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Where in the World? Part One: The Zooarchaeology of Europe - Ep 45
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Welcome to episode one of a miniseries focusing on the zooarchaeology of various world regions. This episode is centred around European zooarchaeology, focusing on the natural history and anatomy of the most prominent wild and domesticated species. Tune in for curious animal introductions, waterfowl collections and musings on Pliny the Elder.
Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging
For rough transcripts of this episode go to www.archpodnet.com/animals/45
Links
- Bartosiewicz, L. (2005). Worked elk (Alces alces L. 1758) antler from Central Europe. From Hooves to Horns, from Mollusc to Mammoth—Manufacture and Use of Bone Artefacts from Prehistoric Times to the Present. Tallin: Tallinn Book Printers Ltd, 339-50.
- O'Regan, H.J. (2018), The presence of the brown bear Ursus arctos in Holocene Britain: a review of the evidence. Mam Rev, 48: 229-244. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12127
- Pate, F., Henneberg, R., & Henneberg, M. (2016). Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope evidence for dietary variability at ancient Pompeii, Italy. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 16(1), 127-133.
- - Richter, J. (2005). Selective hunting of pine marten, Martes martes, in Late Mesolithic Denmark. Journal of archaeological science, 32(8), 1223-1231.
- Robinson, M.A., Domestic burnt offerings and sacrifices at Roman and Pre-Roman Pompeii, Italy. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 11, 93-9. (2002)
- Wigh, B. (1998) Animal bones from the Viking town of Birka, Sweden. In E. Cameron (ed.) Leather and Fur: Aspects of Medieval Trade and Technology, 81–90. London, Archetype Publications Ltd
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Archaeo Animals and 'Where in the World' miniseries
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Archaeo Animals, the podcast all about zooarchaeology. I'm your host, Alex Fitzpatrick, and with me, as always, Simona Falanga. And this episode is the start of yet another miniseries, although this one is not about video games, so don't worry. This one is very zooarchaeology focused. We're calling it Where in the World, because I'm very good at titles.
00:00:45
Speaker
We talk about this a lot on episodes. We always say, oh, well, don't forget, we're located in England. So a lot of our stuff is very British-centric.
Exploring European Zooarchaeology
00:00:55
Speaker
But we decided to break out of our British shells and enter other parts of the world to take a look at some archaeology there.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, we will be starting with Europe in this episode, however, but we will be branching out. Yeah, so we won't be going that far just yet. We will be, but we are starting a bit close to home. And just for the sake of ease, because we could easily, you know, if we wanted to do like, country by country, we would be here for
00:01:27
Speaker
a very long time. And there's other topics we want to cover. So just for ease, we've broken it up into continents. So obvious disclaimers, we might not get everything we're picking and choosing a little bit. But hey, if you're interested in us talking a bit more about a certain country or anything, let us know in the social media channels, the various ones that we're a part of.
00:01:52
Speaker
of course, like this mini series, it is going to be fairly broad strokes. Because of course, you know, like continents are pretty big. Very big. Or the wisdom. Because continents are big. So
00:02:11
Speaker
But we are going to be a bit structured. So this first segment, we will be looking at some of the wild species. And again, we could spend a whole episode just talking about wild species of different continents. So we
The Historical Significance of Antlers in Europe
00:02:26
Speaker
had to pick and choose a little bit. And I'm very excited about this one, because we're going to talk about something that I've bothered. It's been bothering me for a very long time since I moved to the UK from the US.
00:02:38
Speaker
Let's talk about the European moose slash elk. Uh, not gray squirrels. Okay. You know what? There is going to be no squirrel material in this miniseries. Okay. No squirrels. I bet. Picturing all the hay. Why did you not cover the humble gray squirrels? We'll do a whole episode about it if people are that fast. But we need to talk about the European moose slash elk.
00:03:04
Speaker
Aussie's Aussie's is very confusing. So in North America, this species is considered a moose. But in Britain, it's considered an elk. Yes. And also, like, correct me if I'm wrong, like, don't, in North America, don't you also refer to a red deer as an elk? Yes, I hope. I don't know what you're talking about. It makes perfect sense to me. I mean, to me, like, we
00:03:33
Speaker
In my native language, we call it neither moose or elk is Alche from Alches Alches. Surprise. Yeah. I mean, I just, someone brought it up. I remember when I first moved here and I was just started doing some archeology and someone brought it up. It blew my mind. I couldn't believe it. And we'll probably, we'll come back and cover this once we cover the Americas. But seriously, what the heck?
00:03:58
Speaker
Anyway, it's mostly found in Northern Europe, including Scandinavian countries and countries like Poland.
00:04:04
Speaker
Although hunted for food, the antlers were a vital resource during prehistory, as they have often been found in archaeological sites across central Europe through the form of axes, tools, knife handles, just really interesting kind of worked materials. And it should be noted that it was often gathered as shed antler.
00:04:29
Speaker
So you wouldn't necessarily see antler and immediately think, oh, they killed that.
