Dale Serjeantson

Subsistence and symbol: the interpretation of bird remains in archaeology

This issue of the journal is devoted to papers on the role of birds in archaeology. Most of the contributions are based on papers given at the second meeting of the Bird Working Group of the International Council for Archaezoology (ICAZ) held at the University of Southampton (UK) in September 1995. The meeting brought together archaeologists, zoologists and ornithologists, and the subjects discussed cover most of the relationships between humans and birds that can be established form the study of birds from archaeological sites.

Survey of animal remains from southern Britain finds no evidence for continuity from the Mesolithic period

Abstract A recent review of bone remains from more than 90 assemblages from southern Britain confirms that the animals show no evidence for continuity from the Mesolithic period. Fish and birds are almost absent and few remains – less than 5% – are from wild animals. One site only, the Coneybury Anomaly, has a mix of wild and domestic animals as well as birds and fish, but it is unique. Nearly all assemblages, even those with a few bones only, include sheep, an animal unsuited to the environment of Britain at the time. The animal remains support the argument that all aspects of the Neolithic way of life were introduced together by incomers rather than adopted by a local population.

'Science is Measurement'; ABMAP, a Database of Domestic Animal Bone Measurements

Abstract A database of animal bone measurements, the Animal Bone Metrical Archive Project (ABMAP), is now available on the Web at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/specColl/abmap. The measurements can be downloaded and imported into a spreadsheet. They are of bones of domestic animals from the Neolithic to the 19th century AD from assemblages in England, most from southern England. An example is given of the retrieval of measurements of cattle metacarpals and their application in a scatter diagram. The database is a resource for zooarchaeologists and others concerned with research into prehistoric and early historic domestic livestock and animal husbandry.