Dr. Martin Welker: Assistant Curator of Zooarchaeology, Arizona State Museum; Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Arizona
Wednesday September 24, 2025,
3:00pm – 4:00pm,
Great Room and Zoom
The domestic cat is both one of the most popular pets and companion animals, and one of the least studied domesticated animals. Cats are variably portrayed as cute and fuzzy pets, lauded for their effectiveness as mousers, or vilified for their role in the decline and extinction of small native species. Despite their popularity and impacts on human society, they have received relatively limited study by archaeologists. In many ways, this likely reflects cats’ own independence and solitary nature. For much of human-cat co-existence, cats have been left to their own devices, hunting the mice and rats drawn to human settlements at will. As sailors began undertaking longer and longer voyages, they came to rely upon cats to keep down the mice and rats aboard ships. Because of this, cats were likely one of the earliest Eurasian domesticates to catch sight of the New World. In this lecture Martin Welker will explore the domestication of cats in the Near East, their spread in Europe, and their arrival in the New World.
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