Dead or alive?: investigating long-distance transport of live fallow deer and their body parts in antiquity

Miller, Holly; Carden, Ruth F.; Evans, Jane; Lamb, Angela L.; Madgwick, Richard; Osborne, David; Symmons, Robert; Sykes, Naomi

Abstract

The extent to which breeding populations of fallow deer were established in Roman Europe has been obscured by the possibility that the skeletal remains of the species, in particular Dama foot bones and antlers, were traded over long distances as objects in their own right. This paper sets out to refine our understanding of the evidence for the transportation of living and dead fallow deer in Iron Age and Roman Europe. To achieve this, museum archives containing purportedly early examples of Dama antler were searched, with available specimens sampled for carbon, nitrogen and strontium isotope analyses, and compared with data for archaeological fallow deer from across Europe. Importantly, the resulting isotope values can be interpreted in light of new modern baseline data for fallow deer presented here. Together these multi-isotope results for modern and archaeological fallow deer provide a more critical perspective on the transportation of fallow deer and their body parts in antiquity.

Citation

Miller, H., Carden, R. F., Evans, J., Lamb, A. L., Madgwick, R., Osborne, D., Symmons, R., & Sykes, N. (in press). Dead or alive?: investigating long-distance transport of live fallow deer and their body parts in antiquity. Environmental Archaeology, 21(3), https://doi.org/10.1179/1749631414Y.0000000043

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 19, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Sep 18, 2014
• Deposit Date: Jul 24, 2018
• Journal: Environmental Archaeology
• Print ISSN: 1461-4103
• Electronic ISSN: 1749-6314
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 3
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/1749631414Y.0000000043
• Keywords: Roman Britain; Fallow deer; Damadama; Carbon isotopes; Nitrogen isotopes; Strontium isotopes
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/735684
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/1749631414Y.0000000043
• Contract Date: Jul 23, 2018