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Is There a Doctor in the House (Part 2) - The Zooarchaeology Special - Ep 49
669 Plays11 months ago
On Monday the 27th of November, 2023 we invited four Zooarchaeologists from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology to talk about the work they are doing towards their PHD and Post PHD studies.
Even though this was a relaxed pre-Christmas event, they were given just 15 minutes each and the time was strictly enforced!
The event was held in the upstairs room at The Red Deer Pitt Street Sheffield which is the spiritual home of Sheffield Archaeology.
Our speakers were:
Dr Maeve Moorcroft - What is in the Box? : Rediscovering a unique pathological bone collection.
Ewan Chipping - Cowology: Anatomy, Morphology and More.
Tracy Platts - What else did the Romans do for us?
Marina Chorro-Giner - I Like Turtles: Archaeology, Turtles and why they are Awesome!
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 49 of Archaeology and Ale, a free monthly public archaeology talk brought to you by Archaeology and the City, the community outreach programme from the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology. This month we have a treat for you. Four zoo archaeology students from the University of Sheffield were invited to explain their work in just 15 minutes.
00:00:51
Speaker
In an event we called Is There a Doctor in the House Part 2? The Zoo Archaeology Special, which went under the name of Is There Dr. Doolittle in the House? Hope you enjoy. Thank you.
Event Welcome and Concept Introduction
00:01:16
Speaker
Good evening, everybody. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Steve Hollings and on behalf of Archaeology in the City, I'd like to welcome you to our latest archaeology and ale talk. For the purpose of the podcast, we are at our spiritual home in the Red Deer in the heart of Sheffield. I want to thank Emily for hosting us tonight and hope you will enjoy the odd glass of superb beers.
00:01:42
Speaker
I assume, well, I can see some of you have already been enjoying them too well. Last year was the first time we held a Is There a Doctor in the House event, which went down really well. Although I was informed there wasn't enough animals or enough bones. So this time, it is time for the zoo archaeologist to fight back. And what we have nicknamed is Doctor Doolittle in the House. So our four victims, sorry, students.
Dr. Maeve Moorcraft's Transition and Project
00:02:10
Speaker
We'll have just 15 minutes to explain to them what they've been doing or what they've been working on for the last few years. So at first we have Maeve, if Maeve would like to take it away. Thank you. Thank you very much. So my name is Dr Maeve Moorcraft and I'm actually not an archaeologist. But please bear with me.
00:02:38
Speaker
So, I am not an archaeologist, I am actually a veterinary surgeon, but at the young age of 17, I couldn't decide between veterinary and archaeology, so I ended up doing veterinary. My father said, do veterinary, that's a proper career.
00:02:57
Speaker
But I've always thought maybe I should have been an archaeologist. So when I found out in the middle of Covid that my veterinary degree would actually get me on a zoo archaeology course, I quit my job, made the decision in one day, quit my job and went to do a course. I was initially going to come to Sheffield to do it, but because of the disgraceful closure of the archaeology department, I ended up going to do it at York.
00:03:24
Speaker
But I am doing some work with Umberton now. So, when I got to York, when they were giving us the tour, they showed us this. And they said, this is the Baker and Brothewell Collection. And I was going, what's the Baker and Brothewell Collection?
00:03:40
Speaker
My dream was to use my veterinary knowledge and expertise after 30 years and find a way to combine that with my passion for archaeology. And when they told me what this was, I will admit I nearly trampled some of the young other master students to be the one who got to help catalog the Baker and Brothewell collection.
Baker and Brothewell Collection's Significance
00:04:03
Speaker
So who are Baker and Brothewell, I hear you ask. So John Baker was a vet.
00:04:09
Speaker
with a passion for archaeology, so I identified with him already. He, for about 40 years, was the head pathologist at the University of Liverpool Vet School. I know many vets who he taught. And he became friends with Don Brothewell, who was an archaeologist, and who worked in zoo archaeology initially in London, and then human paleoecology at the University of York.
00:04:33
Speaker
They wrote the book, you can see there, Animal Diseases in Archaeology, in 1980. And it was a really important book in its time, I believe, in that it was the first clear guide. Archaeologists aren't trained in animal diseases and in pathology. They have enough to learn.
00:04:51
Speaker
So this book actually gave them pictures of modern examples of pathology, the actual effects diseases can have on animal bones and archaeological examples, and then written descriptions. I tried to get a copy of this book. I couldn't get one in the UK. And I paid over £100 to get one shipped from Montana in the end. And I treasure this book.
00:05:18
Speaker
So what is the Baker and Rotwell collection and why is it important historically and how can it help us with pathological specimens from archaeological sites? So because of Baker's absolute passion for pathology he was in a unique position in the University of Liverpool seeing all of these animals
00:05:41
Speaker
The ones that were put to sleep or that died and were having post-mortems. He then had access to build up an amazing collection of animal bones over the years. And Don Brothewell was collecting some as well. But I have found out as I start to work my way through all the boxes. If you see in the top left hand corner, unfortunately it's got a shine on it.
