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Cultural change
Cultural change can often be reflected in our use of and relations to animals, be it changes in dietary habits to changing attitudes to certain species. At present, my research has concentrated on the change in animal burials between the Iron Age and Romano-British periods. I have also started to investigate how animals reflect the interactions between ‘native’ and Greek colonists in 8th-7th century BC Southern Italy, through my work with the University of Rennes Incoronata project.
As Toynbee (1973, 15) noted at the beginning of her volume, there were few aspects of Roman human activity, either work or leisure in which animals did not share. Although human-animal relations have been investigated using ancient literature and art, the investigation of zoological remains is often limited to dietary activity. This has started to change with archaeologists such as Fulford (2001) urging archaeologists to take a closer look at ABGs and other ‘special’ deposits found in Romano-British pits. He pointed to the high proportion of dog ABGs discovered on Romano-British settlement sites and argued that such deposits might represent a continuation of Iron Age ‘ritual’ practices and not population control as suggest by earlier zooarchaeologists. King (2005) has also recently claimed that ‘ritual’ animal deposits can be found on a number of Romano-British temple sites. Influenced by Fulford’s (2001) argument, Woodward and Woodward (2004) revaluated the ABGs found within a number of Romano-British shafts at the Greyhound Yard site in Dorchester as forming ‘structured deposits’ relating to the foundation of the Romano-British town.
Although normally associated with the Iron Age, ABGs are just as common from Romano-British sites. There is however a number of significant differences between the Iron Age and Romano-British ABG assemblages, the main one being the species deposited in this manner. The most common Iron Age ABGs are those of sheep/goat, whereas dogs become the most common ABG in the Romano-British period. However, this change in the types of species deposited appears to be a gradual one. The ABG assemblages from early Romano-British ‘rural’ settlements are very similar to the ones seen from late Iron Age sites. The main difference in the early Romano-British period occurs on urban sites, which have a dog dominated pattern. By the middle Romano-British period dogs dominate on both urban and rural sites. Does this represent a gradual adoption of Roman practices on ‘native’ sites?
Investigating the patterns within such deposits by adopting a biographical approach can help us to further develop our understanding of human-animal relations. Further work is currently being carried out to develop the themes discussed above.
Fulford, M. 2001. Links with the past: pervasive 'ritual' behavior in
Roman Britain. Britannia, 32, 119-218.
King, A. C. 2005. Animal remains from temples in Roman Britain.
Britannia, 36, 329-369.
Toynbee, J. M. C. 1973. Animals in Roman Life and Art. New York,
Cornell University Press.
Woodward, P. & Woodward, A. 2004. Dedicating the town: urban
foundation deposits in Roman Britain. World Archaeology, 36, 68-
86.
Relevant Presentations
From remains to meaning. Animal Ritual Killing and Burial: European Perspective, session. EAA (European Association of Archaeologists) meeting, 15th-20th, September, 2009, Riva del Garda, Italy.
Transitional identities; Animal biographies. Body as Object:Object as Body. TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group), 2008, Southampton University.
Associated bone groups; Continuation and Romanization. A Zooarchaeological Approach to Romanisation: Cross-cultural Synthesis or One-Way Traffic? Session Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC), 2006, Cambridge University.
Relevant Publications
Serjeantson, D and Morris, J. (in press, 2011). Ravens and crows in Iron Age and Roman Britain. Oxford Journal of Archaeology. 30.1
Morris, J. 2010. Associated bone groups, beyond the Iron Age. In. J, Morris. and M, Maltby. (eds.). Integrating Social and Environmental Archaeologies; Reconsidering Deposition. Oxford. British Archaeological Reports International Series 2077. 12-23
Morris, J. 2008. Associated bone groups; one archaeologist’s
rubbish is another's ritual deposition. In. O, Davis. K, Waddington.
and N, Sharples. (eds.). Changing Perspectives on the first
millennium BC. Oxford. Oxbow. 83-98.
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