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Cow-abunga! - Ep 06
344 Plays7 years ago
Modern domestic cattle descends from the aurochs (Bos primigenius). The dynamics of aurochs domestication is, as always when domestication is concerned, not well understood as of yet. They were supposedly domesticated in SW Asia some 8,000 years BP.
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Banter
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. We could have burned it, but my dad somehow put it in a freezer bag and it's in the garage. I don't know why.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is Archaeo Animals, and it's episode six, and today we'll be talking about cows. I'm Alex Trixpatrick, and with me as always is... Simba Palanga, the one that's fun at parties.
00:00:36
Speaker
You are fun at parties, even though I haven't been to a party with you. Or anywhere, really.
The Fame of Knickers the Cow
00:00:43
Speaker
The true tragedy of this podcast is that we actually haven't met in person yet. When we eventually meet in May next year, we should probably do a live stream or something.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, anyway, so this is our cow episode. I know everyone is so excited to hear about cows, but more importantly, to kind of slightly date us recording this, let's first talk about that big cow.
00:01:11
Speaker
Nickers. Nickers the cow. So if anyone's listening in the future and people have already forgotten about this big cow, we will put a link to the story in the show notes. But it's extremely big cow. And it's just so nuts that this happened like right while we were recording our cow episode.
Cattle Growth and Castration
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, because he's about a metre 94 tall, isn't he? Something like that. Yeah, we should we should mention that it's more than a cow per se, he's actually a steer, so a castrated male. So pretty big.
00:01:50
Speaker
boy oh my god it's an absolute unit like i like i remember like seeing the pictures again this will post it in the show notes but like when i showed you that didn't you did you immediately also think like what do those bones look like i just thought like oh photoshop oh it can't be then i opened it no it's legit okay it's a thing no it's a big boy and i was just like oh man i could probably murder someone with those bones
00:02:18
Speaker
They're like huge and robust. I could probably use one as like a club. But also very elogated because castrated. Oh yeah, that is true. We'll have to do an episode on castration, I guess, huh?
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, and to give a little bit of context for those who are not aware, castrated males in cattle or just castrated animals in general, I guess will tend to have will tend to be larger, but more than larger per se, they'll be taller because their bones are like more elongated, because I guess it delays the
Cattle Domestication and Origins
00:02:52
Speaker
fusion of the bone. So they sort of keep growing a little bit longer. Correct me if I'm wrong, because you're the science person here.
00:02:59
Speaker
No, I believe that's right. I mean, to be honest, I don't really look at castration as much because honestly, I'm hit with like thousands and thousands of bone fragments. I just, I can't. But yeah, but we'll probably get into that as we begin the episode, but just to give you like a little bit of context.
00:03:17
Speaker
knickers is about a metre 94 tall. And now usually, the average or like the maximum height for oroxen, so like the ancestor of cattle, used to be about a metre 80 tall. So this boy is bigger than an orox.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, because actually my partner was asking me when he was reading the story, he was like, oh, what would you think if you found those bones? And I was like, I would probably think it was like a weird auroch, to be honest. But as you said, it's even bigger than that, which is nuts.
00:03:52
Speaker
But more importantly, let's get into general cattle domestication. You mean more of break-all to me than Nickers. Yes, that is true. There is nothing
Cattle Biology and Domestic Role
00:04:00
Speaker
more important. Oh, did you see why his name is Nickers? No. Because there's another cow named Bra, like Brahmin, so they have the whole underwear set. I could honestly do a whole episode on Nickers the Cow.
00:04:16
Speaker
Oh my god, what a good cow. Part of me wants to contact my supervisor at the university and be like, listen, I don't think I can do this PhD research anymore. I need to just do a whole thing on this cow. It's just huge. Please send me to Australia. Funded research trip to Perth. Just study knickers.
00:04:38
Speaker
I just want to know more about that boy. That literally just hit me. It's been a day. Okay, let's do it. We're gonna talk about cattle in general. We can't always talk about knickers as much as I want to talk about knickers so much all the time. I want this to be the knickers podcast. Oh, God.
00:05:04
Speaker
We can always try and get a sponsor for someone who sells under one. I specifically want Knickers the Cow to sponsor our podcast to be honest.
00:05:13
Speaker
Wow, we're not even, we haven't even hit 10 episodes yet and we're already falling apart. Okay, so like back to cows. Okay, so cows belong to a very, very big family called the bovidae. And the family includes cows, of course, also bison, sheep, goat, deer and antelope. But they're also part within the family of a super family, which is not bovidae, but bovinae with an N.
Ethics of De-Extinction: The Aurochs
00:05:44
Speaker
And the super family Bob and A only has two genera. So you have boss, so which includes the now gone extinct, all rocks. All right. Yeah. Bison.
00:06:00
Speaker
just a little bit of taxonomic background on the, and the most per se, and I think, well, you've all seen a cow that they're, they're pretty big, pretty happy. They like to just graze on stuff and they do actually a fairly complex digestive system that allows them to process food like grass. I think, no, I think, is that, no, I think there's one of them, I saw that cattle horse that have actually sort of two stomachs.
00:06:29
Speaker
Is it close? It's hard because honestly as someone who's like really hyper focused on like zoo archeology and scientific zoo archeology, I generally don't know much about the living bits all the time.
