The Contextual Cat: Human–Animal Relations and Social Meaning in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

The growing popularity of relational approaches to agency amongst archaeologists has led to increased attention on the specific contexts of interaction between humans and their material worlds. Within such viewpoints, non-humans are perceived as agents in their own right and placed on an equal footing with humans, with both acting to generate social categories in past cultures. However, to date, the focus of these interpretative models has been overwhelmingly directed towards inanimate objects. Animals are generally absent from these discussions, despite their ubiquity in past societies and the frequently central roles they held within daily lives and social relations. Moreover, living animals are set apart from material culture because, like humans, they are usually aware of their environs and are capable of physically responding to them. This ability to ‘act back’ would have made human–animal interactions extremely dynamic and thus offers different conceptual challenges to archaeologists than when faced with objects. This paper demonstrates that the notion of performativity, combined with understanding of animals themselves, can help to comprehend these relations. It does so by focusing on one particular species, the domestic cat, in relation to Anglo-Saxon England. The characteristics and behaviour of these animals affected the ways in which humans perceived and interacted with them, so that just one individual cat could be categorised in a range of different ways. The classification of animals was thus just as fluid, if not more so, as that of objects and highlights the need to incorporate the former into reconstructions of the social in archaeological research.

Foxes and Badgers in Anglo-Saxon Life and Landscape

“…That the animals occupying these mounds were therefore also seen in negative ways is possible, although Meaney (2000, 102) suggests that the sudden emergence of the vixen at the top of the hill in Riddle 15 may be meant to remind the reader of the Resurrection. As with all species, the ways in which foxes and badgers would have been perceived would have been contextually dependant, including social level, religious belief and local variations and how they interacted with people (Poole 2014).…”

“…Although often overlooked in research, animals were central to these shifts, with human society structuring, and being structured by, relations with animals (Poole 2013a(Poole , 2013b(Poole , 2014Pluskowski 2006;Sykes 2011). Whilst the animal-derived foods that people ate and the raw materials they used were significant in terms of social identity, interactions with living animals would arguably have been of greater significance (Poole 2013a;2013b).…”

Avian aurality in Anglo-Saxon England

“…Even so, the tawny owl remains recovered hint that, along with sites such as Jarrow and Flixborough, it may have had people present whose quotidian activities required them to be up at night, namely ecclesiasts. What the evidence from Bishopstone and Anglo-Saxon England in general demonstrates is that birds (as with all animals) are able to act in ways that affect human behaviour and how people think about their worlds (Poole 2014). Reconstructing these aspects means moving beyond seeing animals as mere passive resources to be exploited or measuring their importance by how common they are in a bone assemblage.…”

“…food and raw materials) means that other aspects of human-animal interactions are missed (Knight 2005;Poole 2013). It is arguable that encounters between humans and living animals are of far greater significance in terms of how people experience the world and understand their place within it than human use and consumption of dead animals (Poole 2014;Sykes 2012). When living, animals may be experienced in a number of different ways, including being seen, smelled, touched or heard (Sykes 2010(Sykes , 2012, or a combination of these.…”

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material, Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

“…Humans are not the only agents actively shaping the sociocultural worlds they inhabit (Steward 2009;Hill 2011;Poole 2015;Kost and Hussain 2019); especially the animated part of their natural environmentswith animals perhaps being the pinnacle of animacy exerts agencies of various kinds which, despite of their differences to human action, have shaped the human story ever since (e.g. Albarella and Trentacoste they actively configure human lifeworlds, thereby influencing the course of human culture (Willerslev 2007;McNiven 2010;Conneller 2011;Russell 2012;Overton and Hamilakis 2013;Hussain and Floss 2015).…”