00:06:03
Speaker
These bones, some of them are in the original containers. There's ice cream tubs, there's biscuit tins, there's cardboard boxes. And people obviously found out that John Baker was collecting Weird and Wonderful, so they started posting him. So that is the 1976 postmark. I think it was only 79p, so you can tell how long ago it was. And under the shine, that is addressed to the University of Liverpool. And somebody sent him, presumably a vest,
00:06:32
Speaker
three deformed piglets. So the skulls are deformed, they don't have proper acetabulum in the hemipelvus there in the middle and on the rice the top bits of some of the femurs are actually not developed at all. They look like they've been sharpened into a point, that's actually how the poor piglets were born. So there was no connection in the upper part of the leg at all. So
00:06:57
Speaker
In the book, a very important point that they make, which is why this collection is so valuable, is anyone working in the field of animal paleopathology requires access, if at all possible, to a comprehensive collection of specimens from modern mammals. And the important bit is on which an accurate diagnosis has been made. And they make the point that, unfortunately, such collections are very rare.
00:07:24
Speaker
So Baker and Rothwell basically made such a collection. And this is really important. These bones have been sitting in these boxes for decades. And David Orton, who's head of the Zoo Archaeology Department, said it would be so good to have a vet help because there are handwritten clinical notes with these specimens, with diseases he hadn't even heard of, like who's heard of pseudo-hyperparathyroidism and that sort of thing. All of you, I'm sure.
00:07:53
Speaker
So when I said, please, please, can I be the one to catalogue this? He was like, yes. And I found the project I was looking for to combine my veterinary knowledge with my love of zoo archaeology. So we want to make this available. I'm cataloging them on a database. I'm taking photographs of lots of different angles to make it freely available. That's very important to archaeologists all around the world so that when they find something weird and wonderful,
00:08:19
Speaker
I just might have been able to put a copy of exactly that and it hopefully will help
Cataloging and Specimen Analysis
00:08:26
Speaker
them. And Vets would be interested because this is quite an important collection historically. And it's a complete treasure trove. I say it's like Christmas Day. Every time I go up to York, I'm going on Thursday. This was one of the first boxes I opened and I mean, it's literally, you know, brown paper packages wrapped up with string. These are a few of my favorite things.
00:08:46
Speaker
to quote the sound of music or whatever that film was. Not only do you have the bones, but you actually sometimes have a clinical history, which is really, really rare and really valuable. And this handwritten note, this is horse metatarsals. It actually says, injury six hours before the horse was destroyed due to the hind legs going down a gap in the floor at the back of the horsebox.
00:09:14
Speaker
where the gate was down. And they've even drawn, can you see the little picture of the horse to show where his back legs went down? So I know, I mean, this is amazing. So I know exactly what happened to that poor horse. And if you look on the bones, if you look along, you can see where the bone was scraped on both of them. One leg, they probably could have saved them, but that happening to both legs. There was no chance. So we know what can cause that kind of injury.
00:09:41
Speaker
and even better sometimes there's a timeline for the pathology which is really unusual and really valuable to have. This is horse again, femur with osteomyelitis which is infection in the bone and bacteria were literally eating their way out of the bone. See the two holes in the picture on the left and then a close-up on the right and again little handwritten notes that are like 50 years old in some cases saying four months so we know that it can get that bad in four months
00:10:10
Speaker
That doesn't take years. That can happen that quickly. And some of the disease names have even changed since the 70s, which again is where David said it was really helpful to have a vet who would know. So I'm updating the diagnosis, in some cases, on the chart. The Scurvy Dog. I feel like I'm in a pirate film even saying that.
00:10:31
Speaker
Scurvy. You all know about scurvy and sailors at sea having to eat oranges and limes. But dogs do not need to take in vitamin C in their diet. The only animals that cannot make their own vitamin C are people.
00:10:47
Speaker
The primates and guinea pigs bizarrely and some I think it's species of fruit bass. Everything else can make their own vitamin C so they will not get scurvy but it looks like scurvy. So in the 1970s when John Baker was recording this he put it down as a dog with
00:11:05
Speaker
scurvy. It isn't. It's actually hypertrophic osteodystrophy. But even now, that's what I call it, HOD, but it is now apparently called Metaphyseal Osteopathy. So again, names change. So it's important we keep this up to date. This is my favorite case. There's loads I would like to show you, but I don't have time, Steve. So I will show you this one. People are eating as well. Oh, gosh, are you nearly finished?
00:11:36
Speaker
And you're closest to the screen as well. At least it's phones, there's no sort of bits. Right, this, again, you can't see the writing, but see that little handwritten note? What that says is what is written down below there. So this was a horse that was in a trotting race, you know, the little light carts?
