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September 1999 - September 2009
Publications
Publications (51)
The faunal remains from the late Neolithic site of Ness of Brodgar on the Orkney Islands (UK) provide a unique opportunity to investigate past adaptations of animal husbandry strategies to the Northern island environment, as well as the potential management of red deer. In this study, sheep and red deer mandibles and loose teeth (dP 4 & M 3) from t...
Ratios of barium and strontium concentrations in skeletal samples (e.g. in the logarithmic form lg(Ba/Sr)), are a possible alternative or supplementary marker to stable carbon isotope ratios (δ¹³C) for identification of marine food consumption. Previous studies have compared lg(Ba/Sr) values between different species of animals with differing diets...
This chapter explores the profound impact of farming on North Atlantic vertebrate biota, reviewing evidence for the introduction of domesticated faunas and of the irrevocable changes to the island landscapes and environments effected in particular by pastoralism and the exploitation of marine resources. The North Atlantic islands have different set...
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03328-2.
The maritime expansion of Scandinavian populations during the Viking Age (about ad 750–1050) was a far-flung transformation in world history1,2. Here we sequenced the genomes of 442 humans from archaeological sites across Europe and Greenland (to a median depth of about 1×) to understand the global influence of this expansion. We find the Viking pe...
Seaweed consumption by wild, feral and domesticated animals in coastal areas world-wide is currently likely widely underestimated. Seaweed consumption on the Orkney Islands by domesticated animals has become an established part of the archaeological literature, but the extent of seaweed consumption elsewhere is still largely unknown in archaeologic...
The Viking maritime expansion from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) marks one of the swiftest and most far-flung cultural transformations in global history. During this time (c. 750 to 1050 CE), the Vikings reached most of western Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, and left a cultural legacy that persists till today. To understand the...
In Early Medieval Northern Europe, food was more than mere sustenance. Rather, dietary choices were used to define and manipulate identity and shape power politics. Using the Norse Earldom of Orkney as a case study and commensality as an analytical framework, the authors explore how the archaeology of food, and in particular zooarchaeological evide...
Fertilisation with animal manure has been shown to affect crop chemical and isotopic composition, indicating that if manuring effects are not taken into account, there is a risk of overestimating consumer trophic levels in palaeodietary studies. The effect of fertilisation with seaweed, a common fertiliser in the past in coastal areas, has been the...
Bioarchaeological evidence suggests that the site of Grimes Graves, Norfolk, characterised by the remains of several hundred Late Neolithic flint mineshafts, was a permanently settled community with a mixed farming economy during the Mid-Late Bronze Age (c. 1400 BCE – c. 800 BCE). The aim of this study was to investigate, through isotope ratio anal...
In the context of unanswered questions about the nature and development of the Late Neolithic in Orkney, we present a summary of research up to 2015 on the major site at the Ness of Brodgar, Mainland Orkney, concentrating on the impressive buildings. Finding sufficient samples for radiocarbon dating was a considerable challenge. There are indicatio...
The identification of dairying is essential if we are to understand economies of the past, particularly in northwest Europe, where a high degree of lactose tolerance suggests that fresh milk has long been a significant food product. This paper explores a possible link between economic focus and seasonality of calving. Although cattle (Bos taurus) c...
A key goal for archaeozoology is to define and characterise pastoral farming strategies. In the last decade, some of the most innovative approaches for addressing these questions have centred on the mammalian dentition, including inter alia sequential sampling of stable isotopes, dental microwear analysis and the study of dental pathologies. It is...
Island evolution may be expected to involve fast initial morphological divergence followed by stasis. We tested this model using the dental phenotype of modern and ancient common voles (Microtus arvalis), introduced onto the Orkney archipelago (Scotland) from continental Europe some 5000 years ago. First, we investigated phenotypic divergence of Or...
Recent technological advances in survey and computing are opening up new opportunities for the accurate spatial recovery and recording of archaeological materials during excavation. These have the potential to revolutionise understanding of depositional practices and (other such) taphonomic processes which create the deposits and sites that archaeo...
Intra‐tooth sequential analysis of enamel δ18O is currently used to investigate birth seasonality in past animal populations, offering new insights into seasonal availability of animal resources, herd management and seasonality of site occupation. Reference data sets are still required to address two major difficulties: (1) that inter‐individual va...
The Neolithic round barrow at Duggleby Howe comprises a substantial mound surrounded by a large causewayed ditch. The mound covers a rich Middle Neolithic burial sequence, as revealed by Mortimer's nineteenth-century excavations, and occupies a position on the northern valley side of the Gypsey Race, near to the stream's source. Following the recen...