00:04:35
Speaker
elk slash moose for their antler, it could have easily just been picked up. And I find like in general, like a lot of the archaeological antler tends to be naturally shed, but sometimes like, you know, it doesn't necessarily get worked, you just find some naturally shed antler. Because, well, again, like humans being consistently the same throughout time, you're out on a country walk, oh, this looks pretty, I'll take it back to the settlement.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, they do look cool. But you know, anyone who's kind of held antler before, which is, you know, you probably come across it either while you're walking in the woods or just it's a nice curiosity to have. They're pretty sturdy. So you can kind of see why you would pick it up and be like, I'm going to use this to put a blade on it and make it into a knife or something like that. You can kind of see the logic there.
00:05:30
Speaker
also like they make for some very pretty sort of knife handles once they're all sort of nice and polished but I guess for everyone who's listening who's wondering like how do you tell if the antler was naturally shed or whether the animal was hunted. Now usually with most fragments of antler you can't really tell for the one that have this sort of part called the burr which is the right the base of the antler and to
The Eurasian Lynx and Other European Wildlife
00:05:55
Speaker
me it looks a bit like a sun because he's got like a circle and he's got sort of like some
00:06:00
Speaker
radiating around it. Do you know what I mean? So it's right. No, that's exactly what I think. And so that is the path that attaches to the skull. And when the deer naturally sheds its antler is literally pops off clean, if that makes sense. But normally, if you do find this bird with some bone,
00:06:23
Speaker
sticking out of it, especially if you've got some cut marks around it, that means that it was sewn off of the skull. Meaning that, again, that wouldn't necessarily mean that they've hunted the animal, they might as well have scavenged the antler of a deer that was already dead. So I guess unless you find, you know, some of this like, like that nice, was it like deer ribs that stood a narrow head through it?
00:06:50
Speaker
like normally as a rule of thumb. So like the bird if you sort of clean off, the antler was naturally shed, if it's attached to sort of any bone, then the animal was either hunted or it was taken off a dead deer. Go with that. Yeah. Moving on, we have the Eurasian lynx, also known as Lynx. Lynx, some real good Latin names we'll be hearing in this miniseries. Anyway, it's
00:07:18
Speaker
widespread across parts of Europe as well as Asia.
00:07:21
Speaker
And it's relatively threatened still by poaching and loss of habitat, but it's also been made completely extinct in many areas of Western Europe. This is mostly due to hunting and people trying to protect their livestock. Some countries such as Norway actually had official bounties for them. However, many places like the UK have had big movements calling for them to be reintroduced.
00:07:49
Speaker
in more remote areas in Scotland as part of the kind of rewilding movement. Because I think also, like, I don't think like the links massively go for livestock. I mean, they do, but not as much as you think.
00:08:06
Speaker
I think it's a similar case to a species that we'll talk about in a later episode, the thylacine, where there were a lot of bounties and the idea of, oh, they're killing your sheep when realistically, they probably weren't killing that much of your livestock. No, they're probably already like, probably already suffering enough from competition from dingoes anyway. So yeah, but that's a different
00:08:30
Speaker
Well, we'll cover that in a future episode, but I think it's probably a similar kind of sad story with the links and kind of similar. Well, not really similar, not like a similar species, but in my mind, they're like smaller links. Is the European pine marten, Martis Martis. I just like picture them as a really big ferret.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, I guess in my brain, I've never really I've seen pine martens mostly like taxidermate. I've never seen like a live pine marten. So in my brain, they're kind of, well, in my brain, they look like this Pokemon that is based off of a ferret. So I'm a very good zoo archaeologist, I have a PhD. Anyway, it is a mustelid and he has sort of that elongated shape like a like a lot of those are the ferrets, mink, stoats, you know, that that
00:09:24
Speaker
They're very similar, especially the skull morphology. I think this is kind of similar, but they're mostly found in Northern Europe and are mostly rare or potentially extinct. There's a bit of a fine line, I guess, between those two kind of designations in places such as England. There's actually a fair amount of archaeological evidence that the Pine Martin was a source of fur for humans as early as the Mesolithic, based on
00:09:53
Speaker
remains that they've found in places like Denmark, where there's been very specific taphonomic, taphanom, taphanom, taphanom, am I? So want to help me to follow me to follow me. I don't know why I just struggled to say that word. I again have a PhD and my PhD thesis was based on to find me. Yeah, you said it then. Yeah, there we go. I'm back. I'm back, baby. Anyway,
00:10:22
Speaker
Z had these pine marten remains with taphonomy on it that was very indicative of fur cutting for fur, skinning for fur. I think we've talked about kind of those taphonomic features before in the previous episode.
00:10:42
Speaker
I think like on and off in most episodes in all fairness, but there are strategic sort of like cut marks that you'd be making sort of in the jaw and that the foot bones that would indicate sort of
00:10:56
Speaker
skinning for fur. Yeah, one indicator as well, because I'm not sure whether that applies to these particular remains of mink in Denmark, because I'm mostly thinking of like cattle and sheep type stuff. But the foot bones would tend to travel with the hide. So normally a high incidence of foot bones would suggest use for fur.
