An increasing number of archaeologists are incorporating insights from human–animal studies into their reconstructions of the human past. Much of this work, like several chapters in this volume, begins with the basic data of zooarchaeology—the species present at a site, their proportional representation, and their depositional contexts. But the animals in these assemblages were much more than economic resources—they led active lives in the past—as agents, co-domesticates, co-workers, and companions; as deities, ancestors, and the spirits of the dead; as ritual helpers and scapegoats for illness or misfortune, and even as living spaces in the cases of whales (Habu and Savelle 1994; Patton and Savelle 2006) and mammoths (Pryor et al. 2020). Animals also functioned in utilitarian terms, employed by humans to negotiate status and identity, to mediate gendered labor relations, and to manifest hunting prowess and political power. Often, the entangled lives of humans and animals involved oscillation between ontological subjectivity and objectivity, depending on the task, location, and social context. A nineteenth-century Inuit puppy might take the role of a lost human child, coddled and petted as a member of the family, in the winter become a sled dog subject to the needs of a human caretaker, only to regain autonomy in the summer, scavenging and roaming at will; its fur might ultimately trim a parka.