Microwear analysis of pig teeth from the classical site of Sagalassos (SW Turkey) is undertaken to obtain insight into pig management strategies in this region from the 1st to 7th centuries AD. Earlier research on modern pigs revealed significant differences in microwear patterns between stall-fed and free-ranging, rooting individuals. A comparison...
The domestication of livestock represented a crucial step in human history. By using endogenous retroviruses as genetic markers,
we found that sheep differentiated on the basis of their “retrotype” and morphological traits dispersed across Eurasia and
Africa via separate migratory episodes. Relicts of the first migrations include the Mouflon, as we...
The use of seaweed as fodder for domestic animals during winter has been suggested for the North Atlantic isles in prehistory with reference to a historically attested practice. We tested the use of stable isotope analysis in tooth enamel bioapatite to detect seasonal consumption of seaweed on modern sheep from the Orkney archipelago, with no contr...
The domestication of livestock represented a crucial step in human history. By using endogenous retroviruses as genetic markers, we found that sheep differentiated on the basis of their "retrotype" and morphological traits dispersed across Eurasia and Africa via separate migratory episodes. Relicts of the first migrations include the Mouflon, as we...
Excavated by John Mortimer at the end of the nineteenth century, Duggleby Howe, near the source of the Gypsey Race in the Yorkshire Wolds, is one of the most iconic round barrow sites of the British Neolithic, not least because of Mortimer's detailed description, his schematic section and the range of prestige goods associated with the burials. Des...
Pigs are one of the most iconic but also paradoxical animals ever to have developed a relationship with humans. This relationship has been a long and varied one: from noble wild beast of the forest to mass produced farmyard animal; from a symbol of status and plenty to a widespread religious food taboo; from revered religious totem to a parodied sy...
The management of ovicaprines by the Medieval Norse farmers in Greenland is explored using dental microwear analysis. Adult and juvenile ovicaprines from Norse contexts in Greenland are shown to exhibit microwear patterns very different to those in modern Greenlandic sheep; while modern sheep demonstrate microwear consistent with low levels of soil...
No Until recently, osteological studies into ancient diet and health have primarily focused upon human remains. As a result, these areas of research are still in their infancy in the field zoo-archaeology. Animals have paid a heavy price for many major human advances, such as those in agriculture and transport. This use (and often abuse) of animals...
Insight into the relative importance of sheep and goat herding and of the economic significance of each species (i.e., milk vs. meat vs. wool) in Medieval Greenland is obtained through the application of Halstead et al.'s (2002) criteria for the identification of adult ovicaprine mandibles to faunal assemblages from three Norse farmsteads: Sandnes,...
Microwear patterns and formation processes are examined in modern browsing and grazing Gotland sheep from Denmark. Clear differences in microwear patterning are identified between Gotland sheep, which included a high proportion of leaves, bark and twigs of deciduous trees and shrubs in their diet, and those which primarily had access to graze speci...
The potential of dental microwear for recognizing the use of seaweed as fodder in the past is explored through the analysis of microwear patterning in modern seaweed-eating and grazing sheep from Orkney. Seaweed-eating and grazing sheep are clearly distinguished on the basis of microscopic dental wear patterns. This reflects an emphasis on anterior...
In recent years dental microwear analysis has attracted considerable interest as a potential method for reconstructing ancient diet. The potential of dental microwear for reconstructing pig diet and management within an archaeological context is explored through the analysis of microwear patterning in modern stall-fed and free-range/rooting pigs. S...
In recent years, dental microwear analysis has attracted considerable interest as a potential method for reconstructing ancient diet. This article presents results from research exploring the potential of dental microwear analysis in the reconstruction of domestic ungulate diet through the quantitative analysis of diet-microwear relationships in mo...
Projects
Projects (2)
The project takes as its focus the island group of Orkney during the
Early Medieval Period, a time of significant socio-economic, cultural and climatic change in the islands and across North West Europe. Research will explore the role of Norse herding economies in Viking/Norse Orkney, looking specifically to address both how
pastoral farming underpinned societal sustainability (eg., by enabling participation in feasting or long distance trade networks) and whether it may have contributed, through intensification and overstocking, to the decline in agricultural production and the marginalisation of the islands in the Later Medieval period.
Funder: British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship
The central question examined in this project is: How did the Northern Isles of Scotland respond to the economic and cultural impacts of European-scale trade in the period 1468-1712? The overarching concept of this project is not as a particularistic study of one small place, but as a microstudy illuminating the passage from the medieval to the modern world.
AHRC-DFG Funded. 2020-2024. PIs - Natash Mehler and Sarah Jane Gibbon; CoIs - Mark Gardiner, Ingrid Mainland, Jen Harland, Julie Gibson; RAs - Bart Holtermann, Phillip Grassel, Paul Sharman, Dan Lee.
See https://archaeologyorkney.com/category/lifte/ for further details