00:11:15
Speaker
or like to how it's traveling. Yeah, I believe that is the case for these pine marten because that is very, very indicative given that especially for a small animal or relatively small animal like a pine marten, those small extremities would be, you know, very significant in a lot of ways to find an archaeological context. Imagine you've got a pit, a pit of marten feet. Yes. That's strange.
00:11:45
Speaker
But hey, they are potentially making a comeback. Yes, because I think they have been reintroduced to Britain since, because I believe there are some studies that infer that they may actually contribute to the decline of grey squirrels. Well, then.
00:12:06
Speaker
I think I am team Pine Martin. I think it's got something to do with that the native squirrels recognize the Martin as predators. Well, the great squirrel is more like, what's this thing? Or think something along those lines, but also I guess the the ability of being able to evade the Pine Martin, which are the native squirrels seem to be just better at in general. Hmm.
Europe's Unique Species and Historical Extinctions
00:12:32
Speaker
that is really strange. But also, go Pine Martens. I'll try to find the article and pop in the show notes. But yes, and then, yeah, we have the the Eurasian brown bear. So Ursus Arctus Arctus, because we're repeating. Sorry, I was gonna say, why wasn't I making you do all the scientific names to begin with, I forget that you just have such a way with it, probably because, you know,
00:13:02
Speaker
of just reading it in my native accent. Yeah. It sounds so much better than me trying to say it in my American accent. Yeah, but it's just again, there's also, there's a trend, there's multiple trends this evening, but one is a species name sort of twice, you know. What are we calling this animal? Lynx Lynx. Orsos Arctos Arctos. Yes. Real, real Alex energy with these names, because believe me, that would be me. I don't know. We'll just name it twice. Same thing, right?
00:13:32
Speaker
But again, trend number two. Once widespread, widespread across Europe, the brown bear is now extinct in many places, including the UK. Trend number three, every single species we've named has been extinct in the UK.
00:13:48
Speaker
But still exists elsewhere in Northern Europe. I mean, we're still trying to figure out exactly when the brown bear went extinct in the UK. And Hannah O'Regan is doing some research on the subject. Because right now we sort of have two options. So either we have a late Neolithic early Bronze Age date, or the early medieval period. Just quite a gap. Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
But I guess because you, in spite of them potentially having gone extinct in prehistory, you do still find brown bear remains sort of like throughout antiquity, likely because of continuous imports of species were into the, well, I was gonna say into the UK, but into Europe, specifically, I guess, from the Romans who did love bringing animals over.
00:14:37
Speaker
Some because they just look pretty, some because, you know, we could hunt this native species, but, you know, I hunt this back in Italy, which is much better. Or just, you know, thinking of all the big, scariest wild animals that you could bring to then fight in arenas. So, yeah. But, mind you, that wasn't just the Romans. You see that, like, throughout the medieval period as well, because the bears were used, you know, they're used for bear baiting, other forms of sport.
00:15:04
Speaker
So again, you do see bear remains popping up, not very commonly, but they do pop up here and there. But then I guess it'll be about establishing whether these populations, the little pockets that have been introduced and did not constitute a viable population.
00:15:22
Speaker
or whether bears were around all along but just their numbers were slowly dwindling up until the medieval period when you kind of stopped finding them for a while until I believe they popped up again in the Victorian period for again very much like all the wrong reasons of like oh let's bring this bear over.
00:15:39
Speaker
because I collect wild animals, so I'll have to spare now. Yeah, some things never really change, do they? But this will be kind of exciting to see Nottingham, I believe. University of Nottingham is doing a lot of
00:15:55
Speaker
research looking at bear bathing and also kind of further exploring the brown bear in history in the UK. So it will be very exciting to see that research kind of get published and disseminated. But just to wrap up this segment, we have one final wild species I'd like to talk about, the Barbary macaque, macaque.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. Do you want to read the Latin name? Macaca Sylvanos. Yeah. Which I guess is of the forest. So yeah, I actually did not know this. The only wild monkeys of Europe. Up until
00:16:36
Speaker
today, so the evening of this recording, I had no idea we had sort of native monkeys. Yeah, it was kind of surprising. But I guess we're very, you know, UK centric here. But yeah, they were once widespread across the continent, again, a bit of a theme here, but are now only found, at least in Europe, in Gibraltar,
00:17:00
Speaker
That said, fossils of this monkey were actually found as north as Norfolk, England. They're in the Pleistocene. So I guess they probably were in the UK for a bit. Hmm. Yeah, no, I guess that to wrap this up, the zoo killed you of Europe, we have obliterated all of us.
00:17:25
Speaker
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00:17:51
Speaker
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Domestic Species and Their Archaeological Significance
00:18:06
Speaker
-L-E-O, imaging.com, and check out the link in the show notes.
00:18:11
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. We are talking about this archaeology of Europe. And in this segment, we'll be looking at the domesticates, which I'm sure loyal listeners will probably know a fair bit about domesticates, particularly in Europe. But hey, there might be something new. There probably isn't. We
00:18:38
Speaker
The thing you'll learn in this mini-series with domesticates is, oddly enough, we kind of all have very similar domesticate species, but I tried my best to find some interesting ones. Yeah, I guess for the most part it's pretty much the same species that were domesticated in various areas of the world, at various points of time, and then they just spread.
