About

Nerissa Russell is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University, with a focus on environmental anthropology, archaeology, and material culture. Her research primarily involves zooarchaeology at Neolithic sites in southeast Europe and Anatolia, with extensive work at Çatalhöyük in Turkey where she served as co-director of the zooarchaeology lab. Her work explores human-animal relations in prehistoric societies, emphasizing the social and symbolic functions of animals and meat, including their roles as wealth, symbols, medicine, and food. She examines how prehistoric peoples used animals and meat to construct social relations through practices such as feasting, meat sharing, and exchanges, and investigates the intersections of these relations with social dimensions like gender and inequality. Her scholarly contributions include numerous publications on Neolithic human-animal interactions, animal symbolism, and domestication, establishing her as a key figure in the field of zooarchaeology and environmental archaeology.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Geography
• Social Science
• Biology
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Zoology
• Medicine
• Epistemology
• Environmental ethics
• Philosophy
• Pathology
• History
• Anatomy
• Ecology
• Surgery
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• Hunting and Eating Symbols

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-02-28

  book1st authorCorresponding

  This Element approaches large game hunting through a social and symbolic lens. In most societies, the hunting and consumption of certain iconic species carries deep symbolism and is surrounded by ritualized practices. However, the form of these rituals and symbols varies substantially. The Element explores some recurring themes associated with hunting and eating game, such as gender, prestige, and generosity, and trace how these play out in the context of egalitarian versus hierarchical societies, foragers versus farmers, and in different parts of the world. Once people start herding domestic livestock, hunting takes on a new significance as an engagement with what is now defined as the Wild. Foragers do not make this distinction, but their interactions with prey animals are also heavily symbolic. As societies become more stratified, hunting large animals may be partly or entirely reserved for the elite, and hunting practices are elaborated to display and build power.

  PublisherDOI

• Domestication: a turning point in the history of human–animal relationships

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2026-04-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Duck, Duck, Goose: Varying Goose Proportions in Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Southwest Asia

  International Journal of Osteoarchaeology · 2025-12-12

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Water birds, especially Anseriformes, predominate in most Early Holocene assemblages in Southwest Asia. However, the ratio of geese to ducks varies substantially. I survey Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene avian assemblages to explore whether the variability in relative proportions of geese, most of which breed far to the north and would be present only during migration and winter, was due to shifting migration and wintering patterns in response to climate change, local environmental conditions, or human selection. The results paint a complex picture, with signs of changes in migration or wintering location apparent in some goose species, local environmental effects in some locations, and human choices apparent at some sites. Judging from body part distributions, geese were not always eaten even when taken in substantial numbers; their feathers may often have been valued over their flesh, although they are large, meaty birds that occur in abundance in autumn and winter. In some cases, different choices were made at settlements that are quite nearby and with apparently similar landscapes.

  PublisherDOI

• Resting on Strong Shoulders: The Power of Animal Scapulae in the Near Eastern Neolithic

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Domestication and Religion

  2023-12-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Animal domestication entails major changes in human-animal relations. It brings humans into more intimate contact with some animals, but ironically also inscribes the human-animal boundary more clearly. My focus here is on livestock domestication, primarily in Southwest Asia, where it occurred earliest. I argue that the most important aspect of livestock domestication is that animals are converted into property, which has widespread implications for human-animal and human-human relations. Foragers, and to a large extent other people, tend to view wild animals as equals, often as ensouled persons with whom they enter into two-way relationships and who must be treated with respect. Livestock, by contrast, are generally not considered to have souls and are in a permanent position of dependency relative to humans. Thus, animal domestication is much more than just a technological and economic transition. Emerging evidence from the Southwest Asian Neolithic suggests that this transition was locally variable and sometimes contested, depending in part on the nature of prior human relations with wild species.