00:06:46
Speaker
my interaction to cows is limited by the field of lovely cows. They used to be in my village and I always used to say hello and they were very curious and they enjoyed a little stroke from me but it's come to the time of the year where they've gone from the field and we don't say where they've gone to. We all know but we don't say.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, man, just a sidebar. But the most famous cows I've ever met are like two years ago, I went to the Ben and Jerry's factory in Vermont. And I met the cows there and it was amazing. Yeah. Celebrity cows. They help make your Ben and Jerry's. Who knew? I knew.
00:07:34
Speaker
But yeah, anyway, so again, cattle, when you find cattle, you're basically dealing with a domestic site, aren't you? For the most part. Essentially, yeah. Although you may find the odd aurochs
Archaeological Evidence of Domestication
00:07:52
Speaker
here and there. Shall we mention a little bit about the history of aurochs and domestication and
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, just a bit, I guess. I mean, I think at this point, everyone should kind of understand the general kind of ebb and flow of the domestication process, but specifically with cows, I guess. Yeah, because again, with domestication, it's not well understood when and where the old rocks and was domesticated and became cattle.
00:08:22
Speaker
At present, it appears, as of when this is being recorded, the 28th of November, cattle was domesticated just over 8,000 years ago in southwest Asia. Although, as far as from the information I could find about it, one of the main markers that has actually been used is just the sudden increase of
00:08:49
Speaker
boss sort of remains in domestic assemblages. Because boss are going by the genre name. So either these people are killing all the Aurochs and taking them all back to the settlement, or they were up to something.
00:09:07
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, you know, it's kind of the same story we get with most domestication, isn't it? We kind of have an idea, but it gets a bit fuzzy. It's a long time. We just know that we now have cattle. I mean, there are some markers that sort of like could represent sort of a clear definite, because we found remains of a
00:09:31
Speaker
possibly most likely cattle in Cyprus. And of course, there's no native wild cattle in Cyprus. So they must have been transported there. So if they were not cattle per se, they would have been sort of very tame or oxen, but someone brought them there. It's sort of the same story, like we'll get to that in a couple of episodes with one of the cat burials found in Cyprus. And of course, there's no wild cats in Cyprus.
00:09:55
Speaker
originally, so if we find any of our cats in the archaeological record, someone brought them in.
Cattle in Roman Times
00:10:01
Speaker
Someone's let the cat out of the bag and all. Basically what we're trying to say, domestication and cattle kind of go hoven hoof, I guess that would be. That was a bad joke. I'm sorry, I'm gonna leave the podcast now.
00:10:19
Speaker
Well, actually, just as a little bit of information, because, of course, as many people know, the Aurochs went extinct. It was a bit about the 17th century that the last one died in Poland. I think so. I'm not an Auroch person, per se. I deal mostly with cows, unfortunately. I don't think I've actually ever come across Aurochbones before, which is... I have not, no. It's funny.
00:10:47
Speaker
But one sort of interesting thing with a side of ethics for you, which we may not necessarily have the time to get into, but it'll be an interesting thing for the listeners out there to let us know what they think. Because in the 19th century, two brothers, the Heck brothers who were zookeepers in Germany, decided that they wanted to bring the Aurochs back. So they actually got a hold of sort of
00:11:14
Speaker
semi-wild cattle and modern domestic individuals and they try to selective breed them back to the aurochs. And of course, what they've achieved was an animal that looks an awful lot like an aurochs, about the same size, same colour, though can perhaps agree that even if it looks like an aurochs and it acts like an aurochs, it's not necessarily an aurochs.
00:11:38
Speaker
I also want that on a t-shirt. Which brings to a whole debate that I made inside of my head. And now thanks to me, you can all make it inside of your head too, and you can curse me and thank me for it later. Don't tell me all already. Should we actually try and resurrect extinct animals? I mean, you know,
00:12:04
Speaker
I would love to get mauled to death by, like, an auroch. So yeah. Can I interject really quickly here? No, you shouldn't want to bring back dead animals. I really disagree with that. Look, can we just point out, 1993, we found out that basically bringing animals back from the dead was a bad idea. Jurassic Park has nobody thought of that. That's what happens if we bring animals back.
00:12:30
Speaker
But to the bigger point is that if you do bring these animals back, a lot of the time they won't be the animals that were there in the past, you know, we have such, we've changed our environments so much that bringing these animals back, I don't think is really fair. And I also think, well, it's, you know, meddling with nature. And I think we're probably better trying to look after the animals that have survived rather
Butchery, Rituals, and Cultural Significance
00:12:56
Speaker
than trying to
00:12:57
Speaker
bring dead ones back. I don't know. That's my opinion on this, but I might be wrong. That's fine. It's actually explained it a lot better than I would have done because I'm 100% in agreement with what Tristan said. That was a take so hot that the producer had to come in.
00:13:19
Speaker
I'm also trying to steer you back into cows as well. That's completely fair. I feel you've left the, you've left the paddock a little. Oh, I'm just, I'm just hurting. I'm just hurting, but I heard these podcasts. Oh my God. Give me your location right now. I'm coming over and just beating you. No, no, that's no, that's not, no, no, that's not going to happen. No, not with that answer. Go back, go back to cars, go back to cars. Okay.