00:11:57
Speaker
So the light Roman chariots, I always think of them as, they go exceptionally fast. This poor horse crashed into somebody, or well, a horse or the cart in front, presumably, and the shaft of its own cart went into its shoulder joint. So they took it out, they'll have treated it, they'll have cleaned it, they'll have given antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, expecting the horse to get better. It didn't. It must have got worse and worse and worse and a bigger and bigger lump.
00:12:23
Speaker
And in the end they put it to sleep and they did a post-mortem and you can see why that horse was not getting better. What they found in the PM was the brass end that was on the tips of the shafts of the cart. The brass end had stayed in when they pulled out the shaft, it left the brass tip. So the body, I mean look what the body can do, it's amazing.
00:12:44
Speaker
It was trying to seal off this irritant, foreign body that had been left in the shoulder joint. I actually think that is beautiful. My friends think I'm very weird. I hope I'm among understanding friends here. It's like modern sculpture. That is an incredible specimen to have and we know exactly what happened and what caused it.
00:13:07
Speaker
Now, I wouldn't be expecting archaeologists to find many of those, so where the collection is going to be more helpful is the common pathologies that they see, and
Euan's Research on Cow Morphology
00:13:18
Speaker
osteoarthritis is one of the more common. A lot of us will end up with osteoarthritis, it is due to wear and tear.
00:13:25
Speaker
horses and cattle that are worked hard will get arthritis and if pets live long enough to get old a lot of them will end up with arthritis and there are some things that are really specific. Can you see there are grooves? If you look at the middle picture on the left hand side there are actually grooves in the bone. That is where the cartilage has been worn away and you have bone literally rubbing on bone.
00:13:49
Speaker
and it has worn grooves. This would be extremely painful. If any of you have fat older dogs that are limping, please, please make sure you get anti-inflammatories for them because this is what their joints might look like and every step will hurt. The other thing is the shine. Can you see this? If you look both the middle one and on the right hand side, there's a slight shine that's called hibernation.
00:14:13
Speaker
which is a word I love, and that again is where the bone has literally been polished by the other bone. Another example is traumatic injuries. One of the more common things that they see is three different equine fractures. The one on the left was a race course injury. Horses, if you imagine, all of their weight when they land down after a jump, and the way they have evolved, you just have basically one toe, if you like.
00:14:40
Speaker
The force, if they land badly, the bones can literally shatter. And that's what happened to the one on the left. The proximal phalanx shattered into eight little pieces. The next one, it was trying to heal. That's the same bone on the bottom with a little chip fracture. And it's trying to heal, but obviously wasn't doing well enough. And the one on the right is awful. That is a complete non-union. The bone, I mean, it looks like it sort of died almost.
00:15:07
Speaker
No healing at all. Presumably there was much too much movement to get any kind of a callus. I'm a second favourite one because I'm nearly out of time. If any of you know anybody who has cats and loves their cats, please make sure they are not feeding them on liver every day.
00:15:24
Speaker
This poor cat, the owner spoiled him or her rotten, and for six years the cat had nothing but best liver, thinking they were doing it a favour. Liver is very high in vitamin A, the body cannot get rid of vitamin A, so it builds up and becomes a toxic problem. And the way the body reacts is to make new bone. If you look at the middle picture, which is the underside of the cat's skull,
00:15:49
Speaker
It's completely fused to its neck, all the vertebrae in its neck, and it's like almost somebody's put concrete down underneath the vertebrae. They look solid. And on the left-hand side, the skull is in the top left-hand corner, and then just next to it is the thoracic vertebrae and the lumbar vertebrae. That's broken after death, so the whole cat's spine was fused together, and he slowly turned into a living statue.
00:16:16
Speaker
and on the right you have his leg, front leg and again that is frozen solid so this cat would have been like that hardly able to ease it should never have got this bad luckily nowadays people are aware I've seen milder versions of that sort of 30 years ago when I started but you don't see that nowadays
00:16:38
Speaker
And there will be loads more interesting stuff I could tell you but I am out of time. I'm just starting on the bird and the exotic section and I have emus with scoliosis in their spine and a monkey skull with osteoporosis and look at the
00:16:57
Speaker
Trico Bazaar's bottom row, second one in. They are hairballs from a cattle's stomach that goes rock hard. They were believed to be magical in medieval times, that it could protect you from poisoning. And that's it. I'm out of time.
00:17:16
Speaker
with our second speaker who is Euan who will introduce himself and what he's been doing. Hello I am Euan I'm a teaching technician at York so I'm staff here but this is really things that are to do with my PhD
00:17:32
Speaker
which I've been doing for quite a long time. I've been doing it part-time, so this is kind of the culmination of about six and a half years of work and it should be submitted very soon. And obviously the last thing you want to do when you're submitting a PhD is think about a PhD. So I'm going to present this without thinking, so we'll see how that goes.