00:19:02
Speaker
That said, we will start off with, and I think we have talked about them, but it's always nice to talk about donkeys. Yes. We won't get treated by your donkey impersonation this time. Or Shrek rather, but yes, donkeys.
00:19:25
Speaker
I call this one myself. So yeah, donkeys, echos, as Alex mentioned, we already talked about them. I think on them, we had an episode that covered donkeys and camels. While I think, I think we discussed them in a case study before, like talking about Italian donkeys specifically, but I guess donkeys did not originate in Italy, unsurprisingly. They do in fact descend from the African wild ass.
00:19:53
Speaker
but they were likely to be sort of introduced by the Greeks in their sort of wave of colonisation and then the Romans throughout their empire. As a fair few breeds of donkeys, I mean, there's a few that originate from Sicily specifically, so you have the Ragusano, the Sicilian Grey, but really, I think there's a lot of breeds at this stage as well as sort of various crosses, which I guess, are they quite specious in their own right, like mules?
00:20:23
Speaker
kind of they're one of those kind of I think that's why we talked about them in that specific episode, they were that in between kind of stayed in that. Well, because the thing like, I guess the definition of the species technically will be like, that they produce fertile offspring, while mules are not fertile. Yeah, true. So
00:20:48
Speaker
Anyway, mules are a thing. They're there. But of course, you know, like, being that both donkeys and horses come from the same gene as echos. I mean, they do interbreed. Yeah, the offering is not fertile. And I've just gone down this fertile for mule fertility rabbit hole. Come back.
00:21:10
Speaker
I mean, donkeys, like normally, you know, you'd associate them sort of more with Mediterranean and North African landscapes. And that is indeed a thing where you do find the bulk of the donkeys, but they are sort of used as beasts of burden elsewhere, just maybe not so much in Britain, it's not something that, you know, it's a species you're familiar with, but you don't necessarily encounter
00:21:32
Speaker
too much, but they are sort of quite hardly animals suited to sort of fairly harsh terrains. And again, since they do share the same genus with horse, with the horse being echos, both of them, there is an argument to be made over sort of how much horse, well, how many donkeys were actually misidentified as horse in zoarchological analysis. Because in all fairness, if you're looking at an assemblage and you see sort of like, you know, a horse shaped sort of tibia,
00:22:02
Speaker
The first thing that pops to mind is not, oh, I should take some measurements, it might be donkey. Oh, they're definitely not in British zoo archeology and if you're working in Greece, then, you know, maybe.
00:22:13
Speaker
a good look to make sure that it's horse and not donkey. And as you'd expect, I don't think it's all too easy to differentiate between horses and donkeys because I think the morphologies are mostly related to the cranium. So the neck, they do tend to have a different number of vertebrae. But again, unless you've got the whole skeleton,
00:22:34
Speaker
doesn't really matter too much. And I believe they also have sort of different eruption stages for dentition, which again, would be useful so much to a point. Yeah, I mean, you know, there are differences, but realistically, unless you have a whole skeleton, it's a bit of a mixed bag. And again, I think for, you know, specifically speaking from the UK perspective, for the most part, if you see something that looks like a horse, it's probably a horse.
00:23:02
Speaker
And just, again, depending on the context, depending on what you're dealing with, you know.
00:23:07
Speaker
But I don't think I've ever run across donkey remains before. Although it could have been donkey and I could have misidentified a whole slew of bones in that case. I mean, to be fair, like a cowsie caves, you did have like a Noah's ark of animals. So why not a donkey? This is true. Yeah. Like some further, like maybe another PhD, the lost donkey of cowsie caves.
00:23:32
Speaker
Oh, I love my PhD so much. I definitely do want to do a second one. All over again. Moving on a bit. I mean, again, different species, but morphologically speaking, not that much different. We are talking about reindeer. Do you want to take a stab? Am I doing? Yeah.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, I can't. It doesn't sound the same. You make it sing, Savannah. I do not. So this one's a bit of a stretch, I guess. They're technically semi-domesticated, as reindeer herding is part of the subsistence strategies of many Eurasian indigenous people, including the Sami of Sapmi.
00:24:17
Speaker
The use of reindeer actually varies depending on the culture, but they have been known to be useful as draft animals as well as used for their milk. Specifically among the Sami, reindeer herding is managed through what they refer to as a steeda, which is a traditional form of cooperative community. Literally, it translates to reindeer pastoral district.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I guess like anatomy wise for the reindeer, I mean, the one thing that got me like just looking at it was the size of the nasal cavity on the skull. I don't know, that's one of the first like striking thing. Like it might be me like very large nasal cavity. Also, interestingly enough, a reindeer is the only cervid where both sexes have antler.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, which also, you know, they're a bit strange, because, you know, they have beams, sort of as you see, like, you know, like the long sort of tubular beams that you'd see, like on a red deer, but they also have sort of palmate brow tines. So the palmate
00:25:20
Speaker
Although you see that that's the real challenge of the podcast. They're trying to explain something as visual as the anatomy of that. But you know, like fallow deer, maybe like a lot of people know the fallow deer, like the antler, a sort of palmate, it's flat.