00:13:49
Speaker
But yes, if you have any ideas or opinions, just reply in the comments or tweet at us using the hashtag rqanimals. We'll have a nice debate somewhere where it is more fitting and we have more time.
00:14:03
Speaker
So identifying cattle bones. So now that we've already put out the fact that when you have a domestic assemblage, you're usually going to find cow bones. How do we actually identify them? I don't know about you, but I have a very bad habit of anytime I see any pretty big bones, I'm like, all right, that's a cow. And it takes me a second to be like, you should probably double check that, Alex, because it's just
00:14:30
Speaker
It just seems so easy to just be like if they're this size, they're probably cow.
00:14:36
Speaker
That's exactly the thing, because usually on a domestic assemblage, 90% of what you're going to find is either going to be cattle or sheep. But now, because of course what you find in the archaeological record will tend to be a lot more fragmentary, and also we have this bias in our head that if there's something large-ish, it's likely to be cattle, we sometimes tend to overlook not necessarily horse, but especially red deer.
00:15:01
Speaker
If you look at cattle, which of course back in prehistoric times used to be considerably smaller than it is these days, it's not completely outside of the realms of possibilities to mistake cattle for Red Deer.
00:15:18
Speaker
And of course, the skeletons of the two animals are actually fairly similar, even though like, you know, if you add the complete specimens in front of you, the differences are quite blatant. But then when you have very small remains of something that's roughly cattle sized, you're more inclined to just put it down as cattle. And the same can happen to an extent with horse. But usually, like, yes, if you do a double take horses, so
00:15:42
Speaker
different. Of course, we're talking about post-cranial elements, because with skulls and teeth, you can't really get it wrong like cattle and horse. I mean, I will say, to defend my Bad Zoo archaeology, I did just send some animal fragments out to get
00:16:02
Speaker
zoology by mass spectrometry done. And there was a bit that I was so convinced was a bit of cow, but it was so big, I wanted to double check if it was auroch and it was like a cranial bit. Turned out it was horse. Well, by the way, if it's a small cranial bone that you're not necessarily like, I mean, if you have a complete skull, then it'll be very blatantly a horse because the teeth are very different or the cusps, they're a lot more pointy in cattle. Well, the horse tend to have this almost squared, not always, but most like square chunky
00:16:32
Speaker
things. Very long, very long teeth. You can't miss it. We'll post some photos in the show notes. You can't miss them. I mean, all animal teeth are bad, but yeah, definitely. Alright, so we're gonna take a bit of a break. And after that, we will talk a bit more about what cattle remains actually indicate in assemblages.
00:17:01
Speaker
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Domestication Pathologies in Cattle
00:17:30
Speaker
That's WildNoteApp.com for your free 30-day trial. Now back to the show.
00:17:41
Speaker
OK, and we're back talking about cows this episode. So now that we've kind of talked a bit about the ins and outs of the actual morphology of the cow bones, or at least we attempted to, we talked a lot about knickers. Let's talk a bit more about kind of what we can extrapolate from cattle remains when we find them in assemblages. So kind of one thing that I want to talk about is that
00:18:11
Speaker
It's not unique to cattle, but I feel like you find it more with cattle. Pathologies related to domestication. I guess because cattle were not the only animal used for traction, but I think it was also the major one.
00:18:29
Speaker
So of course, like with cattle a bit, a lot more likely to find sort of bone growth like that. Yeah, cattle pathologies relating to domestication. So yeah, I mean, cattle aren't, you know, the only animals use retraction, but I kind of, at least in my brain, I associate them mostly with having specific pathologies that you can relate immediately to domestication.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm afraid I'm not massively knowledgeable in this department, but I think less spamming is the main one that comes to mind. Like this bone broke. Yeah, that's what I think of. That is usually like, it's been interpreted as being caused by incest and traction. So essentially, it's a chronic inflammation of the joints of the foot bones. Yeah. And I mean, am I mixing up horse? But do they, can you also get like bitwear? I know you'd find it horse, but can you find it in cattle as well? Do you think?
00:19:22
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:19:25
Speaker
Because again, I'm not entirely sure what sort of plows they used. True, yeah. I feel like I should know, but I don't. Yeah, this is something that I was very confident of, like, oh, cattle have that too. And now I'm just like, do they? But I mean, I guess the general point, though, is that cattle do have kind of those pathologies that, especially if you're not really sure what kind of animal you're dealing with, you know, those things might help out with IDing.
00:19:54
Speaker
Although I might be able to tell you more about guess what, like some some Iron Age and Roman information about cattle. You know, they can help us make interpretations about archaeological sites.
00:20:07
Speaker
Oh, this how? Yeah, my faves.
Roman and Anglo-Saxon Cattle Use
00:20:12
Speaker
Because one trend that is identified with cattle, especially in the Roman period, that you tend to find a higher number of cattle in your assemblage on more romanized sites as opposed to more sort of native
00:20:28
Speaker
So you like a lot more cattle and sort of what actual Roman Roman sites, especially military so like military thoughts, then just cattle everywhere.
00:20:41
Speaker
actually, more Romanite sites have a lot more pig as well, but that's a story for another day. And also, the shift from the Iron Age to the Roman period sees an increase in size of cattle. That's probably got something to do with the Romans bringing their own cows, as they did for essentially everything, like they're done with a fallow deer. Yes, we could hunt all the native deer that's already here, but no, we're going to bring the fallow deer from home, because we want to hunt something we know, because Romans.