00:17:49
Speaker
I should say this is like a very quick overview of a whole bunch of things that are very very complicated and I'm not going to explain it all but it's a prime question you can come and talk to me after it and it's something I like to call cowology, the study of cows and I think this should be taught in every university curriculum. No bias.
00:18:09
Speaker
So I gave it the kind of subtitle of anatomy, morphology, and more. So we're going to look at a little bit of anatomy, really kind of looking at how cranial function in cattle relates to various things that cows might do. And that's through a method called finite element analysis, or FEA, which we'll refer to a bit later.
00:18:31
Speaker
The main kind of thing I want to look at is, are there differences in the crania of cows and aurochs? That was the main kind of thrust of my PhD. So really kind of placing the animals at the center of the research and considering humans as just part of the story of cows. So kind of flipping what we might do, usually in zoology. And then I put Anne Mark's, it's kind of like a carte blanche cop-out of just other things that I might talk about, if I remember. So we'll see how that goes.
00:19:00
Speaker
So this all started a long time ago with me going around and visiting every single museum collection that would let me through the door. So I went to loads of places, I photographed all of the aurochs and all of the cattle I could literally get my hands on and I did photogrammetry on them to create 3D models so you can kind of see there me shuffling around a cow skull taking a whole bunch of pictures which we can then stick into some software and
00:19:30
Speaker
make some really nice 3D models. So there's one spinning round which is a bit of cow skull which is all smashed up. Using some more software we can then start to put little dots all over the skulls. These are called landmarks and I guess the best way to kind of think of this to an archaeological audience is to be like this is like a GPS survey on a skull. We get x y z coordinates that we can then look at and compare loads of different specimens.
00:19:59
Speaker
And at the end, after some more processes, I should say this takes about two years to get to this point, so you've got the quick version. After a lot of work, anyway, eventually we get a graph. So this graph basically shows us the major axes of shape change in skulls. So we've got the red group there, which are aurocs, and we've got a big blue group there, which are just our domestic cattle.
00:20:23
Speaker
and you might see that they're kind of nicely separated. So this is really just telling us that aurochs and domestic cows do have significantly different cranial shapes. And there's a couple of static pictures on this graph that you can see and if we look at the one labeled PC1 you can see you've kind of got like wide skulls towards the left and we've got some more slender skulls towards the right and as we look on PC2 there we've got kind of
00:20:51
Speaker
very convex caves skulls at the top and very concave skulls at the bottom or you can just look at the handily moving images on the screen that are warping between the two different specimens we've got here so they're moving between aurochs with that very kind of concave slender shape into cows with a more wider kind of shape and you can see the whole cranial facial region is kind of bending in on itself and that's really a process of domestication
00:21:23
Speaker
So long.
00:21:25
Speaker
That wasn't enough. I wanted to punish myself further. I start to consider, well, how are they changing? We know they're different, but in what ways? So I decided to look at size as being a major difference that the archaeologists have cited between aurochs and domestic cattle for years and years, as well established that they're very different in size. So I plotted size against shape in a regression. And I basically wanted to see how the regression lines
00:21:55
Speaker
lined up on the graph. So whether they were parallel, which would tell us that size is a major factor, but the shape vectors are the same. Whether they're converging, so they're different, but they're going towards a common shape, or whether they're diverging, so they're moving away from each other.
00:22:15
Speaker
And from all of this, and to cut a long story short, we basically worked out that orox and cattle are actually diverging from each other. So they're moving further away from each other in terms of shape. So the last time that orox and cattle were the same was when they were all orox, right? When they were domesticated and from that point they have been progressively getting further and further away from each other in terms of shape.
00:22:39
Speaker
So we started to think about why that might be and what factors influence shape. A lot of the skull is to do with what you can get in your face, so eating. Most of the front of the face is all to do with just how to get things in. You can see a cow there eating grass. That's Miss Licky. Every time I go in the field, she's desperate to lick you all over.
00:23:02
Speaker
So we looked at her a little bit to find out how she was eating and basically eating or any biological process in living animals, as archaeologists we tend not to worry about it until we get the end product, the dead thing, right? So now we're kind of moving a little bit into more zoology biosciences. So I wanted to work out how a process in a living animal could influence its skeletal morphology. So
00:23:27
Speaker
To do this, we used finite element analysis, and this is a technique that engineers use to simulate buildings, bridges, so they can mock, load them with stresses, and see if there are weak points, anything like that. So we were going to simulate biting to see are there differences in stress and strain between aurochs and domestic cattle. Unfortunately, we need muscle data to do this.
00:23:49
Speaker
does not exist. No one has thought to produce this for cattle. You can get it for a staggered on, anything like that, not for cows. So we had to get a cow's head, which we dissected to get out the muscles. We measured all of the fiber links. We got the data from that, and then we loaded it into some software where we put in the major muscles that we're using. So the masseters, the medial pterygoids, things like that, and some vectors of biting, which you can kind of see there all labeled up.
