Traditional Practices and Cultural Resilience: Exploring Pastoralism in Central Sardinia and Celtic Diet Practices

This thesis, entitled Traditional Practices and Cultural Resilience is comprised of two distinct works: Culture and Landscape, Continuity and Adaptation: Pastoralism in Central Sardinia, which investigate the impact of sheep and shepherd relationships on human mobility and the landscape in central Sardinia, and Food and Fight: Diet Practices as a Form of Colonial Resistance by Celtic Tribes, which investigate diet practices through the archaeological record and infers if they can be viewed as a tactic of colonial resistance to the Romans. Both works draw from and build upon existing scholarship to explore how cultural change is driven by the relationships between humans, animals, things, and their environments. This thesis uniquely ties two methodologies that are rarely used in unison, landscape archaeology and zooarchaeological analysis with faunal remains. This research fills a crucial gap in scholarship that aims to find a discourse between humans, animals, and the environment and its findings reveal the central role human and animal relationships take in shaping cultural processes, like identity formation, and cultural change. Through this research we gain a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics between humans, things, and the environment across different locations, time periods, and cultures.