Abstract

In the modern urban landscape, most animals save a handful of pets and scavengers are hidden from or hiding from the human view. In ancient cities animals were ubiquitous. Materially they served human needs for food, energy, transport, and raw materials. Socially they took on significance as sources of companionship, entertainment, power and prestige. Environmentally, animals would shape and transform urban landscapes, hinterlands, and networks in ways not always anticipated or controlled by humans.

Inspired by recent work in network-studies as well as in environmental humanities and animal studies that aim at decentering people in the study of human-nonhuman relations, this lecture addresses the rich evidence of animals in the iconographic, epigraphic and archaeological records from ancient Palmyra, in an attempt of exploring the manifold entanglements between animals and people in the ancient city.