00:24:20
Speaker
This software is very clever. It goes away, does its thing and basically spits out some heat graphs. We can kind of manipulate these to see where the most stress is on the skull. So you can see there's a skull that which is kind of going hot and cold. So we can play around with that until we see the differences in the skulls.
00:24:39
Speaker
And so if you look at the table there, you'll see there's domestic cattle and aurochs sort of situated next to each other. And as we look, probably the anterior, the middle row is the most clear. You can kind of see aurochs have slightly more cooler colors than domestic cattle, possibly suggesting their skulls are slightly better adapted at biting.
00:25:00
Speaker
There's some more tests we can do and one of them is called the mechanical efficiency of biting. So this is literally just how much of that energy generated from muscles is converted into force in a bite and aurochs actually have a more efficient bite force as well so they're better able to produce energy in their muscles and bite on something.
00:25:18
Speaker
So it might be to do with what they're feeding on in a wild environment. They're feeding on branches, twigs, grasses, all that kind of stuff. Whereas cattle, at least modern cattle, probably have a much more homogenous diet. It's probably much easier to eat. Another area where I noted quite a lot of change in the different shapes of skulls was actually in the posterior of the skull, in the horns and the frontals.
00:25:42
Speaker
And so I thought this might be to do with the different sizes of horns. Orox, if you've ever seen an Orox skull, have absolutely enormous horns. They're like comically large, too large. And when we compare that to domestic cattle, they're obviously much more reduced if they even have horns in a lot of instances.
Impact of Domestication on Cattle
00:26:01
Speaker
So I thought it might be something to do with literally the anatomical architecture required to support these enormous weights hanging off the side of your head. So I went back to my cow head that I had. I chopped off the horn and managed from that horn to approximate the mass of horn. We extrapolated that onto a whole bunch of more models.
00:26:25
Speaker
So we could then do a very similar thing. We could use FEA to load up these models to work out where the different stresses and strains were coming in a cow literally just supporting its own horns. So the chart on the right there you can see is just the mass of horns loaded onto these models.
00:26:41
Speaker
domestic cattle have very very low stress there you can see it's very cold because they have very light horns i think they're only some like 100 grams which is not that heavy or rocks off the other hand very high stress all over the back of the skull there because their horns are nearly three kilos each
00:27:00
Speaker
Which is interesting, but it's basically saying as something is heavier, you get more stress. That's not really news. We're not breaking the boundaries of physics here. So I did another test, which was to scale up domestic cow horns to as if they were the same proportion as aurochs. So they're relatively the masses are now the same. And you can see on the chart on the right, you've got a domestic cattle and now the posterior aspect of the skull is completely red. They're very, very high stresses there. And if we compare that to our aurochs, less stress.
00:27:30
Speaker
So the morphology of cattle is actually less well adapted to having very large horns. So something has happened throughout the process of domestication, throughout their evolution that has made them made their anatomy less resistant to having big headgear.
00:27:51
Speaker
And so we kind of got to a point where it's what does that all mean, which is currently what I'm writing up. So we just gave some pictures instead. But it's basically this process of throughout time, aurochs and cattle have interacted different ways with the environment. Humans have obviously had a massive impact on cattle.
Tracy's Insights into Roman Butchery Techniques
00:28:09
Speaker
and change their trajectory, change their morphology in such a way that it's actually impacted Cal's ability in real life to perform specific functions. So for example to have very large headgear or even just to eat and the forces that are generated throughout that. So that's probably where I'll leave it and I'm happy to take questions or enjoy a stunned silence.
00:28:36
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tracy, I'm a PhD student, and I'm due to Andini with February, so I'm on the right upstage now, so excuse me if my mind wanders. Can I say first of all, I think it's really important to try and get a Monty Python quote in wherever you can. It's very much into that. Yeah, I managed to sneak Blessed Are The Cheesemakers into my undergraduate.
00:29:06
Speaker
So what else did the Romans ever do for us? What I'm researching are some aspects of Roman butchery, in particular, which explains why I'm holding a cattle scapula. I'm looking at cattle scapula in particular, as I say. I'm looking for evidence that is related to curing processes. The first thing that I'm looking at is
00:29:36
Speaker
perforations in the blade of the scapula which is sort of here. I don't know if you can see the scapula blade is really thin and fragile. These have been interpreted as hook marks.
00:29:51
Speaker
whereby a large hook's pushed through the scapula and then it's hung either in a smoking oven or a vat of brine for curing purposes. As you can see, the blade's very delicate. So what we often see is more like this. You can still see where the hook or whatever was driven through the scapula has made the damage. And then the scapula
00:30:22
Speaker
fragments from the hole. We also see the scapula spine, which is this bit, and the acromion process, which is the pointed bit at the end. That's been very often sliced through, chopped off from the bottom. And then the glenoid cavity, which is this part, this is what articulates with the humerus.