00:25:38
Speaker
I was gonna say and it gets wobbly at the end. It's just quite the right way of putting it. So they have this sort of this tubular beams and then they sort of go into like a palmate shape at the brow tines facing forward and the ones that are right at the top.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, just take our word for it. Just look at the photo. The reindeer were very interesting. I knew about reindeer herding, but I don't really consider that they were semi domestic catered. I guess they're technically managed herds, which is in that weird kind of wobbly stage between proper proper domestication and say wild species, you know.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, I guess they'll probably become domesticated in time. Maybe, we'll see. There's different approaches to kind of maintaining these herds. So I guess it really just depends. But moving back to another species that we have covered in the past, and is definitely domesticated, you're talking about the simple, the humble goat.
00:26:54
Speaker
Capra eucus. Which I know we have talked about before, especially as goats are mostly known throughout zoarchaeological circles as being a big pain because it's very difficult at times to differentiate between sheep and goats. Good ol' ovic caprid everywhere. Oh yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
I mean, unless you have like, there are some morphological differences where you'd be able to tell with visual inspection, but usually you just need a good pair of calipers and just just go for it. Yeah, so fun. Which again, chances are in Britain, while you do find goats, it'll mostly be sheep. If you see something that looks like a sheep, probably a sheep.
00:27:37
Speaker
Exactly yeah but similar to what we're talking about with donkeys there are a wide variety of breeds of goats and I guess probably the most famous European variation at least when I think of you know if you if you ask me to name at least one breed of goat this is probably the only goat I could think of is the alpine goat
00:28:01
Speaker
which unsurprisingly originates from the French Alps. Well, it could have been any of the Alps, they didn't have to be the French ones. Oh, I'll take it up with the French, I guess.
00:28:14
Speaker
So they are mostly famous, I guess, for being heavy milkers, which is a horrible turn of phrase, but it's the one I came across. They are specifically bred for being heavy milkers, and they're thus known as one of the premier breeds for goat milk to thus manufacture into other dairy products.
00:28:38
Speaker
And, you know, although a lot of those podcasts, obviously, we're discussing domestication from an archaeological perspective. It's really interesting to kind of get a more modern example of how humans kind of continue this process of influencing, you know, the the species themselves through breeding.
00:29:00
Speaker
because I guess something that would have been done in the past as well, because given depending on the types of settlement and their economy, they would have veered towards sort of one use as opposed to the other. So like a settlement in somewhere in Europe may have preferred sort of keeping goats for meat. So they would have been bred in a way that they would accumulate sort of like the largest amount of meat in the shorter amount of time. I mean, we still do it. Again, like not so much in Britain, because goat meat isn't really much of a thing.
00:29:31
Speaker
Speaking of meat, our next species is the common pheasant. There you go. How was he going to try even if you didn't want to tell me? There's someone who speaks Latin who is furious at us.
00:29:56
Speaker
That's all right. Even if you've not not heard him today, please, as usual, redirect all the hate mail to Tristan. Another technically semi domesticated species, the common phasic was actually native to some European areas such as the Balkans, but introduced widely across the continent over time, likely by, let's all say at the same time, the Romans. The Romans. Yes, the Romans. Thanks a lot.
00:30:25
Speaker
So the evidence of pheasant actually seems to decline post-Roman period, but rises again in the medieval period, as it likely became very popular as hunting game among those of high status. Again, a very similar kind of thread we're seeing with the Romans bringing in something, and then the medieval high mighties deciding that they also want that something.
00:30:48
Speaker
I mean, it says sort of in a very generic way, the medieval period, but I bet it was the Normans. It's always the same trend, like the Romans bring them over and say, well, make it just like Italy. And then they go away and then the Normans come and they do exactly the same thing. Wow. Just calling out the Normans. Apologies to any Norman podcast listeners. They do Norman time travelers.
00:31:14
Speaker
And we're going to continue with this bird theme for our last species that we'll talk about, which is weird enough, even though we are talking about Europe, we're going to talk about the Canadian goose. I mean, why not?
00:31:36
Speaker
So it's not really domesticated, but I'm going to be honest, I did run out of interesting ideas beyond the species we already talked about. I mean, I didn't think anyone really wanted to hear us talk a bit more about cows or sheep or any of those other species. I mean, it's really like cow, sheep and pig, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to keep it fresh, keep it interesting. This is a mini series and, you know, people want to hear the good hot takes.
00:32:06
Speaker
So I decided to talk about Canadian Goose because that's kind of funny to talk about in an episode about Europe. So, yes, they are not really domesticated, but they are not entirely wild either. Again, that weird kind of wobbly stage in between technically their semi feral or another kind of phrase I've seen thrown around is naturalized feral and
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, I've never actually heard that phrase. I kind of get what they mean. They were, you know, naturalized into the environment and are kind of just feral, running about, whatever. But even though the Canadian, they actually have a very weird introduction story into Europe.
