Dale Serjeantson. Birds.
De L. Brooke, M.
DALE SERJEANTSON. Birds. xxvi+486 pages, 169 illustrations, 61
tables. 2009. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 978-0-521-75858-1
paperback.
As an ornithologist reviewing a book intended primarily for an
archaeological readership, I find myself straddling two stools. On the
one hand, the ornithologist wants to mention the assertions that, if not
wholly erroneous, do not ring true. For-example, it is stated that the
chicks of altricial birds are able to fly and feed themselves as soon as
they leave the nest, which is by no mean universally the case. As for
the 90g greenfinch Carduelis chloris (p. 232), it would be unable to get
off the ground to reach any reader's suspended garden feeder!
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
On the other hand, it seems only fair to judge the book against the
archaeological yardstick that it sets itself, to explore how human
actions can be illuminated by bird remains. That is a broad brief that
extends, to paraphrase the jacket blurb, to the consumption of wild
birds, the domestication of birds, cockfighting and falconry, birds in
ritual and religion, and the role of birds in ecological reconstruction.
In other words, Serjeantson casts her net far more widely than the
chicken coop.
How does the book set about fulfilling these aims? The first half
deals with the nitty-gritty of avian archaeology, how to identify
species from their bones, how to assess whether a bone assemblage might
represent a sample derived from the breeding season or an alternative
season, and more besides. In a nutshell, how to interpret correctly bird
remains round in an archaeological context.
The second half promised to be the more interesting, intending to
consider, for example, the extent to which birds provided the principal
food of prehistoric communities (rarely) or whether the bird remains
scattered through archaeological sites might provide insights into
climate-induced changes in geographical distribution that were not
already generated from other, more tractable taxa (again, rarely). In
her commendable quest to cover the ground thoroughly, Dale Serjeantson
fires off a wealth of pertinent examples, at the expense of a clear
narrative. Too many paragraphs are simply a collection of barely-linked
examples.
Except where they had access to concentrations of wildfowl or
seabirds, prehistoric communities generally made less use of birds for
food than of mammals. Some of the reasons for this are obvious. Birds
tend to be more difficult to catch and they also come in smaller packets
(body sizes) which yield less reward for the hunter's effort.
Another part of the explanation is more subtle and interesting
biologically. Terrestrial mammals most commonly feed on foliage while
their avian counterparts feed on seeds or insects. Since there is a lot
of greenery and less of the high-quality low-density food targeted by
birds, mammals of a given body size exist at 10-20 times the density of
birds of similar size--which makes them more harvestable by people.
Geese, unusual among birds in being relatively large-bodied and grazers,
go some way to proving the point, for they have been a favourite target
for hunters, ancient and modern.
The critical points made, there are fascinating morsels that were
new to me. For instance, I did not know that Alexander the Great and his
army played a key role in spreading the chicken westwards nor that the
self-same chicken provides evidence, along with the sweet potato, of
pre-Colombian contact between the Polynesians and South America. I would
not necessarily have guessed that, at least for birds, bone tools appear
to survive better than waste bone, and I welcomed the reminder that the
house sparrow Passer domesticus almost certainly spread across northern
Europe in close association with people in the aftermath of the
Pleistocene. I suspect Serjeantson is right to be sceptical that the
scarcity of medullary bone, characteristic of laying female birds, in
archaeological deposits represents any worthy conservation ethic among
our forebears. A more likely explanation is that, because birds breed in
seasons of plentiful food, they were then ignored by hunters. To help
the archaeologist confronted with unfamiliar avian material, this book
usefully points out how to proceed, ideally with the help of a good
reference collection and an obliging tutor. As a signpost into a
scattered literature and as an aid in that most difficult of scientific
steps, formulating the right question, I can see even greater value. And
I, a left-hander, shall retain my review copy to remind me that, when
next I come to pen a book review, I should use a quill from a
goose's right wing.
M. DE L. BROOKE
University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, UK
(Email: m.brooke@zoo.cam.ac.uk)
