Dear Colleagues,
Ever since the Neolithic domestication, animals have been part of everyday human life, imagination, and religion. In antiquity, many human pursuits, from plowing the field to fighting on the battlefield, from consumption of food to sacrificing to the gods, were shaped by, and relied upon, a symbiotic or interdependent relationship with animals. Animals were hunted or tamed, kept for entertainment or even worshipped. Material culture provides important evidence as representations and illustrations, expressions and mediations of ancient ideas and attitudes about, as well as experiences and interactions with the animal world which surrounded them. Iconographic representations may, for instance, reflect social status as much as religious practices. Such imagery can offer visual clues for the dissemination of animal husbandry as well as for beliefs in mythic creatures.
The theme of this Special Issue, "Animals in Ancient Material Cultures", broadly includes the Mediterranean world and the Near East, from ca. 10,000 ʙᴄᴇ to 500 ᴄᴇ (although exceptions in period or region may be considered). Approaching this subject from a broad chronological and geographical perspective allows the contributors to focus on a specific region, period, animal, and/or creature. Papers may draw on (zoo-)archaeological, physical, visual, and/or cultural material to examine the dispersal and exchange, appropriation, and acculturation of practices and beliefs. This Special Issue aims to bring together specialists from different fields of expertise, including but not limited to art history, ancient history, classics, classical archaeology, and zooarchaeology. Proposed subjects comprise topics such as pastoralism, human–animal relations, iconography, and cultic practices.
The principal purpose of this first volume is to bring together a collection of papers associated with two separate conferences on animals in antiquity, namely, "The Living World of Animals in Antiquity", a panel organized by Sian Lewis and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones at the Eighth Celtic Conference in Classics, on 25–28 June 2014, at the University of Edinburgh, and "Animals in Ancient Material Cultures", organized by the undersigned at the Allard Pierson Museum, on 15–16 October 2015. Contributions are invited for a second volume on the same subject.
Dr. Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter
Dr. Chiara Cavallo
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website. Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI. 
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