00:32:52
Speaker
Obviously, Canadian goose have always had kind of access to parts of Northern Europe due to their migration patterns. But geese were actually physically introduced as well. And it's mostly due to weird royal business. So
00:33:10
Speaker
trend number four. Yes. The high status people need to have their species wherever they want. And weirdly enough, this happened in two different places. So in the UK, Canadian geese were actually introduced to King James II to a head to his waterfowl collection. Yes, he had a specifically a waterfowl collection during the late 17th century.
00:33:38
Speaker
Okay, weird, right? Also in the 17th century, King Louis, the 11th? Yeah, I almost said the ninth, but no, it was the 11th. In France, as a present from one of his explorers in North America, Samuel de Champlain,
00:34:00
Speaker
He also brought over Canadian geese in the earlier part of the 17th century. Was that also part of his waterfowl collection? Now they do not say, but I would not put it past King Louis.
00:34:15
Speaker
to also have a waterfowl collection. It's the fact that they specifically say waterfowl collection, which kind of implies the idea that he had
00:34:34
Speaker
a massive bird collection and was specifically like, oh, these are my my COVIDs and Corvids and then these are my waterfowl and these are my my domesticates or whatever. Like, what a weirdo. I'm sorry. Hot take. What a weirdo. Anyway, after that, guess what? They're everywhere now. So thanks a lot to King James and King Louie.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. They've given us the goose species we never thought we needed. Yeah, that's great.
Upcoming Case Studies and New Ideas
00:35:07
Speaker
As we ruminate about how royalty has single-handedly changed the kind of species composition of this continent, we will take a break and we will come back with our case studies. And we are back with archaeo-animals. We are talking about the zookeology of Europe.
00:35:26
Speaker
And it's, again, no one said this. We've said this. I don't remember what episode we said this. I feel like it was probably very early on, but we just decided this is the best part of the episode for everyone. Yeah, that and the video game episodes just, yeah. Listen, you know, it's about having self confidence and recognizing our strengths.
00:35:50
Speaker
And also, I feel I should call you out on it, because you mentioned earlier that this miniseries was not going to be on video games like previous ones, but we've not actually had a video games miniseries. So we should get on that.
00:36:05
Speaker
Oh,
Zooarchaeology of Pompeii
00:36:06
Speaker
I guess we've just done so many video game episodes, one after another, that I guess in my brain, I seem to be done a mini series. No, just just isolated episodes. Just thought I'd mentioned just just isolated episodes one after the other. But yeah, we are actually properly talking about the archaeology in this episode. And we're actually going to talk about something that I'm kind of surprised we haven't really talked about in
00:36:34
Speaker
previous episodes because it's kind of a big deal in archaeology. Two mainstream. Yeah, it's true. Two mainstream. Let's instead talk about very mainstream video games. But now video games mix with archaeology, not mainstream. Oh, yeah, no one's ever done that before. Novel, novel stuff.
00:37:00
Speaker
No, we are actually talking about Pompeii. Yeah. I mean, I guess, realistically speaking, no one really thinks about the zoology of Pompeii. There's a lot of other things going on that, fair enough, take a bit of precedence. Some more novel things happening in the excavation sites of Pompeii.
00:37:20
Speaker
So such like outstanding sort of like standing buildings material culture that sometimes you don't think oh but what about the animals? I mean clearly someone thought about the animals otherwise we wouldn't have anything to talk about in this case study. But for those who are unaware Pompeii is a site located near sort of modern-day Naples, Italy
00:37:40
Speaker
Of course, it is most famous as being the site of destruction from volcanic eruption in 79 AD, when Ash from Mount Vesuvius buried it along with Herculaneum. Although a tragic disaster, the Ash resulted in a significant amount of preservation that has provided archaeologists with a wealth of information regarding Roman life because it's almost like a picture in time
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those once on a lifetime or once in history events, because I don't think we really have anything comparable elsewhere. Obviously, we do have well preserved things here and there. But to the extent of Pompeii and Herculaneum, I don't think that's the case. And Europe anyway, like the amount of preservation and
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I think Pompeii is also most famous for those kind of plaster casts of bodies where because of the way the ash fell and then hardened, you can actually kind of see what the bodies looked like without kind of relying on skeletons. I was going to say, like, it's scientifically amazing, but also like just as haunting.
00:38:58
Speaker
It's, yeah, and it's one of those things that, you know, arguably I get why people really focus on that because again, you don't see that in a lot of other archaeological sites and it is very evocative imagery to like actually see, you know, there's a difference between seeing skeletons and, you know, on a level you understand that those are human beings, but, you know,
00:39:23
Speaker
the skeleton versus what you look like now are very different. But the plaster cast that came out of Pompeii, you can really see bodies and kind of it's very easy to imagine them as living beings. So I think that's always kind of captured a lot of people. And I know it's something that kind of really inspired me like pre going into archaeology.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, but I guess less is known about the zoo archaeological analysis that has been going on at the site, which, you know, as you expect, for sort of like that type of settlement is actually quite varied. I mean, like they've done what aside from, you know, like the excavation and collection or sort of bulk for the remains. After that, like a series of sort of stable isotope analysis have been carried out on the
00:40:10
Speaker
human remains as well, which sort of indicated a very diverse diet. So you'd have a variety of fish, poultry, sort of game meats, of course, like wild species, you know, that mostly consists of boron deer. Now, deer, I'm presuming they probably be predominantly fallow deer.
