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Imports and isotopes: a modern baseline study for interpreting Iron Age and Roman trade in fallow deer antlers

Osborne, David

Imports and isotopes: a modern baseline study for interpreting Iron Age and Roman trade in fallow deer antlers Thumbnail


Authors

David Osborne



Abstract

The European Fallow deer (Dama dama dama) became extinct in the British Isles and most of continental Europe at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, with the species becoming restricted to an Anatolian refugium (Masseti et al. 2008). Human-mediated reintroductions resulted in fallow populations in Rhodes, Sicily, Mallorca, Iberia and other parts of western Europe (Sykes et al. 2013). Eventually, the species was brought to Britain by the Romans during the 1st century AD, with a breeding population being established at Fishbourne Roman Palace (Sykes et al. 2011). The human influence on the present-day distribution of the species makes it particularly interesting from a zooarchaeological perspective.
This paper describes my MSc research, as part of the AHRC-funded project Dama International: Fallow Deer and European Society 6000 BC–AD 1600, looking at antlers from Iron Age and Roman sites in Britain for evidence of trade in body parts and whether this can be elucidated by a parallel stable isotope study of modern fallow antlers of known provenance.

Citation

Osborne, D. (2017). Imports and isotopes: a modern baseline study for interpreting Iron Age and Roman trade in fallow deer antlers. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 27(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.5334/pia-482

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 13, 2015
Publication Date Mar 16, 2017
Deposit Date Jan 5, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Papers from the Institute of Archaeology
Electronic ISSN 2041-9015
Publisher Ubiquity Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 27
Issue 1
Article Number 10
DOI https://doi.org/10.5334/pia-482
Keywords Stable isotope analysis
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/851260
Publisher URL http://www.pia-journal.co.uk/articles/10.5334/pia-482/

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