Archaeozoology

Although numerous sub-species of house mouse exist, only one is found wild in mainland Britain (Mus musculus domesticus). Since these sub-species cannot be readily differentiated in archaeological material, in this paper (Dobney and Harwood, 1999) the house mouse is simply considered as Mus musculus.

The genus Mus lived originally in the steppes of Central Asia where it is thought to have used rock crevices for shelter, thus pre-adapting it to a commensal existence in and around areas of human habitation. This is supported by evidence from modern populations such as that on the island of Skokholm where it shelters on cliffs in early spring.

On the basis of the fossil record, the house mouse is thought to have been present in England since the Iron Age at the latest. It appears to be competitively inferior to the two native British species of mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus and Apodemus flavicollis) in open farmland and woodland. It is, therefore, principally a commensal, living in and around buildings.

There is no evidence for the presence of the house mouse in the North of England prior to the arrival of the Romans, although this may be a result of the paucity of Iron Age occupation sites that have been excavated in the region and the lack of systematic sieving. The species does, however, appear to have been common in York throughout the Roman and Anglian periods. Outside this urban centre, there are only two records prior to the medieval period: one at the Roman fort of South Shields and one from Carlisle.

Reference: Dobney, K and Harwood, J. 1999. Here to stay? Archaeological evidence for the introduction of commensal and economically important mammals to the North of England, pp 373-387 in Benecke, N (ed.). The Holocene History of the European Vertebrate Fauna. Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH: Rahden/Westf.

There is an interesting review at ‘Anthrosite‘ about reindeer body part representation at Grotte XVI in France.

From historical evidence, it seems that the Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) arrived in Britain aboard ships from Russia  c.1728-1729. However, the archaeological evidence is poor, primarily as a result of the difficulty in differentiating brown and black rat (Rattus rattus) on the basis of post-cranial bones. Most archaeological rat bones from the 16th century onwards are not identified to species, and the authors of this paper (Dobney and Harwood, 1999: 37 suspect that some earlier finds are identified as black rat on the assumption that the date is too early for brown rat.

Evidence for the absence of brown rat from early post-medieval Britain includes the apparent larger size of black rats in the past; some appear to be comparable in size to brown rats. This may reflect the lack of inter-species competition during these periods. Only three records of firmly identified brown rat exist in the North of England. The earliest comes from the Church Street sewer excavation in York (dated to between the 6th and 7th centuries AD). However, the find was recovered from the topmost, heavily disturbed layer and may therefore be intrusive. Medieval deposits at Jarrow also apparently contain brown rat, however the potential that this is also intrusive cannot be ruled out due to the little contextual information that exists. Finally, brown rat has been identified at Skeldergate, York, in deposits dated to the early 15th century AD, but the early date of this find is not discussed in the text and so it is difficult to establish the criteria for identification or whether there might be grounds for questioning its stratigraphic provenance.

Reference: Dobney, K and Harwood, J. 1999. Here to stay? Archaeological evidence for the introduction of commensal and economically important mammals to the North of England, pp 373-387 in Benecke, N (ed.). The Holocene History of the European Vertebrate Fauna. Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH: Rahden/Westf.

Volume 37, the Pulp SciFi edition, of the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is now available to read at ‘A Hot Cup of Joe’.

The Isle of Man lies between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in the Irish Sea. The main island is about 30 miles from north to south and 10 from west to east, with a central mountain range and wooded glens that fall away to the sea. Peel Castle stands on St Patrick’s Island off the west coast. Castle Rushen, in Castletown, is located on the south-east coast on the main island.

The bird bones from Peel Castle were mostly medieval and post-medieval in date, with a few from earlier periods. Those from Castle Rushen were from between the 16th and late 19th/20th centuries. Most were from the two main domestic species: domestic fowl (Gallus gallus) and Greylag Goose (Anser anser). Some goose bones appeared to be unusually short and it is suggested that this is a dwarf variety akin to that kept on Shetland during the Dark Ages.

Wild birds were less frequent at the sites, although their presence provides interesting information about the habits of the Manx people. Gulls, in particular, provide opportunities for serious trade and exploitation by humans. They are known to have been netted and then fattened during the winter months in the poultry yard - something which also helped to dissipate the strong fishy taste. Black-headed gulls, known as puets, were held in high esteem during the 17th century and were eaten as a delicacy after being fed on bullock’s liver or with corn and curds from the dairy. Some gull bones from the excavations showed evidence of knife and skewer marks, and it is suggested that some form of pinioning is possible. Crane (grus grus) and Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) were also found heavily scraped and scored by human implements at Castle Rushen.

It is suggested that the pigeon bones found during the excavations were the remains of wild rock doves (Columba livia) collected from the southwestern cliffs of the island. These were reported during the early 1800s by visitors to the island, and were said to be good eating. It is likely that their extinction on the Isle of Man was partly due to over-harvesting. Other cliff-nesters such as the common guillemot (Uria aalge) and puffin (Fratercula arctica) are still present, but are not as abundant as they once were.

The Isle of Man had a well-established trade in birds and their products, attested to both by the accounts of early writers and the finds from Peel Castle and Castle Rushen. Harvesting contributed to driving some elsewhere to breed, others to extinction. It also reduced the breeding populations of others such as the guillemot and Manx shearwater.

Reference: Thorne, C. T. 1997. Past human exploitation of birds on the Isle of Man. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 7: 292-297

One day last spring, fossil hunter and anatomy professor Kenneth Rose, Ph.D. was displaying the bones of a jackrabbit’s foot as part of a seminar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine when something about the shape of the bones looked oddly familiar.

