Evolution of a Taboo: Pigs and People in the Ancient Near East

Max D. Price traces the changing relationship between pigs and people in the ancient Near East, asking how an animal once widely raised became subject to powerful food taboos. Zooarchaeological evidence is combined with historical and religious material to follow pig husbandry and avoidance across changing environments and societies.

Pigs were domesticated, raised in cities and assigned changing ritual roles long before later prohibitions took familiar written form. Price argues that the taboo developed through Iron Age conflicts and was subsequently reshaped in the political and religious encounters of the classical and later worlds. The book follows that history through agricultural practice, animal bones and texts instead of treating the prohibition as a timeless rule.