two aspects cannot really be taken in isolation; they intersect in the social context
of animal husbandry. The geographical/physical scale of herding is closely related to the
social scale at which it is organized, and the practicalities of stock management both
influence and are influenced by the forms of exchange in which livestock or their products
are involved, exchanges which may constitute a primary motivation for keeping domestic
animals in the first place. The use of secondary products not only introduces new forms of
physical interaction between humans and animals, but also adds to the range of
transactions in which animals may be involved, including loans for labour (Bogucki 1993)
as well as exchange of tangible products.
All these considerations reinforce the point that the form of human-domesticate
relationships is highly context-specific. These ideas are developed further below with
regard to the central Balkan later Neolithic.

The Vin!ca period

The Vin!ca culture is a later Neolithic phenomenon in the central Balkans during the
approximate period 5300–4550 cal. BC. Settlements are concentrated along the floodplains
192 David Orton

and lower terraces of the Danube, Sava, Morava, Mureş and their tributaries, and on the
Kosovo and southernmost Great Hungarian Plains (Fig. 1). Across most of its extent the
Vin!ca period is preceded by the Star!cevo/Körös/Criş complex, representing the earliest
Neolithic in the region. Vin!ca sites vary considerably in size, with the largest settlements
emerging in the middle to late part of the period, followed by population dispersal and
reduction in average site size in the very final phases (Chapman 1990). Smaller sites exist
throughout.
A broad model of social change during the Vin!ca period has been developed by various
authors. Kaiser and Voytek (1983) argue that an intensification in ceramic and lithic
production on Vin!ca sites was a response to increasing sedentism and population growth,
stressing the importance of household-level production. Tringham et al. (1985: 427)
suggest that the period saw the ‘emergence of the household as the primary unit of social
and economic organization’, at the expense of the community, a theory elaborated in later
works (Tringham 1991; Tringham and Krstić 1990: 602–15). Evidence cited in support
includes larger sites, increasingly substantial houses and greater frequency of house
burning.
Chapman (1992: 312; see also Russell 1993: 472–82) infers changing property relations
on the basis of increasingly abundant and diverse material culture over the course of the
period. This is argued to reflect an intensification of status negotiation in the domestic

Figure 1 Approximate extent of Vin!ca culture. Base map provided by Dušan Borić.
 Both subject and object 193

arena, creating contradictions between wealth accumulation at the household level and a
pre-existing egalitarian ethos. Whittle, by contrast, suggests that the abundance of
material culture should be seen in terms of ‘social relationships and transactions . . . de-
signed to consolidate a sense of community’ (1996: 105).
Following Chapman’s more recent (2000) proposition that the south-east European
Neolithic was characterized by gift exchange and enchainment (sensu Strathern 1988),
these arguments need not be mutually exclusive. Such exchange is nothing if not
competitive, but the competition revolves around the social relations materialized by
objects rather than the objects themselves, and so also has a cohesive potential. As the
value of objects per se starts to exceed the significance of these relationships, Chapman
continues, accumulation emerges as an alternative ‘way of relating’. This is seen as
essentially a Copper Age (i.e. post-Vin!ca) development, but ‘tension between personal or
household accumulation and corporate kinship relations’ exists throughout the Neolithic,
the former being kept under control by the ‘levelling mechanism’ of enchained relations
(2000: 47). The intensification of production noted during the Vin!ca period could be taken
as a heightening of this tension, with increasingly intense gift exchange being a corollary of
incipient accumulation. Chapman’s ‘fragmentation’ argument regarding breakage, reuse
and deposition of ceramic artefacts has been criticized from several directions (see
Chapman and Gaydarska 2007: 6–8) but the underlying social theory – derived primarily
from Strathern (1988) and Weiner (1992) – is here taken to be a fruitful way of looking at
social relations in Balkan prehistory.

Animals in the Vin!ca period

Human-animal relations are one important arena in which Vin!ca period social changes are
likely to have been negotiated. In particular, the ability of domestic animals – as sentient
property – to form social ties both with and between humans raises some interesting
possibilities regarding the fairly active role in social relations that Chapman attributes to
exchange items. The idea that artefacts can ‘have agency’ has become quite popular within
archaeology, inspired in large part by Gell (1998). If we can accept, at least for the
purposes of debate, that inanimate objects are active, it is ironic that we cannot do the
same for animals, which palpably are active in the most literal of senses (Mlekuž 2007: 267;
Nadasdy 2007: 35). Gell (1998: 17) does in fact include animals in his argument, but does
not see them as qualitatively different from artefacts. The question of animal agency is
discussed at some length by Oma (2007: 61–2).
Chapman’s argument for the inalienability of artefacts in the Balkan Neolithic draws
heavily on Strathern’s idea of enchainment, which holds that things may take on some of
the social form of persons (1988: 134) and develop their own biographies as they move
between people, all the while establishing complex networks of relations: ‘an indissoluble
link exists between all owners or users of an artefact and the artefact with its distinctive
biography’ (Chapman 2000: 5). This calls to mind Ingold’s argument that the involvement
of animals in transactions between individuals or households leads to the establishment of
‘extensive networks of social relations . . . every herd comes to embody an aggregate of
separate but overlapping interests’ (1980: 175). Both Strathern and Chapman extend their
194 David Orton

