Chapter 5: Space, time and pig51
as a cautionary tale for archaeological explanations involving the
role of pigs in early domestication, as well as their place in urban
economies and the rise of complex societies. (Nelson 1998: 1998).
My conclusion about the valuation of pigs-as-pigs in ancient
and medieval peasant subsistence agro-ecosystems on Cheju
Island in Korea are much in concert with those of Albarella, who
has published on the valuation of pigs-as-pigs in Northwestern
Europe peasant agro-ecosystems. He acknowledges (Albarella
2007) that pigs in medieval European agro-ecosystems were val-
ued in part as pork, but adds this caveat: ‘It would, however, be
grossly unfair to regard them as mere meat producing machines;
pigs were much more than that.’ He goes on to itemize their
additional value to humans: ‘They were living creatures that
contributed substantially to the shaping of the medieval com-
munity, to its organization, settlement, movements, everyday
activities, seasonal cycles, entertainment, and also feelings.’
Albarella also quotes Wiseman (2000): ‘It has been writ-
ten that pigs’ role as a major contributor to the development of
medieval society has rarely been acknowledged’, and proceeds to
conclude: ‘It is a fair point, which should remind us of how much
domestic animals have helped in our history, and how little they
have received in exchange’ (in Albarella 2007).
Subsequent to my observations and experiences among
Cheju Islanders while in the Peace Corps, I increasingly began
to wonder the extent to which initial interpreters of the terra-
cotta models in Chinese tombs (see Figure 5.1B) failed to realize
they were pigsty-privies? For example, in one popular history
book there is a photo of an excavated tomb model of a ‘pigsty’
accompanied with this caption:
Ceramic Model of a Pigsty. Chinese farmers regularly raised pigs,
keeping them in walled-off pens and feeding them scraps. This
Han Dynasty model of such a pigsty was placed in a tomb to repre-
sent the material goods one hoped the deceased would enjoy in the
afterlife’ (McKay et al. 2011).
It seemed possible that even the archaeologists who early
on interpreted these tomb models as ‘pigsties’ for raising pigs-
as-pork were slow to realize or publicize that they were in fact
not pigsties attached to gravity-fed silos, or granaries. I asked
myself if a massive misperception of pigs-as-pork in the present
and applied to interpreting the past might be entrenched to the
degree that it clouded the perception and judgement of archae-
ologists and museum curators and scholars like Harris (1997),
Kim (1994) and Gade (2000) below?
Occam’s Razor Misapplied?
The Korean archaeologist Kim Seong-og (1994) concluded his
own detailed analysis of pigs in the food production systems of
traditional East Asian subsistence agro-ecosystems as ‘mainly
as a source of nutrition’. Thus, his findings further validated the
prevailing, long-held assumption of pigs-as-pork in East Asia
disseminated in the literature by Harris (1997) cited above, i.e.
‘Clearly, the whole essence of pig is the production of meat for
human nourishment and delectation.’ Also, cultural geographer
Daniel Gade writing in 2000 (p. 539) persisted in reproducing
this dominant pigs-as-pork discourse as recently as the turn of
the present millennium by claiming that ‘Unlike sheep, whose
wool may be more valuable than their flesh, or cattle that are
kept for their milk or for use as draft animals, pigs have had no
primary nonmeat uses [my italics]’ (Gade 2000). Thus, pig-as-
pork remains the dominant paradigm for their valuation in the
present, and is still applied to interpreting the significance of
pig–human relations in the past. This pigs-as-pork paradigm
mentality today prevails to shape and to justify the unhealthy
welfare state in today’s modern factory farms.Speaking for the Pigs: Five Freedoms
‘Rural dwelling is no longer tied to rural working and the popu-
lation has become several steps detached from food production.
Thus pig keeping is no longer familiar and the vast majority of
the [human] population has little idea how pigs are now reared,
slaughtered and processed’ (Marchant-Forde 2009).
Contemporary animal welfare advocates like Marchant-
Forde have taken it upon themselves to inform and persistently
update the public about what they perceive of as persisting farm-
ing practices that have negative impacts on the welfare state of
those farm animals now confined, reared, and rendered into
human food resources – including pigs raised as pork – awaiting
slaughter on factory farms. Their reminders are often harsh and
are delivered in various communications media – for example,
in graphic art (Figure 5.2).
In factory farms, as Sue Coe represents them below, an
unsympathetic but cruelly efficient machine environment and
the absence of any living space allocated for pigs-as-pork await-
ing slaughter prevails. The abuse and slaughter occurs far from
public awareness, yet apparently with tacit public approval. The
assumption conveyed in the illustration is that few humans
and especially pork-eaters have any overriding motivations to
attempt to achieve healthy and humane balances between pro-
duction efficiency and animal welfare in factory farms.
Just so, animal welfare activists have taken upon themselves the
role of ‘speaking for the pigs’ to educate the ‘careless’ public about
these abuses, one of which is deprivation of living space for pigs
awaiting slaughter. Animal welfare advocates speaking for pigs
proselytize that Sus scrofa domesticus is an intelligent, sentient,
and gregarious herd animal, and prone to play in captivity where
permissive space allocation characterizes the prevailing conditions
of their managed rearing (Horback 2014; Marino & Colvin 2015).
Crary (2013) writes that it is due to the efforts of the Farm
Animal Welfare Council of the United Kingdom that ‘it has
been possible to draw up first principles of good welfare for ani-
mals whether on the farm, in transit, or at the place of slaughter’
Crary (2013). These ‘first principles’ manifest in their manifesto
as ‘Five Freedoms’. These address both the physical fitness and
the mental suffering of pigs and other animals raised destined
for mass slaughter in factory farms and they comprise ‘a com-
prehensive check-list to assess the strengths and weaknesses
of any husbandry system’. For example: freedom from thirst,
hunger and malnutrition, discomfort, pain, injury and disease,
fear and distress. Among these ‘Five Freedoms’ is the freedom
to express normal behaviour by providing sufficient space [italics
mine] (Webster 2001).
Spokespersons for the factory farm industry vaunt the suc-
cess of their mass production of pigs-as-pork in factory farms.00712:31:35