  PublisherDOI

• Severe traumatic lesions in the Late Neolithic cattle from the site of At‐Vršac, Serbia

  International Journal of Osteoarchaeology · 2022 · 1 citations

  • Archaeology
  • Medicine
  • Geography

  Abstract This paper aims to assess the etiology and differential diagnosis of severe pathological lesions in wild and domestic cattle from the Late Neolithic site of At‐Vršac in the northeast part of the present‐day Serbia. Excavations of this multilayered site revealed the remains of a Late Neolithic settlement belonging to the Vinča culture network of the Central Balkans. An aurochs metacarpal bone, two domestic cattle fragments of fused ulna and radius and of tibia, all with massive bone proliferations were recovered during the archaeological excavations in 1976. Paleopathological study was undertaken using an interdisciplinary approach, including AMS dating, radiography, computed tomography (CT), and histopathology. The results show severe oblique healed fracture with secondary pronounced bone reaction in the aurochs metacarpal bone and in the domestic cattle ulna–radius, while traumatic alteration infected with disseminated osteomyelitis was found in the domestic cattle tibia. These pathologies of wild and domestic cattle are discussed to reveal the level of environmental and human influence on the origin and development of the lesions in the Late Neolithic cattle.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cattle for the Ancestors at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey

  2022-06-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The recent ontological turn in anthropological theory has opened a space for relational approaches in zooarchaeology, in which boundaries between animals and humans are permeable and persons can take nonhuman forms. Here I explore cattle-human relations in the Near Eastern Neolithic, focusing on Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia. I argue that the rela- tionship between humans and wild cattle at Çatalhöyük was intense, with aurochsen standing in an ancestral relation to humans. There are many parallels in the treatment of dead humans and aurochsen. Both humans and cattle parts are buried beneath house floors, in complementary spatial positions, incorporating both into the houses (which have their own life cycle) as ancestors. The Near Eastern Neolithic is characterized by a widespread concern with heads and head- lessness; both human and animal heads are sometimes removed and used, displayed, and deposited, as well as depicted. Cattle heads and horns are especially prominent in these contexts. Central Anatolians resisted the adoption of domestic cattle for several centuries, while they accepted the herding of sheep and goats. I suggest this reluctance derives from the particularly close relationship between cattle and humans evident at Çatalhöyük. When small numbers of domestic cattle appear in the later levels of the site, displays of wild cattle body parts initially intensify, as though to reassert their symbolic importance. These domestic cattle may signal a change in human kinship patterns now sometimes marked with bridewealth, perhaps eroding the endogamous marriage system at Çatalhöyük and contributing to the eventual dispersal of its inhabitants.

  PublisherDOI

• Wild Meets Domestic in the Near Eastern Neolithic

  Animals · 2022 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Ethnology
  • Geography

  The categories of wild and domestic are one of the classic ways the nature/culture dichotomy manifests itself in human interactions with the environment. Some argue that this distinction is not helpful and a projection of modern thought, and certainly the boundaries are complicated. However, we should try to determine in each case whether it was meaningful to particular people in the past. Here I explore whether wild and domestic were relevant concepts to the inhabitants of the Neolithic Near East in their relations with animals around the time when livestock herding began. Drawing on depictions of animals and the treatment of living animals and their remains, I examine three case studies (Cyprus, Upper Mesopotamia, and Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia) to evaluate whether emic distinctions between wild and domestic existed. I conclude that this was in fact a crucial distinction that shaped economic choices as well as ritual activities. Differential treatment of wild and domestic animals indicates that they were accorded different forms of personhood. The particular nature of human relations with wild animals helped shape the spread of both wild and domestic animals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multispecies Archaeology. SUZANNE E. PILAAR BIRCH, editor. 2018. Routledge, London. xiv + 376 pp. $250.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-13889-898-1. $52.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-36758-085-8. $52.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-1-31570-770-9.

  American Antiquity · 2022-01-19

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  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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• Cattle for the Ancestors at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey

  2022-03-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Louise Martin

  12 shared

• Katheryn C. Twiss

  Stony Brook University

  11 shared

• Amy Bogaard

  University of Oxford

  8 shared

• Hijlke Buitenhuis

  Archeologisch Diensten Centrum (Netherlands)

  7 shared

• Michael Charles

  University of Oxford

  5 shared

• Jessica Pearson

  University of Liverpool

  5 shared

• Mirjana Stevanović

  Sportska Akademija Beograd

  3 shared

• Eric Kansa

  3 shared

Labs

• Nerissa Russell's Zooarchaeology LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of California Berkeley

  1993

• M.A., Anthropology

  University of California Berkeley

  1982

• A.B., Anthropology

  Harvard University

  1980

Awards & honors

• Freedman Award