Artículo
Encountering ancient environments : the impact of nonhuman animals on populations of Hittite Anatolia
Registro en:
1094-2076 (impreso)
2325-5404 (online)
Autor
Della Casa, Romina
Institución
Resumen
Resumen: With the aim of contributing to the understanding
of how nonhuman animals (henceforth animals)
have shaped human lives through time, this article
explores animals’ impact on ancient populations of Anatolia as
reflected in the Hittite tablet collections of Hattusa (Boğazköy/
Boğazkale) and Tapikka (Maşat-Höyük; fig. 1). In other words,
its goal is to survey various textual genres from the Hittite milieu
in search of instances that reveal how the presence and behavior
of animals encouraged human adaptations.
Even though human-animal coexistence can be traced back
to the origins of humanity, approaches to their interactions have
changed over time and differ amply across disciplines. Indeed,
for most of its history, fields within the humanities have looked
at animals as objects from which to understand humans, or as
sources for a society to think about or act on (DeMello 2012:
23). Work carried out mainly by anthropologists over the past
few decades (e.g., Ingold 1994; 2002: 172–88; Viveiros de Castro
1998; Descola 2013; Kohn 2015; van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster
2016) has overhauled this tendency, bringing animals to the
foreground as “active social agents in their own right, as opposed
to ‘things’ in relation to human subjects” (Hurn 2012: 4).
Central to proposals within this animal turn is a shift in perspective,
making explicit that human-animal studies need to
present themselves as a two-way road, with a more symmetrical
attitude toward all components being studied; in other words,
where humans, animals, as well as a multitude of animate and
inanimate beings (such as trees, mountains, rivers, and rocks)
should be examined as mutually affected by their existences. Predominantly,
studies within this turn pertain to human-animal
mutual responses, influences, adaptations and, broadly speaking,
ways of behaving and being with (and within) a given environment.