00:30:46
Speaker
Thank you.
00:30:52
Speaker
chopped and trimmed through the bottom. Very often there's very little of this left. And what this has been interpreted as for chopping it through to make the curing medium penetrate the meat more easily. This is what they think.
00:31:15
Speaker
We also see shave marks which are a lot more difficult to get a good photo of. These are usually on the borders which are thickened and they're interpreted as sort of scraping the last of the cured meat from the bone. The cured meat's toughened so harder to get off.
00:31:37
Speaker
It's all right, Tracer, that the finished eating now isn't it? Yeah. Give me a little more graphic if you like. No, it's all bone. It's nothing gross. Sometimes we see the whole suite of all of the evidence on one bone, sometimes not. And very often, because the blade is so fragile, it will have fragmented so much that it would be impossible to see the hook damage.
00:32:05
Speaker
This is the suite of evidence I've been looking for. So it's been quite widely reported from the 1970s across the North Western Empire, really, including Britain. And it's thought to be a Roman phenomenon.
00:32:29
Speaker
So what I'm looking at is how widespread it actually is across the Central Empire, where it might have started and how it spread. So the idea was to record as many assemblages as I possibly could from different site types, different periods, both Roman and Iron Age, and
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah, to see how widespread it was, where it might have started. But I started my PhD in 2019, so things were just getting started and Covid hit. So I got one assemblage up to Sheffield the day before the university closed.
00:33:20
Speaker
Colin was involved in a... No, he wasn't. No, we won't mention that. We won't mention that. We'll just say that I looked at some of it in my dining room. There you go. My first overseas trip was planned for April, May that year, 2020. It eventually took place January 2022, so lost nearly two years.
00:33:49
Speaker
But these are the sites I didn't manage to look at myself, basically crammed into a year and a half, which should have taken three years, but there you go. You're like it was just travel widely, don't you? Yeah, well it's, you know, it was hard work but someone had to do it.
00:34:10
Speaker
It was busy, but yeah, I'm not complaining. As you see, there are gaps. I mean, the availability of the material is a large thing, whether you can get access, where you can get access. But to supplement this, I was very kindly provided with
00:34:34
Speaker
quite a large number of data sets from other researchers, which if they're using the same methods that I have, it's very easy to incorporate that into my research.
00:34:51
Speaker
The main ones come from the Netherlands and a few from Switzerland, a few from Austria, because they've recorded in a similar way, a few from the UK as well. Yeah, so they've padded it out and also looking for more evidence in literature where I can.
00:35:18
Speaker
This is what we started with. And this is new evidence I found from Roman sites. As you can see, it's quite widespread in Alpine areas. There is some evidence in Italy.
00:35:43
Speaker
I found evidence in one site in Portugal. This particular site was a just Roman site. It was a Roman founded city. There was no archaeology before the Roman levels and none above. So that was quite interesting. And there had been other evidence found there as well of other changes that are associated with Roman sites, as in larger capital.
00:36:10
Speaker
One site in Spain, this was, it was a military site in the early Roman period and then developed into a town that later there was evidence there as well. I recorded one site in France, in northern France, that was a really interesting site. It was made up mainly of cattle scapula. It's still being, not cattle scapula, made up of scapula of
00:36:38
Speaker
cattle pig and sheep. The site's not yet been reported but they're thinking it looks like a sanctuary of some sort and the evidence that I've been looking for it wasn't only on the cattle scapula it was on pig and sheep as well which I've not seen in any other site at all and I've not seen it in any literature so that was quite unusual.
00:37:05
Speaker
I've also found Iron Age evidence in Austria.
00:37:14
Speaker
Switzerland, the Italian Alps, and there was also some recorded in the Netherlands. And one of the sites in Austria was contemporary to the Roman period, but outside of the Roman limits, about 60 kilometres north, there was a lot of evidence there as well. So
00:37:42
Speaker
When we go back to the question, what else did the Romans ever do for us? It's looking to me as though this wasn't something that was started by the Romans. It probably originated in the Alpine region, possibly in the Netherlands as well. And I think it was probably spread by the Roman army. Some of the troops would have been from those areas and probably took their traditions with them.
00:38:12
Speaker
And, yeah, there you go.
Marina's Exploration of Turtle Symbolism
00:38:15
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my goodness. Yep. Almost. Big welcome, Marina. Hi, everyone. So I'm also a PhD student and I'm an archaeologist, of course, but I am a bit of a weird archaeologist because
00:38:38
Speaker
I don't look at domestic animals. I specialize, I want to specialize in reptiles and amphibians. And I've been looking at turtles since I did my masters. I started my masters in 2018 and since then.
00:38:56
Speaker
They just, they have my heart. So I just kept with it. And today I will be talking a bit of just the backstory of how humans use turtles in the past and why I'm studying them basically. And then I'll tell you at the end what am I doing now as part of my PhD.
