Sacrifice and Animal Husbandry in Ancient Greece

Jameson, Michael H.; Cartledge, Paul; Stallsmith, Allaire B.; Polinskaya, Irene; Graf, Fritz

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139023702.020

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…For an example of the geras bestowed as an honour, see Robert and Robert (1983) no. 37; on the normality of sacrificial butchery more generally, see Jameson (1988).…”

Section: Defining a Pastoral Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Shepherds beating the bounds? Territorial identity at a dependent community (IPriene 361–63)

Mack

2015

J. Hell. Stud.

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Abstract:In this article, I re-examine a little-studied stele from Thebes on Mount Mykale in Asia Minor for the light which it sheds on the position this minor community occupied as a territorial possession of Miletus. Two texts were inscribed on this stele in the early fourth century BC, on its front and back. Both are exceptional: IPriene 363 in delineating the territorial boundaries of Thebes for an internal audience; IPriene 362 in setting out an onerous schedule of sacrificial offerings which those who pastured sheep or goats were obliged to observe. After identifying another inscription, IPriene 361, as an additional fragment of the same stele, and presenting photographs, texts, translations and commentaries, I argue that the stele functioned as a coherent monument regulating the activities of pastoral producers and that it was probably erected by the Thebans themselves in order to reinforce their territorial integrity. As such it represents a unique case study for exploring issues of territoriality and communal dependence in the Greek world.

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“…For an example of the geras bestowed as an honour, see Robert and Robert (1983) no. 37; on the normality of sacrificial butchery more generally, see Jameson (1988).…”

Section: Defining a Pastoral Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Shepherds beating the bounds? Territorial identity at a dependent community (IPriene 361–63)

Mack

2015

J. Hell. Stud.

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“…Another common theme which has been explored mainly in the discussions on animal sacrifice in classical antiquity has to do with the sanctioning of meat‐eating through sacrifice (cf. Durant and Schnapp 1989; Jameson 1988; several papers in Detienne and Vernant 1989). Given that for most farming societies, meat is an expensive commodity to produce and also involves the killing of the animal, the offering of part of the animal body to the deities operates as a purification ritual which justifies the violence involved in the killing of the animal as necessary, and represents the consumption of a valuable and rare commodity as an experience shared with the deities.…”

Section: Animal Sacrifices and Mycenaean Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Forstenpointner 2003), and as Isaakidou et al note (2002, 90), the classical practice may be an introduction from other regional traditions or a re‐emergence of a practice in a different form, which must have, no doubt, conveyed different meanings. More specifically, the classical burnt sacrifices, judging from the bone evidence, focused mostly on bovines and caprovines (Forstenpointner 2003, 204; Reese in press), whereas the Mycenaean ones showed at times preference for other species, most notably pigs (Ayios Konstantinos, possibly Mycenae); in classical times, the cult of Demeter is associated with pig offerings, but these were often unburnt, although when pigs were burnt, they were juvenile and were burnt whole (Jameson 1988, 98; Reese 1994, in press); it is not yet clear whether the well‐known selective burning of caprovine and bovine animal parts such as the thighs, attested in Homer ( Iliad I 460–4; Odyssey iii 273, ix 551–5) and in the zooarchaeological record (e.g. Forstenpointner 2003; Chenal‐Velarde and Studer 2003), or tails, attested from both classical iconography (van Straten 1995), and animal bones from classical contexts (e.g.…”

Section: Animal Sacrifices and Mycenaean Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pigs for the Gods: Burnt Animal Sacrifices as Embodied Rituals at a Mycenaean Sanctuary

Hamilakis¹,

Konsolaki

2004

Oxford J Archaeology

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The archaeology of animal sacrifice has attracted considerable attention, although discussions on the meanings and social effects of the practice in different contexts are rather under-developed. In the Aegean, classical antiquity has provided abundant literary, zooarchaeological and iconographic evidence (and has inspired some excellent studies) but it has also overshadowed discussion on sacrifice in other periods. Until recently, it was assumed that burnt animal sacrifices (i.e. the ritual burning of bones or parts of the carcass, often taken to be offerings to the deities) were absent from the pre-classical contexts. Recent studies have shown this not to be the case. This article reports and discusses evidence for burnt animal sacrifices from the sanctuary of Ayios Konstantinos at Methana, north-east Peloponnese. It constitutes the first, zooarchaeologically verified such evidence from a sanctuary context. The main sacrificial animals seem to have been juvenile pigs, which were transported as whole carcasses into the main cultic room; non-meaty parts were selected for burning whereas their meaty parts were first consumed by humans and then thrown into the fire (some neonatal pigs may have been thrown into the fire whole). The article integrates zooarchaeological, other contextual, and comparative archaeological evidence and explores the social roles and meanings of sacrifice in the Mycenaean context and more broadly. It is suggested that, rather than focusing on possible continuities of the practice through to the classical period (an issue which remains ambiguous), sacrifice should be meaningfully discussed within the broader framework of the archaeology of feasting, and more generally food consumption, as a socially important, sensory embodied experience. The evidence from Ayios Konstantinos may reveal a hitherto eluding phenomenon: small-scale, sacrificial-feasting ritual in a religious context, conferring cosmological and ideological powers on few individuals, through the participation in an intense, embodied, transcendental experience. introductionThe topic of animal sacrifice has attracted considerable attention in many disciplines, including anthropology, ancient history, classics and archaeology (e.g. Hubert and Mauss 1964;

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“… Stengel 1920: 105-6;Jameson 1988: 87: "The Greeks derived virtually all their meat (aside from game) from the ritual of sacrifice";Rosivach 1994: 2-3 and 84-85. 54 See, e.g.,Stengel 1920: 105-6; Rosivach 1994: 3n5.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Strange Love of the Fish and the Goat: Regional Contexts and Rough Cilician Religion in Oppian's Halieutica 4.308-73

Lytle¹

2011

apa

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This paper examines one of the better-known episodes in Oppian's Halieutica , an unusual account that describes first the strange desire of a fish, the σαργός, for the goat, and then the bizarre way in which that desire is manipulated by humans to capture the fish (4.308-73). Although it has been dismissed by most previous scholars as the product of ignorance, misunderstood source material or poetic imagination, I argue that this account can be elucidated by evidence for social, economic and religious contexts in the poet's native Rough Cilicia.

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Sacrifice and Animal Husbandry in Ancient Greece

Cited by 4 publications

References 31 publications

Shepherds beating the bounds? Territorial identity at a dependent community (IPriene 361–63)

Shepherds beating the bounds? Territorial identity at a dependent community (IPriene 361–63)

Pigs for the Gods: Burnt Animal Sacrifices as Embodied Rituals at a Mycenaean Sanctuary

The Strange Love of the Fish and the Goat: Regional Contexts and Rough Cilician Religion in Oppian's Halieutica 4.308-73

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