That unanticipated eureka moment has led researchers at the school to the discovery of the oldest known record of rabbits. The fossil evidence in hand, found in west-central India, predates the oldest previously known rabbits by several million years and extends the record of the whole category of the animal on the Indian subcontinent by 35 million years.

Published online in the February Proceedings of the Royal Society, the investigators say previous fossil and molecular data suggested that rabbits and hares diverged about 35 million years ago from pikas, a mousy looking member of the family Ochotonidae in the order of lagomorphs, which also includes all of the family Leporidae encompassing rabbits and hares.

But the team led by Johns Hopkins’s Rose found that their rabbit bones were very similar in characteristics to previously unreported Chinese rabbit fossils that date to the Middle Eocene epoch, about 48 million years ago. The Indian fossils, dating from about 53 million years ago, appear to show advanced rabbit-like features, according to Rose.

“What we have suggests that diversification among the Lagamorpha group-all modern day hares, rabbits and pikas-may already have started by the Early Eocene,” says Rose, professor in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Rose says the new discovery was delayed a few years because the researchers had not been looking specifically to determine the age of rabbits. “We found these bones on a dig in India a few years ago and didn’t know what animal they came from, so we held onto them and figured we’d look at them later,” he says. “It didn’t occur to us they would be rabbits because there were no known rabbits that early in time and the only known rabbits from that part of the world are from central Asia.”

But one day, while using the jackrabbit foot bones as a teaching tool for a class, the shape of the bones in the class struck him as something he’d seen before among his collection of unidentified bones.

Sure enough, the tiny bones about a quarter of an inch long from India looked remarkably similar to ankle and foot bones from modern day jackrabbits, which are 4 to 5 times bigger.

Rose and his team set out and measured every dimension of their Indian bones and compared them to eight living species of rabbits and hares. They also compared them to two species of the related pika-that mouse-like, mountain-dwelling critter that lives in the Rocky Mountains of North America, among other places.

Using a technique called character analysis, the team first recorded measurements of 20 anatomical features of the bones, which showed that the bones are definitely Lagomorph and closer to rabbits than pikas. The scientists then ran a series of statistical tests on the individual measurements to see how they compared with the Chinese fossils as well as living rabbits and pikas. They found that although the Indian fossils resemble pikas in some primitive features, they look more like rabbits in specialized bone features.

Asked how many years of good luck one gets with a 53 million-year-old rabbit foot bone, Rose quipped that he “already got lucky with the feet, but what we really would like are some teeth that tell how different these animals really were.”

Source: EurekAlert!

Jim Myres at Scientific Blogging discusses an interesting history of skull surgery in ‘Trepanation: The Legacy Of Ancient Brain Surgery‘.

Mons Claudianus was a Roman settlement in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Its purpose was for the production of large columns and basins of quartz diorite for use in Italy. The isolated location - 120 km from Luxor and 50 km from the coast - necessitated a self-sufficiency in crafts and almost all provisions must have been brought in from the Nile and Red Sea coast.

Most of the material derives from Trajanic and Antonine occupation (early second century to late second century AD), but the main complex was already in existence from at least the late first century AD and usage continued into the third century AD.

Over half of all mammal bones identified are from the donkey (Equus asinus), which must have been used for logistical support and then eaten at the end of its useful life. With these were 334 bird bones, some feathers and fragments of eggshell. Remains of large galliformes, identified as domestic fowl, are the most frequent amongst the bird remains. Bones of other species are rare. These include at least two different species of geese, stork (Ciconia sp.), quail (Coturnix coturnix), sand partridge (Ammoperdix heyi), sandgrouse (Pterocles sp.), palm dove (Streptopelia senegalensis) and brown-necked raven (Corvus ruficollis).

All of the large galliform bones were examined in order to differentiate between domestic fowl, guinea-fowl and francolin. Although many elements could be identified as domestic fowl, none could be attributed to either of the other two species. It is, therefore, assumed that all galliform fragments are of domestic fowl. The thickness, porosity and curvature of the eggshell fragments were also a good match for domestic fowl. Measurements indicate birds of small size typical of early domestic fowl and are comparable in size to a modern bantam cock.

Given the isolated nature of the settlement, it is suggested that at least some of the remains are from birds living on site. It is hypothesised that birds were brought up in crates from the Nile Valley in a similar manner to today. Some may have been intended for immediate use, whilst others may have been kept alive until required for eating, egg production and/or sacrifice. Birds may also have been kept for cock fighting, although there is no supporting evidence for this.

Reference: Hamilton-Dyer, S. 1997. The Domestic Fowl and Other Birds from the Roman Site of Mons Claudianus, Egypt. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 7: 326-329

See also: Diet and Romano-British Society, Monastic diet in Late Antique Egypt.

For statues, stress injuries come from standing in place for hundreds of years. Using a novel technique, researchers have now developed a way to predict such fracturing, applying the procedure to Michelangelo’s David in an analysis that proved simpler, faster and more accurate than previous methods.

In applying the technique to other objects — including human bones — the researchers are also gaining new perspective on how these structures are likely to fail.

More information can be found at the National Science Foundation website.

Edmund Blair Bolles summarises an interesting paper by Francesco D’Errico on the subject of whether or not Neanderthals had language and John Hawks gives his thoughts on the subject.