00:21:09
Speaker
And the butchery practices will shift as well, because up until the Iron Age period in Britain at least, butchery would have still been carried largely on the ground and using a knife. So you'll find a lot of sort of small v-shaped cut marks on the bone, which sort of implies that a knife has been mostly used, but then butchery sort of becomes more systematic as the Romans start.
00:21:35
Speaker
colonising. So you'll have one feature that I particularly like myself for no particular reason is that you find holes in the centre of the scapula
00:21:48
Speaker
of cattle. And that's been interpreted as like, to put a hook through, maybe to hung up the joint and smoke it. Oh, okay. Although like, in the Romano British period, carcasses were generally hung. Anyway, but I guess you wouldn't have been hung by the shoulder. And I'm actually again, it's something I feel like I should know. When you've butchered an animal, where'd you actually hang it from? The butchers have never really looked, I must say. They also started to bring in cleavers.
00:22:18
Speaker
And I sounded way too excited for that. But you start seeing the chop marks that you're all used to, like a proper, nice and neat. That's the technical term for it. Yeah, how do you spell that? P R F F P U.
Evolution of Butchery Practices
00:22:38
Speaker
So yes, you get the chop marks, like a big one, they'll use it to separate the legs from the hip. So you'll actually cut off the head of the femur with a cleaver and then just go, yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
and separate the two. But just imagine something that isn't Roman for a change. Because you know, like I mentioned with in the in the Roman period, that you tend to find capital, or more like Romanized sites, but also especially on military sites. Yeah, you can also draw similar trends, or not similar, but like, trends of this kind, but completely different.
00:23:17
Speaker
later on, because in the Anglo-Saxon period instead, you tend to find cattle mostly in rural settlements, as opposed to urban. Which in a way is a bit weird, because you'd think that they'll keep the cattle in the rural settlement, then either butcher them or move them to the urban centre where they get butchered, but never mind that. So those were my five cents about Roman cattle.
00:23:41
Speaker
You brought up something that actually didn't even think about before we even did this episode, which is just kind of the butchery process of cattle, because it is very specific. And the fact that like, because when you mentioned it, I was like, yeah, I actually don't know what how they hang up cow either. Cleavers. So it's just one of those things that you just kind of don't really think about until you actually have to think about it, huh? Just actually, it'll actually be something very interesting to
00:24:11
Speaker
look into.
Cattle in Rituals and Liminal Spaces
00:24:12
Speaker
Because, I mean, when you're looking at cut marks, sort of in a cattle or any other domesticated sort of remains that you find that have butchery marks, it'll be interesting actually to see what a butcher would have to say about them in terms of kind of marks that are left on the bone and what sort of cuts of meat would you go for? And how do you actually separate a carcass? Because of course, you know, thousands of years have gone by, but I'm pretty sure some of the techniques are probably
00:24:40
Speaker
Largely unchanged.
00:24:42
Speaker
like in terms of what types of joints people go for and how to separate the carcass. I mean, I can't think of it being that different, say from the Roman period until now. Yeah, no, definitely not. It should more or less be the same, but I've never actually really looked into it, but you're right. That is really interesting to think about. I'm just going to go weird out my local butchers and ask, how do you butcher this animal? Show me where you cut it.
00:25:11
Speaker
Can you record that for me? I love a video.
00:25:17
Speaker
But yeah, no. I mean, the fact that, you know, no cattle are used in food as well as in the domesticated setting is the reason why we kind of associate not just zooarchaeologically, we associate cattle with domesticated assemblages. But even if you look in the material remains of the archaeological record, you can even see that, like, again, my area of interest research wise is more like
00:25:45
Speaker
later prehistoric, so Neolithic, Iron Age, things like that. And in the Iron Age, you see a lot of domestic items that have cattles on it. Like one of the things I always think of is like, what's it called? It's like something that goes over the hearth. I can't remember what it's called now, of course. There's one that is that's been found that has like
00:26:14
Speaker
cattle heads on them, like pots, stuff like that. You find that a lot. It's so associated that it becomes a kind of decorating trope, I guess. Merle So like, over the hearth? So like, does it have specific functions? Just something purely decorative that they found?
00:26:33
Speaker
I think it's something functional now. It's like completely slipping out of my mind. But I know, like, there's cauldrons, pots, things like that that also have like cattle emblazoned on them or, you know, images of cattle on them, which again, just kind of really iterates the fact that they are seen as a very domestic type animal, which makes sense. I mean, based on just everything we've just talked about.
00:26:59
Speaker
Sorry, I guess the least we mention about the ancient Greeks' fascination with bulls the better, probably. Yeah, that's good. That's fine, we're good. It's ancient Greece, bulls everywhere.
