Ossamenta

The most common species on almost all archaeological sites in Britain since the Neolithic are cattle, sheep/goat and pig. Somewhat less common animals are horse - much more common in the countryside than in towns - dog, cat, chicken and red/fallow deer. I guess you can all see the trend: almost all animal bones on archaeological sites are from domestic animals. The exception are high-status sites, which usually contain more wild animals. Admittedly wild animals are still in a minority in those, but it’s a larger minority than in your average urban and rural sites.

But what has all this to do with my very ordinary Roman rural site? As with most sites, the budget is a bit smaller than what I would like, so I can’t record and analyse every bone from the site. For this site I concentrate on the early/middle Roman phase and only record ”valuable” features from the late Roman phase. Valuable here usually means large pit or ditch deposits and smaller features that contain bones that can be used for analysing slaughter age patterns, sex ratios, pathologies etc. This means I look at every bag to see if the context is valuable or not. The few bones from pit 4531 were not supposed to be recorded, but when I spotted the cat bones I knew I had to included them. Cats are quite rare on Roman sites, and it was the first such find so far.


Right and left femur, fibula, tibia and humerus, probably from the same animal.

But then, when I looked the bones properly, they didn’t seem quite right. The supracondylar foramen on the humerus is almost exclusively found in cats and mustelids (in Europe at least, other continents may have other species that has it as well), so that limited my options. I compared the bone to a pine marten and a cat, and lo and behold: it’s a medium-sized mustelid, probably pine marten or polecat! (stone marten is not found in the UK, so I don’t have to worry about a third species). Bones from fur animals are very rare in archaeological assemblages, so this was very exciting.


Femurs from pine marten, unknown mustelid and large tomcat.



Humeri from pine marten, unknown mustelid and large tomcat.



Close-up of the upper part of the femur. Note that the trochanter minor (the little lump at the start of the shaft) is a lump on the cat but a pinch on the two mustelids.



Close-up of the lower part of the humerus. Note that the bony bridge enclosing the supracondylar foramen is differently shaped in the cat and in the mustelids. The ridge on the opposite side is also different.


Identifying mustelids can be difficult. There are a few distinct markers on the skull, but the rest of the skeleton can be quite similar. That said, badgers, otters and wolverines can be quite distinct. It’s the other ones you have to worry about. You can group them by size, pine marten, beech marten and polecat/ferret being the medium sized group and weasel and stoat being the small sized group. But there is considerable overlap within those groups, both between males and females and between the species. Weasels in particular are notorious. They vary so much geographically that you have to make certain your reference specimen comes from the same region as your archaeological bones. For example: a male weasel from northern Sweden can be 17-23cm long, and a male weasel from the Mediterranean can be 26-38cm long. Now if you add females into this, the ones from northern Sweden can be 17-19cm long and the ones from the Mediterranean 23-29cm. Weasels from Britain and central Europe are somewhere in between.

In order to try to identify the mustelid to species, I will probably have to go to English Heritage in Portsmouth and have a look at their reference collection. Hopefully they won’t overlap too badly. I can also contact other zooarchaeologists and see if they have any measurements from Roman pine martens or polecats. Wish me luck. I think I will need it.

The spring Oxbow catalogue came yesterday. So many wonderful books…. If only I had more money for buying them, more space to store them and more time to read them. But there are some really cool stuff that I feel the need to if not acquire, then to read them in the uni library.

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I read today on A stitch in time that the Danish re-enactor Maria Lind Heel has started a crowdfunding project to get the needlebound mitten from Ribe radiocarbon dated. The mitten, found in the 1950s, has only been dated to "Medieval" which, quite frankly, isn't good enough if you want to discuss the spread of stitch types. And as there are relatively few needlebound items out there, every information is worth a lot for researchers.

I've tried needlebinding (aka nålbindning, naalbinding) myself, but never got enough good that I could actually make anything. Trouble with the tension, and the only way to get better is to practice. Sadly, I didn't have time to practice enough, as my life is full of so many other things. Still, reading Maria's blog makes me realise how much you can find out about needlebinding. All the different stitches, and their place in time and space. What we know was made with needlebinding and what we think was not (how do you actually prove a negative...). I'm not even sure what stitch I was using when I tried it.

So, to help a fellow textil nerd out, I donated some money for the project. If you want to do the same, the page is here: http://www.booomerang.dk/projects/stot-datering-af-den-nalebundne-vante-fra-middelalderens-ribe/

The site is in Danish, but the relevant parts have been translated to English.