arguments to animals – the former providing an example involving pigs (1988: 163) –
although neither differentiates them from inanimate items. Whether or not one accepts
Chapman’s ‘fragmentation’ hypothesis, the post-mortem butchery and distribution of
domestic animals can probably be taken as a given in prehistory – indeed Chapman
suggests that carcasses were the original ‘fractal artefact’ par excellence – and would surely
have reflected ties and obligations built up during animals’ lives.
But animals are not only objects – they are also subjects. A biography is a life story, and
animals have lives in a very real sense that pots and figurines do not. For the latter,
‘biography’ can only ever be metaphorical; for the former it is literal (Oma 2007: 237).
Moreover, animals have genealogies in the real sense: Kula valuables may have a history of
social engagements but they do not have sexual partners and rivals; Vin!ca figurines may
become fragmented but they cannot produce and care for offspring. Social ties forged
through transactions involving livestock, and materialized in those livestock, are not
necessarily even limited to the lifespan of individual animals, but might also be transmitted
between generations, most obviously in the case of loans for breeding. This cannot be
reduced to a purely structural issue, with dispersal, fragmentation and the formation of
sets broadly replacing most of the structures of biological reproduction, for, as we have
seen, animals are capable of entering into direct intersubjective relations with humans. Put
simply, they are a qualitatively different order of being from artefacts.
This is not to say that Strathern’s and Chapman’s arguments should not be applied to
animals, rather that there is an added dimension when the media of exchange are animate.
Transactions involving animals do not just create ties among people; they also create and
alter social relationships between people and animals, and among animals. Human and
animal societies thus come to overlap (Ray and Thomas 2003). Since major human life
events are often marked by gift giving that may involve animals – bridewealth being the
obvious example (Russell 1998) – human and animal genealogies may become intertwined
down the generations. Animal as well as human lineages may be differentiated and
accorded significance, with the identity of individual animals partly founded on their
genealogy and biography of involvement in transactions.
I argue that intensification of this process was an integral part of the changes in social
organization and property relations seen in the Vin!ca period. In this model, increasingly
competitive relations between households were expressed through intensified exchange not
just of material culture but also of animals. As we have seen, such exchange may establish
networks of kinship and alliance relationships which, since they partially transcend human
society, cannot be reduced to the sum of individual human transactions. At the same time
as being a medium of competition, I argue, the increasingly complex human/animal
kinship networks embodied through herds also formed a crucial cohesive factor promoting
the stability of larger communities, with human and cattle society in particular becoming
increasingly inseparable. The large size and hence high individual value of cattle is likely to
have promoted a role in competitive exchange, while their low fecundity, relatively long
life span and herd social structure confer particular potential for cattle kinship to become
interlinked with that of humans.
There is a general increase in the zooarchaeological representation of cattle during the
central Balkan Neolithic, relative both to hunted animals and to other domesticates
(Orton 2008). Intriguingly, this trend is particularly clear at certain large, long-lived and
 Both subject and object 195

fairly lowland sites, including Selevac and Gomolava (Fig. 2). These are some of the very
sites which best exemplify the changes in architecture, settlement form and material
culture on which the models of social change outlined above are built. While the increased
representation of domesticates as a whole might reflect habitat disruption and/or depletion
of local wild fauna, especially at larger sites, this cannot account for the apparent rise in
cattle herding. Forest clearance would, in fact, be expected to have the opposite effect,
since sheep and goats are more suited to herding in open conditions than are cattle. It has
been argued that high proportions of caprines at some Balkan Early Neolithic sites result
from intensive garden agriculture, with small overall numbers of domesticates grazed
primarily on cleared land (Bogaard 2004). The subsequent increase in cattle remains may
well thus represent a real-terms rise in the numbers of livestock kept. The ways in which
increased herding articulated with the crop cycle remain to be explored, and call for
collaboration between plant and animal specialists.
The Vin!ca period, it is suggested here, may have seen the first development of large-
scale, extensive cattle herding in the region. A logistical decoupling of herding from other
activities could have allowed larger population agglomerations and greater residential
permanence through, in Whittle’s (1997) terms, a shift from ‘moving on’ to ‘moving
around’, explaining the observed trends in settlement archaeology. The agglomeration of
previously mobile groups may in fact have been driven by the increasing role of cattle in
exchange networks, which also provided the necessary cohesive force to hold larger
communities together. This suggests a partial reversal of Tringham and Krstić’s (1990)
argument regarding social organization: rather than increasingly autonomous households
emerging within expanding communities, some previously independent groups actually
surrendered autonomy in the formation of larger communities.

