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More complicating matters
Nov. 7th, 2015 01:06 pmIn the current bone assemblage I'm recording I came across a sheep burial (probably remains from a feast - deposited in a pit right at the entrance to a big enclosure and with chop marks on the ribs) that made me raise both my eyebrows in a 'you got to be kidding me'- way.
The pelvis looked like the castrated sheep in English Heritage's collection, but the horn cores looked like typical ram horn cores... I'm working on the theory that this is a relatively late* castrated sheep, and that pelvis shape will override horn core shape in the complicated way hormones can shape the body. Definitely a case of more information needed, damnit! I can see myself trying to get hold of records of other sheep burials just to build up a dataset. This would be particularly relevant if late castration will have a difference in how horn cores and pelves develop.
It's unfortunate that most animal bone assemblages come from food and butchery waste, where the bones are only individual fragments, entirely disassociated with the animal they came from. Such a difference from research on human remains, where we (mostly) deal with the entire person and can see how diseases/traumas could affect the whole body, not just single body parts.
*: The flocks from EH's collection had to follow modern day animal welfare regulations, which state that castration of livestock must occur within the first few days after birth.
The pelvis looked like the castrated sheep in English Heritage's collection, but the horn cores looked like typical ram horn cores... I'm working on the theory that this is a relatively late* castrated sheep, and that pelvis shape will override horn core shape in the complicated way hormones can shape the body. Definitely a case of more information needed, damnit! I can see myself trying to get hold of records of other sheep burials just to build up a dataset. This would be particularly relevant if late castration will have a difference in how horn cores and pelves develop.
It's unfortunate that most animal bone assemblages come from food and butchery waste, where the bones are only individual fragments, entirely disassociated with the animal they came from. Such a difference from research on human remains, where we (mostly) deal with the entire person and can see how diseases/traumas could affect the whole body, not just single body parts.
*: The flocks from EH's collection had to follow modern day animal welfare regulations, which state that castration of livestock must occur within the first few days after birth.