00:40:29
Speaker
say, sort of what tends to be more common in Italy. And in terms of domestic it's pork is a big one, but again, so a very popular one with the Romans, so like not much of a surprise there. And although like beef and lamb were also available, they seem to be more associated with ritual, surprisingly.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. But, you know, Pompeii was this kind of villa type of, I guess almost I don't want to say it's like a Roman era holiday place, but I mean, it kind of was in a way.
00:41:04
Speaker
So you have that kind of diverse diet that is representative of people of a certain status we're eating and enjoying. I mean, we do also have like evidence of burnt offerings sort of in place like the House of Amarantos. So there I think they've recovered remains of juvenile pigs and then the head and feet of cocks specifically, very specific and also interesting because juvenile pigs were also a delicacy.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was anyway. And I think these sort of remains have been compared to sort of local wall paintings and also sort of contemporary like texts or in the written record. And one of the interpretations going round or going round being brought forward is that these offerings were being given specifically to the lattice to have been the household gods.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, Pompeii is actually really interesting. Well, obviously, we've kind of covered why it's very interesting. But because of that level of preservation, you can really do a very kind of all encompassing zookeological and archaeological excavation and
00:42:07
Speaker
kind of investigation because, you know, this is a great example of that. You have these zorchological contexts where you have the remaining juvenile pigs and male, you know, roosters. And like you said, you know, there's some
00:42:24
Speaker
evidence of saying, Oh, the juvenile pigs were probably a delicacy. But because they were able to look at the actual kind of wall paintings, and have those contemporary texts, they're able to kind of triangulate and point out, actually, these are probably closer to offerings, because these are the kind of things that were the kind of aesthetics are being used. So in this book context,
00:42:48
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, we do we we bang on about context, obviously, as any archaeologist does. But this is like very specific context. I mean, how often are you able to not only look at a context of remains, but also say, let's double check the text and also let's double check what's actually on the wall paintings near the context? You know what I mean?
00:43:13
Speaker
sort of like imagining sort of like a writing on a mural saying place you're offering here, the little arrow. Well, I mean, you know, the very Roman at that time, particularly wall paintings and mosaics were very much kind of still lifey. So I get the impulse.
00:43:34
Speaker
Oh, no, I'm just being silly here. No, I think it's interesting to point out, especially if someone's not necessarily that familiar with kind of, you know, the sort of wall paintings that you would be dealing with, that is kind of what you would be dealing with. And it's very, because they're very kind of still lifey, everyday life type of depictions, it does feed into a lot of archaeological interpretation, you know, because they're probably painting what they know.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, so like, well, Pompeii needs no introductions, really. But also maybe I guess what it's lesser known off is like the eruption is the event that robbed us of Pliny the Elder. Oh, yeah, I always forget that moment of silence for Pliny the Elder. We've used a lot of Pliny the Elder in this podcast. So I can't remember if Pliny the Elder was the one who said that Severus had like 100 backs.
00:44:33
Speaker
that might have been someone else, but he gave us quite a lot of material. So
Birka's Trading Significance in the Viking Age
00:44:40
Speaker
we are very in depth to him for that. It's natural history, it's just gold. Every page of it is gold. Very accurate natural history depictions. What will we do without the father of natural history himself? Might be the elder. No misses, all hits.
00:45:00
Speaker
I don't know, stuff of like, I'm gonna climb myself out this rabbit hole, but I think one of the things that he described is once he was the smallest of manuscripts that was so small that it could all be rolled and placed inside a nut, a walnut.
00:45:20
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Madman. We stand. Anyway, moving from Pompeii, we were actually moving to somewhere pretty different. We're going to look at Birka located in Sweden in the modern day island of Bjorko.
00:45:37
Speaker
It's a pretty massive archaeological site and is very significant for those of us who do, well, not us, because I don't do Viking Age archaeology anymore. But for those who do Viking Age archaeology, you probably know what Birka is. So its major significance is coming from its really vital role in Viking Age trade, not only as a massive trading center, but it's also basically the kind of linchpin
00:46:06
Speaker
to the trading route between the kind of Norse
00:46:10
Speaker
ports of call and the Byzantine Empire. So for those of you who don't know, it's very easy to not realize due to, you know, contemporary depictions of Vikings and their unfavorable associations. But the Viking age trade was very extensive and went as far as the Byzantine Empire. And there's some really fascinating
00:46:36
Speaker
work that's been done looking at kind of the cross cultural exchanges that came from how extensive the trade was. So, thankfully, we have burka as this kind of site that really was the key to that trade route.
00:46:54
Speaker
So, so Berger was founded in 750 AD, and actually lasted for 200 years before being abandoned in 975 AD. And this idea of abandonment is also very prevalent in Viking Age archaeology. So I always found that kind of strange, but you know,
00:47:17
Speaker
Do we know at all what the reason behind the abandonment would have been? I don't know off the top of my head, but so I did Viking 8 archaeology when I was in my undergrad and kind of did it in my masters. And you just kind of end up seeing that a lot in interpretations. And I get why, because obviously you can kind of see abandonment in the archaeological record. But I always found it a very funny phrase to be like, yeah, and everyone got up and left.
