Regarding Roman butchery deposits, I had something like this at one site
in York. In deposits of Period 5 (late 2nd century AD) at the General
Accident Site, two sorts of deposit were found together. The first was
the familiar 'cattle scapulae' deposit, with many scapulae, some of
which had been chopped around the glenoid articulation, and some had
holes cut in the blade. The second was deposits of heavily butchered
cattle limb bones - mostly femur, humerus, tibia, radius. The bones had
been spilt axially, then chopped transversely into pieces a few
centimetres long. The material is reported and discussed in:
O'Connor, T.P. 1988. Bones from the General Accident site, Tanner Row.
The Archaeology of York 15/2. (London, Council for British Archaeology,
ISBN 0 906780 78 0).
Terry O'Connor
lentacker ervynck wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> At Liberchies (Belgium) a large collection of Roman bones was found, which
> are now in the process of publication. The characteristics of the collection
> point towards the industrial processing of skeletal material for the
> production of secondary bone fat, bone glue, etc (in the sense of the
> publication of Paul Stokes in the Durham AEA conference proceedings, Oxbox
> Monographs). Furthermore, the bones show that horn working was taking place
> at the site. The cultural archaeological material indicates the presence of
> tanning activities but this is not corroborated (but also not contradicted)
> by the bone assemblage. Conclusion: the site seems to represent a
> concentration of crafts based on the processing of animal material. Such
> concentration seems logic because it implies that transport efforts are
> minimal (horns from tannery to horn worker, bones and hides coming from the
> same slaughterhouse).
>
> Our question now is whether there are good published examples from such a
> concentration of crafts in Roman sites? Of course, we know of bone glue
> processing sites (Paul Stokes' article) and are aware of published Roman
> tanneries, but it's the combination of crafts we are looking for.
>
> Any hint would be most appreciated,
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> An Lentacker & Anton Ervynck
> Institute of the Archaeological Heritage
> of the Flemish Community
> Doornveld 1 box 30
> B-1731 Zellik-Asse
> Belgium
>
> tel. ++ 32 2 481 80 38
> fax ++ 32 2 481 80 56
|