Welcome to the project website for ANSOC: Animals and Society in Bronze Age Europe, a project funded under the ERC Advanced Grant scheme.

ANSOC will explore the role of animals as active participants in Bronze Age social worlds. Drawing on work in animal studies that highlights how living with animals involves intimate interaction and interdependency, it will investigate the intertwining of human and animal identities, and will consider how the social and cultural significance of animals affected how they were farmed, managed and consumed. The project will bring together contextual, zooarchaeological, isotope, organic residue and aDNA analysis to investigate herd management; patterns of human-animal interaction; animal mobility and exchange; the role of animals in feasting and ritual; and their location in cultural taxonomies. By figuring animals as more than objects of economic exploitation, and exploring instead how humans and animals together generated Bronze Age worlds of work, sociality and meaning, the project will provide a deep-time perspective on the pressing contemporary issue of how to live sustainably alongside non-human others.

ANSOC is led by Professor Joanna Bruck and is based at the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland. To stay up to date with the activities of the project, follow the project’s dedicated Twitter handle: @ANSOC_ERC.

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ANSOC Partners:

The ANSOC team are grateful for the assistance of the project partners during the lifetime of the project (2023-2027). They are:

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ANSOC is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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