*2.2. Defining Our Aim*

Even with such definitions established, our aim must be somewhat restricted in that "beliefs" of ancient peoples are particularly difficult to ascertain and are often confined to the realm of speculation, especially in the absence of epigraphic remains. Further, our modern conceptions of "what religion is" differ from culture to culture today, let alone from culture to culture in the past, and individual perceptions are biased towards one's own religious frameworks (Renfrew 1994; Zevit 2001). That said, behavioral characteristics and sequences of ritual practices associated with worship may contribute to understanding beliefs and this *practice* of a particular religion, i.e., the "cult," is accessible through archaeological methods in a way that belief is not. Indeed, various paradigms have been established through which excavated materials may be explored in order to identify cultic activity. For example, following Renfrew's well-know "indicators of ritual" (Renfrew 1985; 1994; Renfrew and Bahn 2016, pp. 413–21) that have been adapted for the context of ancient Israel in a number of studies (e.g., Gilmour 2000; Zevit 2001; Davis 2013), ritual practices may be reconstructed where we identify architecture or material culture that: 1. may be associated with particular deities or deities' dwellings; 2. focuses attention; 3. establishes boundaries between levels of holiness; and/or 4. suggests offerings, either votive or sacrificial.

Here zooarchaeology can play a special role, especially with regard to this last identifier of remains that suggest offering in that many offerings consist of meat, whether symbolically destroyed, buried, or consumed by officiates or other participants. Indeed, food is central in the practice of religion, and meat, in that its procurement requires animal death, is often elevated in its importance. Regardless of the way such meat is handled, bones are often all that remains and the analysis of these remains can shed light on the full spectrum of religiously-charged eating events, which arguably includes *all* consumption, from the most seemingly mundane everyday meal to the highest holy feast.

Indeed, zooarchaeology has been applied intensively to particular dietary habits associated with religious prescriptions regarding meat for everyday consumption in ancient Israel, especially regarding the question of pork prohibition (e.g., Harris 1985; Hesse 1990; Faust and Lev-Tov 2011; Sapir-Hen et al. 2013; Sapir-Hen et al. 2015; Sapir-Hen 2016; Faust 2018)—notably, far more complex of an issue than is often assumed (Hesse and Wapnish 1997; 1998)—and also those dietary laws

concerning birds and fish (Altmann forthcoming; Altmann and Angelini forthcoming; Altmann and Spiciarich forthcoming). Explorations of tomb offerings have also been enriched by faunal analysis (Horwitz 2001; Lev-Tov and Maher 2001), and such results, though underutilized, may play a key role in ongoing discussions about the existence, nature, and extent of a cult of the dead in ancient Israel (cf. Bloch-Smith 1992; Schmidt 1996; Hays 2015). Faunal analyses have been particularly central to studies of sacrifice and have provided keys to unraveling ritual sequences (Hesse et al. 2012), and also for evaluating potential congruences between faunal data and sacrificial practices described in the Hebrew Bible (Wapnish and Hesse 1991; Greer 2013).

Thus, our aim for a zooarchaeology of Israelite religion, as described above, is to reconstruct practices—more specifically, those practices related to eating, offerings, and sacrifice—that may be associated with Yahweh-centric worship, and then to integrate these findings with other data sets, such as those from analyses of architecture, artifacts, and, if possible, textual witnesses, to form syntheses that engage the phenomenological, social, economic, and/or historical import of such practices.

#### **3. Toward a Methodology**

While there are many manuals describing the methods of zooarchaeology (e.g., Hesse and Wapnish 1985; Davis 1987a; O'Connor 2008; Reitz and Wing 2008; Sykes 2014; Gifford-Gonzalez 2018), as well as many studies that apply archaeology to the study of Israelite religion (e.g., Nakhai 2001; Albertz and Schmitt 2012; Zevit 2001; Dever 2005; Hess 2007; Stavrakopoulou and Barton 2010), there has been less attention on methodologies specifically focused on a zooarchaeology of Israelite religion that integrate these studies and also engage recent developments in faunal analysis and biblical studies. That said, there are some notable exceptions (Horwitz 1999; Wapnish and Hesse 1991) and many zooarchaeologists working in the southern Levant operate along similar lines and incorporate these various subfields in a number of works (Greer 2013; Lev-Tov and Kansa 2017). Here, we aim to provide a methodological framework represented in such works that also incorporates recent developments, while further addressing some of the recurrent problems regarding the use of biblical texts. This framework is presented by a series of questions that may be posed by investigators approaching animal bone remains in order to understand ancient Israelite religion.