00:47:46
Speaker
which I guess they did. But it's just it's just strange, especially for a site as big as burka, and as important as burka. Merle Like I said, the later phases, you'd see a sort of shrink sort of progressively until so they just went, yeah, okay, bye. Sarah We're good. Bye. Who among us wouldn't doesn't just feel like doing that, you know? Merle Just what collectively abandoned the settlement. Just an entire village just... Sarah Viking, the big mood, of course.
00:48:16
Speaker
So I'm done with this place. Yeah, I assume that's what they said. They said I'm done with this place. And then they just left it. And then that's how we get these great kind of weird sites that we have. And that's just throughout the Viking Age archaeological record.
00:48:34
Speaker
Well, I guess in a way, like it doesn't necessarily have to apply to like Birka specifically, but it just, you know, as trade routes change, and economies change, like some settlements are no longer as viable as they once were. So like they just, people move.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, but as a trading port, it was very, even if it has been abandoned, it is very representative, at least in its neurological record, not just of the kind of domestic needs, but of imported and exported goods. So one of the kind of examples that I thought of when
00:49:08
Speaker
kind of putting this together, was, you know, you have a lot of wild mammalian remains, but they are almost entirely fur-bearing animals, which actually include a lot of the species we discussed in the first segment of this episode. So like lynx, pine marten, brown bear. So that's probably indicative of a very robust fur trade.
00:49:30
Speaker
that said, based on the composition of bones, it's likely that the smaller fur-bearing mammals like foxes, squirrels, and again, pie martens were transported untanned and the paws are still attached. So again, kind of goes back into what we were talking about when it comes to that taphonomy that you associate with fur. Yes, I guess the unprocessed hides we've brought over and then either processed at the settlement or sold on.
00:49:58
Speaker
Yeah, which is interesting to be able to see that through the taphonomy of the site itself. But, you know, it obviously wasn't just fur trade, but, you know, based on the kind of composition of these archaeological contexts, it was definitely a big chunk of the trade that was that was being exported out where all these kind of furs. And it's not just fur, though.
00:50:25
Speaker
One of the kind of other really significant finds are the worked bone. And my favorite is the bone skates, which again is something you see a lot in Viking age settlements and Viking age archaeological sites.
00:50:43
Speaker
And it just delights me for some reason. So they were mostly made from cattle bone, but there's some horse bone as well. And they were made using the metacarpals or the metatarsals or like radii. And it basically works exactly what you think it would work. They kind of cut in half and used them as skates. I tell you what, they used to do that here in the UK as well. Oh, yeah, they did it, didn't they?
00:51:11
Speaker
you see them like even I think late medieval sort of almost like verging on post medieval period. I've seen I think it was a Coventry Museum that has some horse like Metapodials. I think it's all like late medieval and they're just interpreted as ice skates and like, oh, look at that. Yeah, I guess because my frame of reference for those in the UK is from York, which was, you know,
00:51:37
Speaker
its own kind of Viking center. So that's kind of in my brain. I was like, Oh, yeah, Viking age. But yeah, I mean, it makes sense that it would be kind of commonly used. And it's not just obviously these kind of trade exports at Birka either. There's also the idea of changes in subsistence. So one of the cool things about Birka is that you can actually see a shift in species consumed over time. So pre 9th century, you have pasture grazing animals such as sheep,
00:52:04
Speaker
And they were likely the primary meat consumed. However, post 9th century, the amount of cattle remains increases. And the reason for that is probably because the residents of Berkeley used to have the space to raise sheep. But as the port grew bigger and bigger because of trade being successful, you probably had to import meat because you didn't have any room. So you particularly would import beef. So very cool kind of shifting in trends there.
00:52:35
Speaker
So it'll be interesting to see whether, yeah. Well, I guess if you said that, yeah, the meat was primarily imported. I guess a lot of the beef that was found didn't have any of the primary butchery elements. It would bore me like the portion meat that you'd find. So implying that the cattle wasn't raised at the settlement. Okay.
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah, so
Conclusion and Podcast Information
00:52:54
Speaker
there you go. And it'll be exciting to as we end this episode, it'll be exciting to move out towards a bit of an unknown as we kind of enter areas of the world that we haven't really covered and aren't really familiar with. So join us for our next episode as we get out of our comfort zone a little bit.
00:53:15
Speaker
Otherwise, you can stay in your comfort zone and tell your friends to listen to our podcasts. You can subscribe and like, review, wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us on Twitter at archaeoanimals. As always, let us know if you have a very specific kind of episode idea in mind. We love taking requests because we have a lot to cover. Let's be real. Anything else, Simona?
00:53:40
Speaker
think you've covered it all? Yeah, so we'll see you next episode. Bye! Thank you for listening to RQ animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. You can find us on Twitter at RQ animals.
00:54:00
Speaker
Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institutions, employers, and the Opioid Podcast Network. Thanks for listening.
00:54:16
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.