00:27:15
Speaker
And that just sounds like I said something else. It did for a second. It took me a bit. Yeah. Oh, God, my Sonyans, man. But it's not just domestication. We could also talk about the fact that cattle can be used in more cool, ritually tight
00:27:34
Speaker
abstract sort of thingamabobs, whatever you want to call it. I feel like we should get a soundbite for it, like ritual. I mean, that's basically how an archaeologist kind of think about it, isn't it? It's a very scary, terrifying word. I guess depending on the way you look at it, I guess that would be for another episode. Cattle is like this thing where like if
00:27:57
Speaker
When you if you look at like if you're familiar with kind of like the later prehistoric British discourse, I guess, in archaeology, there's this whole thing of like the idea of, you know, the sacred versus the profane did where they very separate spheres. But we have proof that clearly there was ritual elements in the domestic sphere. So, you know, yada, yada, yada, stuff like that. So cattle were kind of like that in between. If you had a Venn diagram of like sacred and like
00:28:27
Speaker
regular stuff, cattle were kind of right in the middle. Because again, there are those domestic connotations, but they also use cattle in, you know, a ritual here and there. The one that I can always think of, not necessarily ritual, but more of a funerary thing, is when I used to dig up in Swandro in the Orkney Islands, which is all the way at the top of Scotland, for anyone who doesn't know.
00:28:50
Speaker
One of the first animals I actually ever dug up was a more or less articulated cow that had been buried underneath the floor of a building, of a Pictish building, so that's about Iron Age.
00:29:04
Speaker
My thing was, I love me a good foundation deposit. I do love foundation deposits. But that was so cool. And again, it just kind of solidifies that idea of like, oh, it's a liminal space. It's kind of ritual, kind of domestic. I love
Notable Cattle Burials and Interpretations
00:29:22
Speaker
the word liminal. It's the best word ever.
00:29:24
Speaker
But of course, I mean, in that case, of course, it doesn't seem very accidental at all that a cow ended up in the sort of in the foundations of a building. But of course, we do have we do get a fair amount of articulated cattle burials in Britain. Yeah, we do. Because I've been like one of the main texts that I've read through like is Morris's publication investigating animal burials.
00:29:53
Speaker
ritual mundane and beyond. It's actually a tome of a book and it's really interesting. So if anyone's really into like animal bone groups or ABGs and just as well as complete skeletons, that should go to book because I mean, it does mainly look at purely just Yorkshire in the south of Britain. But it is a very comprehensive piece of research.
00:30:15
Speaker
Yeah. It was great. I had a lot of fun going through it. I ended up reading it from cover to cover, but that's me sort of sidetracking everywhere like I always do. But what I read in the south of Britain alone, 14 complete individuals total have been recorded in the south of England. That's for the late Iron Age out of
00:30:39
Speaker
out of the 99 recorded in total. But one very good point that the author makes is that people tend to, you know, they see a complete burial, a complete skeleton of a cow in a pit or wherever. And you think, oh, but surely, you know, that's not very practical. If a cow dies, or if you kill a cow, you're gonna eat it. Why are you not eating it?
00:31:00
Speaker
that's sort of what your mind thinks, oh, was it a cherished pet or maybe was it ritual because of this whole cow, you know, buried in a pit. But then if you think about it, I mean, what would people think hundreds of years down the line when they find all the pits that have all the cattle that died of foot and mouth disease buried in there?
00:31:19
Speaker
I mean, there's a very good reason why they weren't eaten. That was a very good point that was made by the author. Because sometimes it's all nice and good to find a nice, pretty piece of ritual. But at the same time, chances are usually the mundane interpretation is likely the correct one.
00:31:39
Speaker
Or maybe I'm just a disenchanted archaeologist that's been doing this for too long. I think we're opposites in that effect, but because my research is specifically on funerary rites and ritual, everything I see is ritual now. You haven't dug in the cold in the winter for four years.
00:32:00
Speaker
don't. It's not fun. Bring the archaeologist inside offer us a cup of tea please. Especially if you just dug up a cow because they are usually big and annoying, but not that bad because the bones are usually robust enough that you don't accidentally break them like I may or may not have done to a bunch of fish bones up in Scotland.
00:32:24
Speaker
unless the soil is very acidic, in which case you clean around the shadows and you see what shape it makes.
00:32:34
Speaker
But yeah, back to cattle burials. I think my, well, my favourite one, if I can say that at all. But one that particularly struck me that I found interesting, that was also mentioned in the text that I was talking about earlier, was one that was found in Dorset in Gossage All Saints. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I'd pronounce it.
00:32:58
Speaker
which is of course known because of all the kitties, but we'll get to that later. But what I did not know is that there was a they found a burial of an adult cow with a neonate cow that was halfway down the pelvic cavity. So like, you know, like you get with human remains, you get coffin births. Yeah. It is like that, but with a cow. How was that? Why does that seem so much worse?
00:33:28
Speaker
But birth is a beautiful thing, just maybe not when you're already dead.
Viking Age Cattle Skulls
00:33:33
Speaker
Well, that seems like a great place to take another break. To just leave everyone thinking about, you know, death. I mean, I guess technically our whole podcast is about death, isn't it? A little bit. Just notice that, I guess.
00:33:51
Speaker
Okay, we will take another break and when we come back we'll talk about a couple more case studies of some of our favorite dead cows. A cheerful podcast. Cleavers!
00:34:09
Speaker
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00:34:28
Speaker
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00:35:04
Speaker
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00:35:29
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00:35:53
Speaker
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00:36:10
Speaker
Okay, and we're back. I hope everyone spent their break thinking about casket burials. I mean, not casket burials, casket births and death, because we're cheerful and fun. And that's why everyone listens to this podcast. Invite us to your next party.
