Expert: John Shea - 5/10/2011

Question
Hello, I am very curious to know if anthropologists would study christians as a group over the centuries. I want to know because I want to know if my topic is anthropological. The topic is how the christians attitudes toward animals, an example is the cat, has changed over the times of civilization. So I was just wondering if anthropologists would research a question similar to that.

Answer
Hi Nuyo
This sounds more like a history topic than an anthropology topic. The essence of anthropology is cross-cultural comparison.   A cultural anthropologist might compare different Chrisitian communities today.  Archaeologists might look at change through time in artifacts left by Christian communities in the same place (or different ones) at different time periods. The topic you propose -attitudes towards cats, to the extent you would investigate it with historical records, animal remains, etc. sounds more like an archaeology project (zooarchaeology, specifically) than an anthropology project.  I would bet there have been studies of this topic published in the archaeological literature.
Not too long ago (within last 5 years) archaeologists excavating on Cyprus found very old remains of domesticated cat -around 8000 years ago, I think.
FYI: In Medieval France, Christians got it into their heads that a mild outbreak of bubonic plague was caused by demons in cats.  They killed a whole lot of cats to eradicate the demons/plague, and as you might expect, the result was a huge increase in the population of rats (the actual hosts to the fleas that transmit plague), and an outbreak that wiped out about a quarter of the population of Europe.  You know, the only reason our species is called Homo sapiens is that we got to pick our own name.
Cheers,
John Shea