Author : Ningning Dong
Release : 2021
Genre : Animal remains (Archaeology)
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 935/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Animal Classification in Central China by : Ningning Dong
Download or read book Animal Classification in Central China written by Ningning Dong. This book was released on 2021. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph uses an archaeological approach to decipher folk classification of animals in ancient societies. Ningning Dong collates faunal data from three late Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites in central China and integrates multiple lines of evidence. The analyses demonstrate a folk taxonomy remarkably different from the Linnaean system. The results show that age might have served as a critical categorical filter, particularly in ritual contexts, and that the wild/domesticated dichotomy was established no earlier than the Shang dynasty. This perceptual distinction is unlikely to have been synchronised with the initial occurrence of domestication in the early Neolithic. Animal categories constituted a vital part of a broader classificatory scheme that concerned the organisation of the cosmos as a whole.