El ser humano y la gallina

Humans and chicken

For some months in 2014, I worked at the Department of Archaeology in the University of Nottingham for the AHRC funded project "Cultural and scientific perceptions of human-chicken interactions", as a postdoctoral fellow. My main duties were helping in general with the project, recording the zooarchaeological data, processing bone samples for isotopic analyses, and work on the history of chicken in the Iberian Peninsula.

Chickens (also known as 'domestic fowl') are native to South East Asia but, today, they have a worldwide distribution. Their diffusion is almost entirely due to human-assisted transportation and, as such, their natural history is a reflection of human history.

Considerable attention has been given to charting the chicken’s eastward spread from Asia, through the Pacific islands to the Americas; however, the species’ diffusion to the west, through India, the Near East, Mediterranean and northern Europe, has been almost completely neglected: no genetic work has been undertaken and the timing and circumstances of their spread remains poorly understood.

Given the social significance of this species (whether as a provider of foodstuffs, their widespread use in cock-fighting or within magic and medicine) and their growing popularity as domestic pets, a detailed analysis of their natural and cultural history in the West is long overdue.

Such a study has the potential to inform on poultry-borne diseases, food security and environmental ethics, issues of particular importance at a time when billions of people rely on mass-produced chickens as a source of sustenance.

This project brings together researchers from a wide range of countries and disciplines - archaeology, anthropology, (art) history, biology, cultural geography, ecology, human-animal studies, philosophy, theology - to examine the social, cultural and environmental impact of this important but under-researched species.

Related publication:

Grau-Sologestoa, I. 2018. “Pots, chicken and building deposits: the archaeology of folk and official religion during the High Middle Ages in the Basque Country”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 49, 8-18.

The following are some images I created for the Being Human Festival in Vindolanda in 2014. Enjoy!