Pigs and Humans

Umberto Albarella is Research Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Sheffield.Keith Dobney is Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Fellow at the University of Durham.Anton Ervynck is Fellow of the Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish Community in Brussels.Peter Rowley-Conwy is Reader in Environmental Archaeology at the University of Durham.

• Introduction ; I. EVOLUTION AND TAXONOMY ; 1. Current views on taxonomy and zoogeography of the genus Sus ; 2. Current views on Sus phylogeography and pig domestication as seen through modern mtDNA studies ; 3. The molecular basis for phenotypic changes during pig domestication ; II. THE HISTORY OF PIG DOMESTICATION AND HUSBANDRY ; 4. The transition from wild boar to domestic pig in Eurasia, illustrated by a tooth development defect and biometrical data ; 5. Culture, ecology and pigs from the 5th to the 3rd millennium BC around the Fertile Crescent ; 6. Hunting or management? The status of Sus in the Jomon Period, Japan ; 7. Wild boar and domestic pigs in Mesolithic and Neolithic southern Scandinavia ; 8. The economic role of Sus in early human fishing communities ; 9. An investigation into the transition from forest dwelling pigs to farm animals in medieval Flanders, Belgium ; III. METHODOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS ; 10. Age estimation of wild boar based on molariform mandibular tooth development and its application to seasonality at the Mesolithic site of Ringkloster, Denmark ; 11. A statistical method for dealing with isolated teeth: ageing pig teeth from Hagoshrim, Israel ; 12. Inter-population variation in recent wild boar from Israel ; 13. A dental microwear study of pig diet and management in Iron Age, Romano-British, Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval contexts in England ; 14. The histopathology of fluorotic dental enamel in wild boar and domestic pigs ; 15. Economic and ecological reconstruction at the Classical site of Sagalassos, Turkey, using pigs' teeth ; IV. ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES ; 16. Ethnoarchaeology of pig husbandry in Sardinia and Corsica ; 17. Traditional pig butchery by the Yali people of West Papua (Irian Jaya): an ethnographic and archaeozoological example ; 18. Pigs in the New Guinea Highlands: an ethnographic example ; V. PIGS IN RITUAL AND ART ; 19. Wild boar hunting in the Eastern Mediterranean from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BC ; 20. The pig in medieval iconography

...a multidisciplinary approach that takes into account zoology, palaeontology, genetics, ethnography and archaeology, and researchers with these different approaches have contributed to the many authoritative chapters in this book. It has been well editied, has excellent illustrations and will be of interest and use to readers in many different disciplines.