Hunting for Hide. Investigating an Other-Than-Food Relationship between Stone Age Hunters and Wild Animals in Northern Europe

Abstract

In archaeological hunter-gatherer research, animals are primarily seen as food. Alternatively, they are proposed to serve as symbols and devices for social structuring of human societies. A growing body of literature in humanities and social sciences now looks into the role of animals as social and sentient co-beings. It is becoming increasingly clear that the roles of animals as other-than-food providers are severely overlooked in Mesolithic research. This article considers hide as a vital resource in northern hunter-gatherer societies. Hide processing and manufacture in ethnographic records from the circumpolar region and experimental investigations are presented, followed by an analytical review of archaeological data from mid-Holocene coastal habitation sites in Norway. The results show that hide work was a central activity, and that various stages of hide processing may have taken place at different sites. It is suggested that hide procurement and processing would have required close planning and scheduling. Based on ethnographic accounts it is suggested that the different processing stages, combining raw materials and animal qualities into man-made objects, are articulations of human-animal social entanglements. Identifying practices related to hide processing in the archaeological record and viewing them as expressions of human-animal relationships, can contribute to fuller insight into Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies.