The discovery by Polish archaeologists of a cemetery of companion animals from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD in the ancient port of Berenike on the Red Sea has made the headlines worldwide, in academia as well as with the general public. Nowhere else have the close relations between ancient man and animal, also in the emotional sphere, been so well attested. Dogs, cats and small monkeys—these are the species that were kept as pets in ancient Berenike and the research, carried out within the frame of the first Polish National Science Centre (NSC) grant awarded for this subject, has already produced extensive new data on the appearance of these animals, their health, dietary habits and human care. While this information is invaluable to research in different fields: archaeology, history, zoology, veterinary medicine, sociology, it has gained in importance also in terms of a general human interest at a time when societies today are often in crisis and the need for closeness, also with other species, is so overbearing. From this standpoint, the project addresses three major research issues:

1. why is it that the “animal pet cemetery” in Berenike finds no good parallels in the ancient world;
2. what is the definition of the concept of “pet/companion animal”; and, perhaps foremost,
3. how can archaeozoological data help to study concepts of value (both material and emotional) and identity (ethnical, cultural, religious etc.) in ancient societies.