Hunting-as-Herding: Conversations with Elk, Elk People, and their Joined Social Worlds as a Window into NonHuman Animal Management and Relational Domestication

Abstract

In traditional archaeological paradigms, nonhuman animals are often thought of through the lens of a strict binary, “wild” or “domesticated,” that can be traced to a largely EuroWestern cultural lens. These traditional domestication models are challenged with a wide evidentiary scope. In this way, live behavior of nonhuman animals is not usually incorporated into domestication models, such as studies on nonhuman animal cognition, emotion, and sociality which have illustrated the complexity and agency within animal social systems in recent decades. This study proposes to address this mismatch by comparing different manifestations of a singular human-nonhuman relationship across situation and interaction type. The relationships between elk (wapiti; Cervus elephus/canadensis) and humans embody more complexity than the “wild- domestic” framework allows, even though elk are by almost no traditional measure “domesticated.” I observe elk behavior, human practices, and inter-species interactions in three generalized locations and across five different interaction types, including minimal interaction, elk hunting, free-range elk feeding, elk in captivity, and elk handling, across western Wyoming. This structure illuminated inter-species sociality, the role of nonhuman animal learning, and human-animal (co)management through hunting-as-herding. These findings suggest that archaeologists should be investigating nonhuman animal domestication (and relationships more generally) through material culture and (co)niche construction rather than/in addition to changes in skeletal morphology or demographic profiles.