I'm not very impressed with March so far. Especially when compared to the unusually warm March of 2012: A year ago I went to Canterbury and walked along the river eating ice cream. I certainly wouldn't do it now. Quite frankly I'm more in the mood for curling up on the sofa with a hot drink and a good book. Thankfully yesterday's snow is mostly gone now, but the temperature is hovering around 0°C, mostly on the wrong side.


Pretty, sunny Canterbury...


But I might at least pass on a few links and close the tabs:

- On my wish list: the unconventional paleoart book All yesterdays, rejecting the standard view of these extinct animals, and by comparison showing us what future paleontonlogists might have thought cats, monkeys and birds would have looked like if they only had the skeletons to go by. The talks from the book launch are well worth watching, even if you have no budget to buy the book itself. Reviews by What's in Johns freezer? (a cool* anatomy blog) and Tor.com, with several illustrations.

*: no pun intended....

- I was linked to a piece in Science Nordic about how fish corrupt carbon dating of pots, which unfortunately lacked several details from the original Danish source (not the Danish version of the Science Nordic page, that's the same as the English one). For starters, it's not the pots that are radio carbon dated, as most people interested in archaeology would realise, as pottery itself doesn't contain carbon (if it has been tempered by organic material, this would likely burn away in the firing), but burnt food crusts on the inside. Due to the reservoir effect of marine life, if the burnt food contained fish, shellfish or other marine creatures, the radiocarbon dating could be off by several hundred or thousand years. And since it is hard to tell what any carbonised crust originally contained, it would be problematic to use radio carbon dating of food crusts alone as a way to, for example, date the introduction of pottery.

- The Book of Kells, a 9th century illuminated Irish gospel manuscript, is now online!

- and from the hilarious site WTF evolution? (go home evolution, you're drunk!), scientists are trying to resurrect a frog species that used its stomach as a womb. It's a recent extinction (and discovery, too: it was discovered in 1972, and extinct in 1983) so they have plenty of genetic material to work with. And considering the world wide threat to frogs due to habitat loss, it may be a good thing to have experience in - we certainly will need it again.

Today I had the day off, not spending time in the sunny outdoors, but sitting in the university library for about eight hours reading Medieval German guild regulations. Unfortunately not all books complied with the Bodleian's photocopying regulations so I had to do a lot of copying by hand. It's a pain in the ass, particularly when you have to go back and check for spelling errors. It's not just the changes in spelling over 600 years, there are also changes within Germany. Today I've gone through regulations for Cologne and Lüneburg, and tomorrow I'm back at the library, going through bibliographies to see which other guild regulations are available. I know that the university library have some digitized, which means I hopefully can read them at home, if the log-in works. Others I will have to order from the stacks, and some I will have to read at the British Library in London. Hopefully I will find some nice patterns, or some exciting details that can be of use for my tanning Ph.D. idea.

I seem to be in a stretch of introvercy (is that even a word?) and non-writingness at the moment. So to cheer things up here a bit, here's a meme I found at oursin:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.

*: Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.

Obviously this goes beyond DreamWidth's friends/reading list, and to all my readers, wherever you are.

A weekend in the middle of game bird season with no plans, and forecasted day-long rain? Time to add to the reference collection! Last weekend, when I passed the butcher, lots of pheasants hung in the window, so I thought a pheasant would be a good idea. If nothing else, it’s good to have a chicken-sized alternative in your brain, particularly since the introduction and spread of pheasant in Britain is still uncertain due to small dataset. However, when I came to the butcher’s, it turned out someone had come in when they opened and bought the whole lot… But they had partridge, which would be a decent substitute. Always good to be able to differentiate small chickens from partridge, quail and other small wild galliformes.


Left to right: bag for waste, bag for meat, pot for the bones, partridge, scalpel, gloves.


Luckily, before I had plucked the whole bird, I recalled that there are two partridge species in Britain. Off to the internet to check what they look like! Unfortunately it turned out I had got a red-legged partridge (Alectorious rufa) which is a post-medieval introduction from France and not the native grey partridge (Perdix perdix). But even if it’s of little use for most of my analyses, at least it will be good to have for post-medieval assemblages.


I believe I looked a bit like this when I realised I had got the "wrong" bird species.


After removing the meat and the innards (into two separate bags), I separated the carcass into smaller bits and put them in the pot. The pot goes on the lowest setting on the cooker until the remains of the meat and tendons have come off the bones (with some help from fingers or a scapel when necessary). A bay leaf or two may not work wonders, but certainly can’t hurt.




The drawback of butchering game bird carcasses and steeping their bones is the pervasive smell which sticks to your nose and your fingers (I find fingers to be the best tool for doing the final defleshing of the bones). I recommend planning in advance an easy to cook vegetarian dinner.