00:39:15
Speaker
Some housekeeping before we start, I'm going to be saying the word turtles a lot. But when I say that word today, I'm only referring to freshwater turtles and terrestrial tortoises. I'm not going to be talking about sea turtles unless I specify otherwise.
00:39:33
Speaker
Again, turtles have a very wide distribution around the whole world. They're found almost everywhere, but not in the UK.
00:39:48
Speaker
The only native species that was found in the UK was that little guy there, the European phone turtle. But it became extinct 8,000 years ago, unfortunately. So all the turtles that we have now in the UK are introduced and probably part of the pet trade and then they were released in a while and we all know how it goes.
00:40:11
Speaker
So let's start with the basics. This is how turtles look from the inside out basically. As you can see they have very unique skeletons because it's the only animal that they have an outer shell to cover part of their limbs and also the most important part their organs.
00:40:36
Speaker
And you have all of the technical names there, like the upper shell is the carapace and the lower shell is the plastron. But as you can see on the image on the right, part of their spine is fused to their upper shell. And also their ribs are also part of their upper shell. So everything is very like...
00:40:56
Speaker
fused together and connected and it's a very specialized structure and on top of the bone there are plates made out of keratin like our hair or nails and they form a pattern and the bone plates also form a pattern but these patterns don't overlap because it's like when you build Legos you don't build like rows and rows you have to build them like this so they are more resistant and it's the same with turtles
00:41:27
Speaker
But how were they used in the past? We as humans, the first thing we do when we find an animal is like, can we eat this? And we give it a go. So the first use, as you can see, it's turtle to go, food exploitation. We try to eat turtle since...
00:41:44
Speaker
Well, the earliest evidence in Europe, it's from 1.2 million years ago, and it was found in Spain, in the north. But in Africa, I think it dates from 1.8 million years ago. So it's like, we were eating turtles since almost the beginning of time. And it's very interesting because, especially for terrestrial tortoises,
00:42:12
Speaker
some researchers have identified with the archaeological material how they were cooked and I put a very nice chart here like basically they would put the animal upside down on fire and they will cook it and then they had turtle soup because
00:42:33
Speaker
Very like I think this is one of the reasons why turtles were so popular, you know from the beginning because it's the only animal that comes in its own ball, so What can you ask for right and apparently? Not only that but Neanderthals loved turtles, especially in in Iberian Portugal and Spain Especially in Portugal there were areas with Neanderthals ate so much tortoises that
00:43:00
Speaker
they almost got them extinct. You can see through time in several sites how the animals would become smaller, smaller, smaller, because they would eat them so often that they didn't let them grow enough. So they were like, they love them. But apart from that, after the Neanderthals, they were still eaten through prehistory. But for example, the Romans didn't like turtles very much. Don't ask me why.
00:43:28
Speaker
It seems that there's a big gap where turtles weren't eaten, especially during Roman times. But then another one of my favorite examples comes from the medieval and post-medieval period, where in some monasteries during Lent, you know, meat cannot be eaten. But some monasteries kept
00:43:48
Speaker
Tortoise pens or turtles because they're not really mean, right? You know, it's different. It's different. So they were eating turtles, basically. And then flash forward, you have, for example, in England, in the 18th and 19th century, turtles was very common. But this one was made out of sea turtle.
00:44:10
Speaker
But turtles, especially freshwater species, are still being eaten today in some countries, especially in Asia. So we still like them. And here are some examples of how we can tell that they were eaten. At the top on the left, that's a humorous of a turtle. And you can see basically that's a tooth mark of an Neanderthal.
00:44:38
Speaker
They liked that turtle so much that they went all in. And at the bottom, those arrows, that is kind of like the scraping that Tracy showed, but it's like when you rip the meat out of the bone.
00:44:54
Speaker
and that's what you get and then at the other side on the right you have the top burning marks and that's how they knew they were putting them upside down on the fire and then at the bottom you see some cut marks there so yeah that's how we know
00:45:10
Speaker
And the second most important use, you know, we're archaeologists, the word that word, the ritual, we don't like it, but that's why I include it because I'm a rebel. But the second most important use, it's related to, as I said, ritual or symbolic practices. Most of these examples are pre-Christian, especially in the prehistory and early historic times.
00:45:40
Speaker
up until, you know, this friend, well, we're calling him something, Saint Jerome said that turtles are slow because of the burden of their weight. Basically, he compared turtles to heretics, and basically they said that they were so slow because they carried their sins of heresy. So, well, but then we saw that they were still eaten, so, I don't know, maybe, you know. But,
00:46:09
Speaker
Most of the symbolic and ritual exploitation that we find, it's very difficult to actually say 100% that it was ritual or symbolic because we just say that it's that because it's objects or sometimes the animals themselves that we find in graves.
