The Deep History of Cattle Herding and Symbolism

This brief provides a unique overview that weaves a thread across the deep history of the management and symbolism of wild aurochs and domestic cattle in Sudan, where these practices are attested for over 15,000 to 20,000 years. It highlights the central preoccupation with these bovids by societies of the region, from the time of the earliest funerary rituals involving wild aurochs in the late Pleistocene, to the introduction of domestic cattle in the Neolithic, to pre-state societies through the historical period into the present day. It recounts the relationship between humans and the African aurochs, the processes of wild animal management, the prey pathway that provides a possible model for domestication, the introduction of Bos taurus to the African continent, and then the establishment of widespread herding practices, including the introgression of the African aurochs into domesticated cattle populations. Finally, it emphasises the economic and symbolic value of cattle seen through social cults and even a human ‘infatuation’ with cattle by observing the roles and representations of these animals from different disciplinary perspectives. Its geographic scope covers modern Sudan's territory, extending from Nubia, in the Middle Nile Valley, to the wider Nile Basin, as well as to eastern and western Sudan.

The herding of domestic animals came to shape the societies of North-Eastern Africa during a period of over 10,000 years, up to the present. With focus on cattle, this volume examines the deep history of the origins of pastoralism in Africa and the economic, political, and religious role they came to play over time. Animal herding is the subsistence economy that is best adapted to arid and semi-arid environments, such as those in North-Eastern Africa, with cattle herding playing a prominent role in providing economic needs by serving as a ‘walking larder’ and ‘storage on the hoof’ and in ritual through its symbolic role, including the practice of sacrifice. From an economic point of view, cattle can provide meat, milk, blood, skin, sinew, manure, fuel, and labor, and can serve as a currency of exchange and a store of value. From a symbolic point of view, their physical presence in tombs and in movable (figurines) and immovable art (rock engravings and paintings) represents a material demonstration of ostentatious wealth and/or social status that can be converted into political support by building a clientele by means of exchange and redistribution, as well as a manifestation of divinity. Finally, from a ritual point of view, ceremonies related to a cattle cult fix and consolidate social bonds between members of a community.

Elena A.A. Garcea is Full Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Department of Letters and Philosophy, University of Cassino, Italy. She served as President of the society of Africanist Archaeologists. She has coordinated archaeological research in Sudan since 1986, conducted research projects in Libya for twenty years, and was field director of the Gobero Archaeological Project in Niger in 2005 and 2006. She is author and editor of 10 books (Cultural Dynamics in the Saharo-Sudanese Prehistory, 1993; Uan Tabu in the Settlement History of the Libyan Sahara, 2001; South-Eastern Mediterranean Peoples Between 130,000 and 10,000 Years Ago, 2010; Gobero: The No-Return Frontier. Archaeology and Landscape at the Saharo-Sahelian Borderland, 2013; The Prehistory of the Sudan, 2020, among others) and over 250 journal articles and book chapters on African prehistoric archaeology.

Julia Budka is Associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Art, LMU Munich, Germany. Her speciality fields are Egyptian field archaeology and material culture; she conducts excavations in Sudan and Egypt, both at funerary and settlement sites, especially at Luxor (Thebes), Sai Island and between Attab to Ferka (MUAFS and DiverseNile projects). For interdisciplinary fieldwork in Sudan, she has received an ERC Starting Grant in 2012 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019. Her main publications include 6 monographs (e.g. Bestattungsbrauchtum und Friedhofsstruktur im Asasif, 2010; AcrossBorders 2: Living in New Kingdom Sai, 2020, Tomb 26 on Sai Island: A New Kingdom elite tomb and its relevance for Sai and beyond, 2021) and 8 edited volumes (e.g. From Microcosm to Macrocosm. Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia, with Johannes Auenmüller, 2018).

Salima Ikram is Distinguished University Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University, and a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum.  She has worked as an archaeologist and museologist in Egypt since 1986, and has excavated in Turkey and Sudan. She currently directs the Amenmesse Mission-KV10/KV63 in the Valley of the Kings and the North Kharga Oasis Darb Ain Amur Survey. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ikram has published extensively in both scholarly and popular venues (for adults and children) on diverse subject matters, ranging from traditional Egyptological subjects to zooarchaeological topics. Her current research focuses on the changing climate of Egypt as reflected in the fauna; rock art; food and daily life; funerary customs, ancient Egyptian technology; and the protection and presentation of cultural heritage.

John Galaty is Professor of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, where he served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and of Arts, President of the Faculty Association, and Founding Director of the Centre for Society, Technology and Development.  He attended the École Pratiques des Hautes Études in Paris and received his MA and Ph.D degrees in Anthropology at the University of Chicago.  He served as President of the Canadian Association of African Studies, on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and on the Editorial Board of the journal Nomadic Peoples. Specializing in the study of rangeland pastoralists in Eastern Africa, he has co-edited several thematic volumes, including The Future of Pastoral Peoples (1981) and Lands of the Future: Anthropological Perspectives on Pastoralism, Land Deals and Tropes of Modernity in Eastern Africa (2021).  He publishes on pastoral territoriality and land rights, ritual and religion, history and social change, and community conservation, and currently directs a partnership project on The Institutional Canopy of Conservation (I-CAN) in Kenya and Tanzania, working with pastoral NGO’s.

Shayla Monroe is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. She specializes in faunal analysis, the social zooarchaeology of Sudan and Egypt, the archaeology of African pastoralism. Her dissertation analyzed the acquisition of cattle at the ancient Egyptian colonial fortress of Askut (c. 1850-1550 BC) and its implications for culture contact and asymmetrical power relations between pastoralists and non-pastoralists. Since 2013, she has worked as an archaeologist at the Third Cataract of the Nile River in Sudan, first at the Egyptian colonial site at Tombos, and then at the Kerma hinterlands site, Abu Fatima, also in northern Sudan.