00:36:27
Speaker
Exactly. So now, you know, it's time for everyone's favorite part of this podcast when we talk about specific case studies that we definitely did tons of research on. But, I mean, we did talk a little bit about some specific case studies before, but I'm here to talk about one that I actually think about all the time, which is these
00:36:57
Speaker
Can you say that you think about it all the time and in my mind he just popped that meme of the guy that can't get to sleep? Is he thinking about something else? No, I'm just thinking about that cow burial. I just can't get it out of my head.
00:37:15
Speaker
But this one's so cool. It's just so cool to me. But there's a Viking Age feasting hall that was found in Iceland. And I hope I'm pronouncing this right. Hofstadir? I think. Hofstadir? This would have been a good point to have Albina back.
00:37:39
Speaker
I know, right? But this one I always remember because I originally was going to specialize in Viking Age archaeology, so I remember reading about this a lot. So it's a feasting hall, and one of the things that they found was loads of cattle skulls that upon further investigation were
00:38:05
Speaker
Mass slaughtered and probably put as hung up as decor, I guess, on the outside of the feasting hall. That's my kind of party. Yeah, see, like, I always think of that because I was like, that is a great vibe. I would love that at my house. I'm thinking about it for our new house that we're moving into. Like, that's so cool. But, you know.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's just, it's just so cool. I'm sorry. I'm not saying anything educational. I just think it's super cool.
00:38:36
Speaker
off you go, go butcher 23 cows. Sent me photos. But like, just like that image of having all those cow heads, you know, just kind of, you know, tastefully placed outside of a feasting hall. I mean,
Neolithic Trepanned Cow Skull Debate
00:38:57
Speaker
this is, this site is kind of known for being a very
00:39:02
Speaker
big hotspot for Pagan activity at the time. So you think it's something to do with that along those lines. But I mean, come on, that's so cool.
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah, they did. Those skulls were just very strange in general. It was weird butchery characteristics, but also the taphonomic characteristics were also quite strange, which is why I think, at least in my mind, this is probably one of the more famous cow remains that have been found in archaeology.
00:39:47
Speaker
you know, out of all those other many famous cow remains that we found in archaeology that everyone knows. But yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like we had to just mention that one, at least, because one, it's cool, two, it's gonna be the album cover in my next metal band album, and...
00:40:08
Speaker
And you know, I think it also kind of ties in that thing we were talking about in the last segment of how cows are this kind of liminal space of domesticity and ritual activity, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. No, just you're just not that excited about ritual like I am. I understand. I am very excited about ritual, just the sorts of equally disenchanted by it. I mean, I guess it doesn't have to always be ritual like the
00:40:38
Speaker
the article that we'll link in the show notes, specifically has it called like a ritual decapitation display at a Viking settlement. I mean, it could just be that they wanted to decorate with a bunch of dead cows, you know, no judgment, right? That could be in the cattle that you've killed for that one particular feast. I don't know how many guests were invited.
00:41:02
Speaker
True. I don't know if they found the guest list, but I can always look into that.
00:41:09
Speaker
But I just realized that the case studies that I have listed, they all have to do with horrible things happening to skull cowscalls. Just couldn't pick anything nice happening. Well, the other case study that I had, unless you have anything else to add about the cool Icelandic cow decorations. Go ahead. Is that the French cow?
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, so this one I definitely wanted to talk about because it happened this year. They found these Neolithic cow skull or a Neolithic cow skull that had a hole in it in France that they think is
00:41:52
Speaker
because from oh my gosh I'm gonna I'm gonna pronounce this right trepanation trepanation or trepanning trepan it trepanation yeah I just because I've never said that I've never said that word out loud I mean why would I ever say that word out loud just so you know it's a learning experience for all of us yeah do it in a way I'm sort of cheating because trepanation that's from the Latin because that's incredibly close to the Italian word for a drill so it makes an awful lot of sense
00:42:19
Speaker
Ah, okay. So I kind of cheat with that, like in taxonomic, like scientific species names, I kind of cheat a little bit. That's pretty unfair. But yeah, so they found this cow skull that had a pretty sizable hole. And the archaeologists that found it,
00:42:44
Speaker
I think that has something to do with experimentation in cranial surgery, which is a very interesting interpretation. Personally, I don't think I would have been able to make that interpretation myself.
00:43:02
Speaker
So I find it very confusing because of course I know trepanation was carried out a lot on people and I'm not entirely sure I mean I remember like reading about it and seeing a few photos but I don't remember what the size of the actual hole was but you think for trepanation it would have been something relatively small. Yeah they said it was the size of like a biscuit which is you know not helpful whatsoever. What type of biscuit? Yeah there's so many other types of biscuits.
Futuristic Speculations on Knickers
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Like, for the American listeners, we were talking about cookies and not Southern biscuits. Just gonna point that out. But yeah, the idea was that the archaeologists who, the lead archaeologists in this basically said, oh, you know, I've looked at trepanation in human skulls, and it's the same technique, because there's a bit of scraping that they found around the whole.
00:43:57
Speaker
So yeah, that's apparently how they came up with that interpretation, which is kind of wild. Okay, I didn't know about the scraping that was found on this particular skull. I mean, of course, the one thing that we noticed that there's no signs of healing, so it was already pretty dead or died soon after. Yeah. But the thing that confused me the most that you do actually find
00:44:21
Speaker
An awful lot of cattle skulls with holes very similar to that, and there's a much more mundane explanation for that. Pollacks.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, see, that's that's exactly what I wanted to bring it up because I will also be also included in the show notes. But in my lab, at least we actually have a Iron Age cow skull that has been completely obliterated by a pole axe. I mean, it's definitely a sizable hole. But when I first heard about the story, that's exactly what I thought of was like, are we sure it's not?