00:46:28
Speaker
alongside a human skeleton. So if we find something in a grave, it's like, hmm, why is this here? And we think sometimes that it has to do with religion, which is very linked to their next use that I'm going to discuss because we really cannot say 100% for sure that those were linked to a ritual or a symbolic practice, let's say.
00:46:53
Speaker
And the next use, it's a very wide one and it's there uses raw materials to build many different objects. For example, containers, as I said, the wrong balls, like what else can you ask for? In this case, you can find examples and you can see that the inside and the bottom part of the shell are usually polished.
00:47:17
Speaker
So that's why they've been transformed into containers that people can eat. One of the earliest examples I found, it's from a Neolithic site in Spain as well. It's a freshwater turtle. And yeah, it was also found in a herd. So it was in a domestic space next to other kitchen utensils. So it's likely that it was that. Then we have tools.
00:47:42
Speaker
And we have this amazing example that I found. This comes from a site in Russia. And as you can see, this shell was transformed into like a scraper or a knife of some sort. I still, me or the researchers who dug it, they still don't know what it was used for, but it was clearly a tool. They did that on purpose.
00:48:03
Speaker
Another example is ornaments. As you can see we have some tools here but like all of those holes those are parts of the fragments of the shell and they were part of necklaces sometimes earrings and these are usually found in graves next to like as grave goods so that's why sometimes these ones are thought to be of symbolic
00:48:28
Speaker
characteristics the same as the last one because they were also transformed into musical instruments and here we have two examples that are very related to symbolic uses for example the lyre that we see here this is a Greek Roman example and because the turtle and the musical instrument they were related to the god Apollo
00:48:53
Speaker
And when it's found, it's usually found also as scraped goods. So it's very interesting. And then you have the turtle rattles. This we find it more either both in Africa and in North America, but in the South of North America from some native tribes.
00:49:14
Speaker
Other things that are more difficult to find in the archaeological record is their use in medicine. For example, we have how Pliny the Elder described the divided turtles in four different categories, so even more than we have today.
00:49:31
Speaker
And he explained how you could use turtles and what could they cure, for example. But these uses also are very difficult because unless you find pot and sometimes it's usually blood and things like that, in the archaeological record we're not going to find it.
00:49:53
Speaker
And another one that is very difficult to find is their use as pets or companions or display or entertainment animals. And we have examples of that Greek vase. Did you see it looks like a girl playing with a turtle?
00:50:09
Speaker
But is it a pet? Did she hunt it? We don't know. And then we have that example there that has a hole. That comes from a monastery in Italy. And it was thought that it was a pet, but it's 100% not confirmed because they were also eating turtles in that monastery. So was it a pet or was it part of the butchery process?
00:50:30
Speaker
Right? So it's a very difficult one to assess. But the fact that we cannot say it for sure doesn't mean that didn't happen, right? Because, yeah, they will follow you if you give them food. If you give a turtle food, it would be your best friend, that's for sure.
00:50:50
Speaker
This is how it relates to my current PhD. You can see here at the top we have three species of terrestrial tortoises and at the bottom three species of freshwater turtles. And some of them you can differentiate quite easily, right? But the problem is when you have the archaeological material, they all look like that.
00:51:12
Speaker
So my PhD, basically the first part of my PhD, is to try to find a way to differentiate between these different animals through measuring bones. That's what I've been doing for the past year, and I didn't want to bore you with all of the, like, things. But, yeah, now I'm doing that so I can learn more about which specific animals were used for which specific thing.
00:51:40
Speaker
And that would be something that I will probably talk to you about in the future. Sumari, as I said, turtles are very cool. Therefore, they're found almost everywhere, but not in the UK. Their skeletons are amazing, unique, and specialized. And if you haven't seen one, you're welcome. They have been used since the beginning of time, probably. Humans love them, and I also love them.
00:52:07
Speaker
And again, the most common use is their use as food. But there are so many other ways in which humans use them in the past, and we're still using them now. So yeah, that's why I'm studying them, and that's why people should look at turtles more.
Episode Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:52:25
Speaker
And finally, unfortunately, some uses are difficult to identify archaeologically, but that's what I'm here for, I guess. And thank you. Thank you very much.
00:52:41
Speaker
Do you have any questions for Marina? Apart from the obvious one, you're enthusing about people eating themselves. Yes. So the question is... I haven't. I haven't. I know the question. You knew that was coming. Yeah, no, I love them too much. Will that be the case?
00:52:59
Speaker
We're going to say thank you again to all our four speakers and we shall see you after Christmas. There will be a podcast made of this which should be out in the next couple of weeks and there's also the back catalogue of all the other talks we've done so if you want to subscribe but yeah please just join with me to say thank you very much to all our four speakers again.
00:53:27
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Archaeology Now. For more information about our podcast and our guest speakers, please visit our page on the Archaeology Podcast Network. You can get in touch with us at Archaeology in the City on Facebook, WordPress, Instagram or Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time.
00:53:53
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.