Contains 12 contributions in English and 4 in French.

International conference proceedings.

Introduction: bones of contention? / Jenny Wallensten & Gunnel Ekroth -- What we would like the bones to tell us: a sacrificial wish list / Gunnel Ekroth -- L’assemblage osseuz comme un dernier état de la présence animale en contexte archéologique / Armelle Gardeisen -- Evidence of animal offerings in Iron Age Scandinavia / Maria Vretemark -- Dans l’ombre du rite : vestiges d’animauz et pratiques sacrificielles en GreΜ?ce antique / Katerina Trantalidou -- Bones and the body politic? / Valasia Isaakidou & Paul Halstead -- Hittite animal sacrifice / Peter R.W. Popkin -- The taphonomy of ritual bone depositions / Ola Magnell -- "Side" matters: animal offernings at ancient Nemea / Michael Mackinnon -- Dealing with the unexpected / Dimitra Mylona -- Rituels sacrificiels et offrandes animales dans le Sarapieion C de Delos / HéleΜ?ne Brun & Martine Leguilloux -- Thesmophoriazousai / Deborah Ruscillo -- The sea in the temple? / Tatiana Theodoropoulou -- Sacrificed animals in Swedish Late Iron Age monumental mound burials / Sabine Sten -- The zooarchaeology of cult / Gerhard Forstenpointner, Alfred Galik & Gerald E. Weissengruber -- Bones in Greek sanctuaries: answers and questions / Scott Scullion -- Archéozoologie et pratiques rituelles / Stella Georgoudi, Véronique Mehl & Francis Prost.

The importance of the zooarchaeological evidence as a source for ritual practices in ancient Greece is gradually becoming widely recognized. Animal bones form the only category of evidence for Greek cult which is constantly significantly increasing, and they can complement and elucidate the information provided by texts, inscriptions and images. This volume brings together sixteen contributions exploring ritual practices and animal bones from different chronological and geographical perspectives, foremost ancient Greece in the historical period, but also in the Bronze Age and as early as the Neolithic period, as well as Anatolia, France and Scandinavia, providing new empirical evidence from a number of major sanctuaries and cult-places. On a methodological level, the complexity of identifying ritual activity from the zooarchaeological evidence is a recurrent theme, as is the prominence of local variation visible in the bone material, suggesting that the written sources and iconography may offer simplified or idealized versions of the rituals actually performed. Although zooarchaeology needs to and should be integrated with other kinds of sources, the independent study of the bones in an unbiased manner is of utmost importance, as the bones can provide a different "reality" than that encountered in our other sources."--Publisher’s website.