00:44:55
Speaker
you know, this whole acts because that's, that was the go to like in the time period, like sort of adds up and a 3000 BC or a bit of been, I don't know, well, Bronze Age, late Neolithic sort of thing. But still, like, so like, at least in the iron age, or the go to dispatching methods, like Polax, just again, the very scientific
00:45:19
Speaker
Exactly, yeah, no. And the fact that it's in the skull, I mean, that's a killing blow right there. It makes sense why that would be there. But apparently the two main theories for this was either they were practicing trepanation to then do onto humans, or they were trying to do trepanation on the cow specifically to save the cow.
00:45:43
Speaker
That's not so much hassle, though. Exactly. No, I think the authors even say that where they're like, probably not because, you know, you would just eat it as long as it wasn't, you know, dying of some kind of disease. So that seems unlikely. But even still, you know,
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, I should elaborate, I'm exactly the kind of person who would go through that hassle to save any living creature. But in the mindset of someone that has to be very practical about the way they go with their lives and the things that they do, like, you probably wouldn't go through that much effort to save a cow. Yeah. Unless it was like your only cow and your most prized possession and your beloved pet.
00:46:29
Speaker
True. I mean, one thing I will say, because obviously I can't... I'm not rejecting this hypothesis because I don't know enough about trepidation to actually have a good, you know, clean statement about this, but I will say what I'm learning as I work more on ritual
00:46:49
Speaker
ritual assemblages and specifically how people treated humans versus animal remains. There's kind of not really that much of a difference in a lot of cases, so I guess I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to actually be the truth. Not that we could find out truly, but you know what I mean.
00:47:07
Speaker
especially because of the scrape marks. Of course, if you deliver a killing blow with a polex on a cattle, why are you gonna go and fiddle with it and scrape it with something? Yeah, exactly. And actually, this article that we're gonna link in the show notes, actually specifically talks about how trepanation has been debated as it might also have been part of rituals. So once again, cows and rituals, I'm never gonna not die on this hill, Simona, and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:47:37
Speaker
Oh you know, balls with big horns, fertility symbol. The fertility goddess sacrificed it, sacrificed it.
00:47:46
Speaker
Listen, I like my zoo archaeology as abstract and conceptual as possible, so. But yeah, no, so these are probably, I would argue these are probably the two biggest cow cases that the archaeology world has come across. In archaeology, because if we take the whole of history together, then that would be knickers. Yes, knickers. I'm so jealous of the zoo archaeologists that are going to come across
00:48:15
Speaker
knickers. Can you imagine? Like, okay, so we still we have a bit of time. So let's let's make our last case study be the hypothetical future moment where knickers the giant steer is found. It's like, can you imagine how much of a big deal that is literally and figuratively? Yeah. Although like, well, this was social media preserve.
00:48:42
Speaker
hundreds of years down the line. I want to be that. No, see, that's the thing. I want to be that zoarchaeologist who finds Knickers, goes, oh, my God, let's look at this giant.
Determining Cattle Purpose through Analysis
00:48:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And I guess people might think that Knickers was in Auroch because of how big he is. Are they going to, you know, like find a link on the old web? I think, oh, no, that's so 2018.
00:49:03
Speaker
No, but then you find the textual evidence of, oh, apparently this giant cattle was like a big deal, truly worshipped among memers. Is that what they're... Yeah, but what if the memes are the only thing that is left? You know, imagine you didn't have any of the actual reporting done and you just literally had the memes. I mean, this is the real archaeology here, like the archaeology of memes. That's what I want. I believe that.
00:49:32
Speaker
that I guess they will dub this time the New Dark Ages. How dare you? I love a good meme. Actually, I had some questions, actually, because you guys were talking about ritual quite a lot. And then you talked a little bit about domestication. I mean, obviously, the use of domesticated cattle obviously had different uses.
00:49:56
Speaker
Now, in the archaeological record, do we see the difference between cows being used for meat, cows being used as beasts of burden, cows being used for milk? I mean, are there ways in which we're not just delineating between animal for work or meat and ritual? Is there a more fine grain pieces of evidence that we see as well?
00:50:19
Speaker
I mean, I think then that comes down to more of the general characteristics of the bone. Because, you know, if you're looking at butchery, usually you're looking at post meal butchery, aren't you? Or post butchery butchery. So you'll see cut marks, the things like that, the fine.
00:50:38
Speaker
cut specifically like you have like manuals like Binford Lewis Binford has a great manual on butchery recording that I'm actually using right now whereas specifically like if you find a cut like this here then it was probably used for dismemberment if you found a cut here this was used for skinning it's fantastic but yeah I guess that's kind of where you get to the nitty-gritty isn't it of kind of figuring out okay if this is
00:51:04
Speaker
Like how did they use this cow? But also one thing that would personally bring up is actually looking at the age at death. True, yeah. Of course by looking at the fusion of the bones and especially at the truthware, you can age the animals within your assemblage and then have what's like old I believe like an age at death sort of profile. Yeah. So if you see another that you have in your assemblage, a vast majority of very old animals, chances are they were used as beasts of burden.
