The Ups & Downs of Iron Age Animal Management on the Oxfordshire Ridgeway, Southern England

Summary

As in any mixed farming system, the management of animals doubtless played an important part in Iron Age societies in southern Britain. Economically, they furnished meat, milk, wool and manure, and served as draught animals for transport and tillage. Intersecting with their economic uses, they were also important socially, politically and ritually. It is relatively straightforward to determine the proportional representation and mortality profiles of the major species – cattle, sheep/goat and pig. While this provides insights into how and why animals were managed, it does not allow the detailed investigation of how individual animals were actually kept, how they were moved around the landscape, and how various nearby communities integrated their animal management practices. Isotopic approaches can offer insights into just these practices. We report the results of a multi-isotope study Early/Middle Iron Age domestic fauna (cattle, sheep/goat and pig) within a very constrained study area of the Oxfordshire Ridgeway, south-central England. Strontium isotope measurements on dental enamel provide evidence primarily for the mobility of cattle, while bone collagen stable nitrogen isotopes suggest separate herds and flocks. The results indicate that Early/Middle Iron Age stock-keeping on the Ridgeway and in the Vale was complex, and both integrated and distinct.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20855