The Shifting Baselines of the British Hare Goddess

Abstract

The rise of social zooarchaeology and the so-called ‘animal turn’ in the humanities both reflect a growing interest in the interactions of humans and non-human animals. This comparative archaeological study contributes to this interdisciplinary field by investigating the ways in which successive human cultures employed religion to conceptualise and interact with their ecological context across the longue durée. Specifically, we investigate how the Iron Age, Romano-British, early medieval English, medieval Welsh, and Information Age populations of Great Britain constructed and employed supranatural female figures – Andraste, Diana, Ēostre, St. Melangell, and the modern construct ‘Easter’ – with a common zoomorphic link: the hare. Applying theoretical concepts drawn from conservation ecology (‘shifting baselines’) and the study of religion (‘semantic centres’) to a combination of (zoo)archaeological and textual evidence, we argue that four distinct ‘hare goddesses’ were used to express their congregations’ concerns regarding the mediation of violence between the human in-group and other parties (human or animal) across two millennia.