00:51:32
Speaker
they were kept alive literally as long as possible so they could farm the land. Of course, for butchery, so for meat purposes, you tend to find sub adult animals. Adults, but not quite.
Unique Challenges in Mailing Bones
00:51:47
Speaker
Because you get them at their prime. Exactly, because I guess if you kept them until adult age, they would grow a little bigger. But I guess the amount of food and hassle, it wouldn't necessarily be worth
00:52:02
Speaker
the marginal increase in size, and I guess the meat would taste as good either. And then for milk, I think if you find a high percentage of juveniles,
00:52:17
Speaker
then of course you'll call like especially the males so that you can get the meal the meal yes well the meal as well but the milk from the cows yeah and you can add that with ice topic information i think as well looking at dairying and stuff like that which is stuff of course that i don't necessarily know off the top of my head but i know generally that's what you do but i guess if you've got the funding for that as well otherwise it's the good
00:52:46
Speaker
Otherwise, it's the good old little graphs and looking at tooth wearing, comparing, and assigning age classes to your specimens in your good old long-winded way. And then you cry forever. So basically on the Christmas wish list, Santa, I really want some isotopic analysis for these remains, please. Have you been reading my private documentation? Because I basically just asked for that.
00:53:15
Speaker
I mean, I actually, having a background in chemistry and archaeology, isotopes is like, oh, yeah, that's normal. I can do that. I don't have an isotope analysis machine. But I mean, how costly can it be? Come on, let's just go fund me. How about that? Let's start with an archaeo animals. Go fund me for isotopic analysis. I mean, I could do it. I've done it with fish. I assume it's the same stuff you do with cows.
00:53:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, it is probably it. The only difference between, I guess, the bone densities are different, but that's your area, not mine. Unfortunately. And if things go wrong in the machine, I can tell you, but once it's the bones, that's completely different. I mean, I'd rather just give you the bones, to be honest. I don't really want to do it.
00:54:03
Speaker
Oh, fine. All right. Post them over my way. Yeah. I'm sure. Oh, that'd be great. Could you imagine like putting bones in the post, like high bones in the post and like somebody in a like somewhere in Royal Mail, somebody opens it up and thinks.
00:54:19
Speaker
Oh, can you actually post bones? I don't know. This isn't on TV. You can. I mean, it gets kind of dicey. Like, I just posted loads of bones to Oxford, and I was told to tell the mailing department and the university that it's archaeological materials and nothing else.
00:54:39
Speaker
That'd be a good point for you to share your story of the chicken in the menu. Oh, okay. So what you can do is you can straight up send a completely dead animal, just a dead animal, because I've been sent a chicken that hasn't been processed into bones. Wait, what?
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah, I got sent a chicken. A friend of ours, Alison, who does chicken stuff, she does a lot of others do archeology, but she had, she was cleaning out her fridge and she was like, do you want a chicken? And I was like, yeah, I would love it for my reference collection. So she just sent over a dead chicken in the mail. It was amazing.
00:55:17
Speaker
Oh, okay. I mean, that's wow. Uh, that kind of, uh, definitely, wow. And you, you were fine with that. Yeah. See that, that's, that, that's the weird part for me. You were like, Oh yeah, I'll take a chicken and now.
00:55:31
Speaker
It's because I'm not a coward. Let's not have a PO box for our cute animals. Please, no. Oh, let's have a PO box. I need to build up my reference collection. So if anyone wants to send me all the dead animals, please do. It'll be great. My partner won't like it, but I will.
00:55:47
Speaker
I guess I think with bones, I think no, it's absolutely fine to send in the mail, I believe. I think the issue is only when you're sending outside of the EU, so they're being sent overseas, then there's all sort of forms and things that you need to fill in. I've never exactly sent people bones. Well, I'm trying to figure out because someone actually has a sheep skull for me in America, so I'm trying to figure out how to get that over here. Oh, easy. Just go through TSA, yeah.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, as long as it's not kinder eggs, it's fine. Excuse me, this is part of my religion. Excuse me, this is this is my friend. This is this is my emotional service animal. This is my comfort skull. I need this. I have a doctor's note. I need it. I'll freak out. I think it should be fine. It's just like that you might have to pay customs for it when it gets here. It's not like I think from the US and again, like
00:56:46
Speaker
I'm not awfully sure myself. I think it just gets a little bit more complicated depending on the species that you want to send over.
00:56:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Alex, you want to wrap this episode up then? Yeah, sure. All right. I think that does it for another episode of Archaeo Animals. As you know, you can always tweet us any of your questions at Archaeo Animals on Twitter or use the hashtag Archaeo Animals. And, you know, we'd love to hear your feedback and stuff like that. And please send us all the bones of cows because I don't have any of my reference collection.
Podcast Closing and Listener Engagement
00:57:24
Speaker
Cleavers!
00:57:34
Speaker
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. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institution, employers, and the uphill your podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:57:59
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. 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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Don't make a PO box. Come on. You know what's going to happen. You're going to get hamsters sent in.
00:58:27
Speaker
Oh my God, that would be great. I don't actually know what a hamster skeleton looks like, so I'd love that. Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to arkpodnet.com slash members for more info.