I finally handed in the huge EEK report today. It's been going on more or less constantly since January(-ish), and I'm incredibly glad to see the end of it. Well, I assume I will get some comments back before it goes to print, but hopefully it will only be language errors and not "Finds expert X discussed these features in detail. Could you do the same for the animal bones?"

To celebrate the end of EEK report writing, I plan to do absolutely nothing this weekend. In fact, I'm about to go *flop* on the sofa now.

I had a great time at the EAA conference, although I really would have liked a clone or two just for the extensive programme. How do you choose between so many interesting talks? I decided to go for the ”useful” option rather than the ”interesting” option. Obviously, it’s always better when these two categories mix. So in the end, I decided to go to the sessions ”Baltic urbanism”, ”Life in the city”, ”Famine, murrain and plague”, ”Settled and intinerant craft people” and sneak into the Scandinavian-related talks in ”War and warfare” and the wear traces talk in ”From bone to bead”. Obviously not all taks were relevant to me or memorable, but luckily, several were.

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It was a good conference, and I managed to do some touristing too among all the conferencing, networking and socialising. I went on a day trip to Tallinn (gorgeous medieval city which made me miss Visby very much) and took a boat out to the 18th century fortress Soumenlinna (a great way to spend some hours). A visit is recommended.

First, I will just let you know that our Open Day at work went well. We had lots of people showing up, and there was rarely a quiet moment in the room where I was. Admittedly not because people were overenthusiastic over animal bones, but because we also had one of the executed Vikings from the massgrave on the ridgeway on display. I clearly played second fiddle there.


Over on some Swedish archaeology blogs, there have been a few posts on tips for future archaeologists. So I thought I’d make my voice heard as well.

The first, and perhaps most important advice is: you must love archaeology. If you merely like it, get a different job and be a volunteer archaeologist on the weekends. Because if you don’t love it, how will you put up with poor pay, having to move around a lot, very hard physical work and the frequent (and/or long) unemployment periods? It will hardly come as a surprise to my readers that there are lots more archaeologists than there are jobs, and therefore you will need skills and luck in order to get where you want to go.

First (and I sort of wish I knew this when I started): check out your university options. Not all educations are the same, and one university might favour the theoretical approach, while another focusses on field archaeology skills. Likewise, if you are into a specific geographical area, search for universities that cover those. All of this might not be obvious from their webpages, so contact students and/or lecturers. Naturally, it helps if you know what you’re after, before you start asking.

As there are more archaeologists than jobs, you need to specialise. Some people go into specific find categories (bone, pottery, coins). Others try to make their career in field archaeology, and other go academic and try to get tenure. A tip would be to see in what fields there might be upcoming shortages. But again, make sure you like those options. It doesn’t matter if two of the three insect specialists in the country are in their 60s if you have a phobia for beetles. Likewise, if you’re squeamish, forensic archaeology is not for you (as one of my teachers said: ”Forensic archaeologists write those books where you don’t look at the pictures.”).

You will probably, unless you go straight into Ph.D. studies and then keep going on the narrow path of academia, be a field archaeologist for some years. It helps a lot if you are a) single, b) childless and c) not a packrat. Trying to work a field archaeologist career while having a family is difficult. Particularly if your spouse is also a field archaeologist. If you are a book worm like me, I recommend you to get an e-reader. Books are heavy! Especially when you have to move house.

Make your name known*. It sort of helps if your name isn’t the equivalent of John Smith, but that goes for all jobs, not just archaeology. Go to conferences and attend courses in areas you are interested in. Ask the teachers/lecturers if they have any jobs - even data entry or skeleton washing will look good on your CV, and you might make some good connections in the coffee break. Good connections are always important. I got my present job in fierce competition with another applicant, both of us championed by our respective referee (coincidentally, both well regarded in the field). In the end it turned out ok for both of us. I got the job, and a few months later they realised they needed another bone specialist and they hired him. But if my referee hadn’t been so well regarded or hadn’t championed me that well (to this day, I have no idea what she told them of me, but it must have been something good), I would probably not had got that job.

There are loads of tips in books and on the internet on how to write a good CV, so I won’t bother to go over that here. You can get lucky by sending out a CV even if the company hasn’t advertised a job. I have got two jobs that way (admittedly, I send one out for bone work, and instead got a job as a digger for a month), but here luck plays a big role, since if there are no jobs in the foreseeable future and your name doesn’t ring a good and clear positive bell, your CV might get filed in the trash can straightaway.

*: and in a positive way. Don’t be well known as that person who always does a shoddy job or the one who gets embarrassingly drunk and once threw up on the big conference’s guest of honour.**
**: These are fictional examples. I hope there are no readers who recognise themselves in them.