Figure 2 Increasing importance of cattle in the central Balkan Neolithic, with key sites highlighted.
See Orton (2008) for raw data and summary of dating.
196 David Orton

The development of large-scale herding should not be seen in terms of commodification

of livestock. Rather, the tension between accumulation of livestock as objects and their
role in kinship relations as subjects can be seen as an expression of that inherent in the
status of domestic animals as sentient property. The incentive to increase herds relates to
the ability they confer to forge and manipulate relationships as much as to the
accumulation of abstract wealth. That said, the generative potential of livestock herds –
the fact that their growth is not wholly dependent on human labour input and depends
partly on their existing size – may have promoted a nascent tendency towards
accumulation. Herds may even have provided the archetype for the more accumulative
approach to material culture that, according to Chapman, characterized the Balkan
Copper Age.
A special role for cattle may be also reflected in the symbolic importance they appear to
have been attributed in the Vin!ca period. Most Balkan Neolithic zoomorphic figurines
judged to be representational resemble cattle (Bailey 2000: 184). Nanoglou (2008: 10) takes
the representation of humans and domestic, but not wild, animals in the Early Neolithic to
indicate a ‘focus on the relationship between humans and animals within the community’,
an argument which seems to hold also for the Vin!ca period. At this level the figurine
evidence suggests some continuity from the earlier Neolithic in the social position of
domestic animals, perhaps with an increasing focus on cattle. Small clusters of apparent
cattle figurines found in situ at some sites (Chapman 1981: 73; Šljivar and Jacanović 2005)
have been taken as representations of herds (Marangou 1996). Meanwhile, Vin!ca period
bucrania – mostly cattle – are typically associated with houses and have accordingly been
linked to ideas of cattle ownership and household wealth (Chapman 1981: 68; Russell
1998). They have never been studied systematically, but seem to be most common in the
latter part of the period and on larger sites, as with actual cattle remains.
The role played by secondary products in the increased scale of herding remains
debatable. Current evidence for cattle is inconclusive, with little sex data and a shortage of
large age-at-death samples, especially for the Early Neolithic. There is certainly no
indication of a dramatic change in slaughter patterns but the few reliable samples show
considerable variability even within the Vin!ca period (Orton 2008: 116–21; cf. Greenfield
2005), possibly masking subtler trends. The social value of live animals may have created
the conditions for the adoption and refinement of dairying and traction as much as vice
versa.
The hypothesis of large-scale, extensive cattle herding remains tentative, but has
intriguing implications. Much of the literature considering the role of domestic animals in
identity formation, as ‘significant others’, is based around the idea of human-animal
intimacy in a domestic context (e.g. Oma 2007). A shift towards extensive herding, with
cattle spending much of the year at a distance from the main population, would have
profound implications for this (see Whittle 2003: 94), reducing the role of settlements as
loci for human encounters with cattle. There is no unambiguous evidence for on- or off-
site corralling in the Vin!ca period, but it is notable that ‘ancillary’ structures associated
with some houses at Gomolava become smaller and fewer over time (Orton 2008: 298).
The suggestion that such structures housed livestock requires testing through micro-
morphology. Stable isotope and/or dental microwear studies could also help elucidate the
geographical aspect of cattle herding.
 Both subject and object 197

Extensive herding would also have implications for the division of labour, restricting
intimacy with livestock for many humans while promoting it for those directly involved in
herding. Cattle are likely to have been increasingly important for identity on a gendered
and/or age-related basis (see Parker Pearson 2000). Tension between cattle as object and as
subject may thus have played out differently for individual members of the human
community, with contrasting aspects of the human-domesticate relationship also coming
to the fore at different times of year and in different parts of the landscape. The
contradiction between personal relationships of care and eventual slaughter could be
explored in this context (see Jones 2009). Such contradictions persist even in modern
farming: while contemporary herd animals are objectified by their role as commodities in a
market economy, they may remain subjects to the farmers with whom they have face-to-
face contact, but who nonetheless send them for slaughter.
This brief case study goes only so far towards attributing to animals their proper status
as subjects, as well as objects, within prehistoric society, and I hope that future studies will
go further. Ruth Tringham (1991: 94) famously called for archaeologists to put faces on
the human ‘faceless blobs’ that she saw inhabiting reconstructions of Vin!ca settlements.
This call is extended here to the non-humans with whom they shared their world.

Acknowledgements

This paper grew out of a PhD project funded by the University of Cambridge. Too many
people contributed to that project to be listed here, but special mention goes to Svetlana
Blažić, Dušan Borić, Marko Por!cić, Duda Starović and my supervisor Preston Miracle.
The paper itself benefited greatly from comments by Nerissa Russell and two anonymous
reviewers, but all shortcomings remain my own.

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge

dco21@cam.ac.uk

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David Orton completed his PhD on Vin!ca period human-animal relations and social
change in Cambridge in 2008. He has since undertaken a post-doctoral project at
Binghamton University, working on material from Fıstıklı Höyük in Turkey, and also has
an ongoing involvement in the West Mound project at Çatalhöyük as faunal analyst.
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