Anton,
There are also some records of camel from Bulgaria and other localities
in Eastern Europe.
I found two camel bones at the Late Roman-Early Byzantine city of
Nicopolis-ad-Istrum in north central Bulgaria (Beech 1997). These were a
distal metatarsal from a late Roman deposit, 250-450 AD, in area D
(context 584), and a proximal metatarsal from an early Byzantine level,
450-600 AD, in area F (context 3240). The proximal metatarsal fragment
had been chopped in an anterior-posterior direction through its lateral
margin. Perhaps camel meat was occasionally eaten? I can vouch for the
fact that it tastes really good, having eaten baby camel a couple of
times at Bedouin weddings here in the UAE! Metapodials would obviously
have also been a useful source of material for manufacturing purposes.
Camel bones were also found by the Polish archaeozoologist, Elizabeth
Schramm (1975: 232) at Novae, located on the Danube in Bulgaria, in the
Western Gate Sector (2nd -6th century A.D.) and in the Central Sector
(2nd -6th century A.D.). It has also been reported by Bökönyi (1974)
that camel bones have been found in other Roman localities in Central
and Eastern Europe. He suggests that they may have come with military
units transferred to the Balkans from western Asia or North Africa.
However, it is also possible that camels were brought into this region
in pre-Roman times and they may well have been used as beasts of burden
on the Black Sea coast in the Roman period. Were these bactrians or
dromedaries??
REFERENCES
Beech, M. 1997. The Economy and Environment of a Roman, late-Roman and
early Byzantine town in north-central Bulgaria: The mammalian fauna from
Nicopolis-ad-Istrum. In: M.Kokabi and J.Wahl (eds.), Proceedings of the
7th International Conference for Archaeozoology, ICAZ, Constance,
September 1994. Anthropozoologica 25-26 (1997): 619-630.
Bökönyi, S. 1974. History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern
Europe. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest.
Schramm, Z. 1975. Zwierzęce szcątki kostne (The animal bones). Pages
216-241. In: Parnicki-Pudelko, S. (ed.), Novae - Sektor Zachodni 1972.
Wyniki badań wykopaliskowych Ekspedycji Archeologicznej Uniwersytetu im.
Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu. Poznań. (in Polish)
Schramm, Z. 1979. Zwierzęce szcątki kostne (The animal bones). Pages
97-130. In: Parnicki-Pudelko, S. (ed.), Novae - Sektor Zachodni 1974.
Wyniki badań wykopaliskowych Ekspedycji Archeologicznej Uniwersytetu im.
Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu. Część II, Poznań. (in Polish)
There seems to be a bit of an assumption that camels found in Europe are
dromedaries... but is this really so? If some of them came from the
Central Asian Black Sea route then bactrians are a possibility?... Often
I suspect the bone remains are too fragmentary to permit more precise
identification. There was that interesting thesis some time ago which
discussed the distinctive morphology in certain post-cranial elements
between bactrians and dromedaries...
Steiger, C. (1990). Vergleichend morphologische untersuchungen an
einzelknochen des postkranialen skeletts der altweltkamele. Institut für
Palaeoanatomie, Domestikationsforschung und Geschichte der Tiermedizin.
München, Universität München.
Does anyone know of anything else published on this subject? Has anyone
tried using DNA work to tackle this problem??
Archzoo readers may also be interested in this paper:
Hans-Peter Uerpmann and Margarethe Uerpmann, 2002, The Appearance of the
Domestic Camel in South-east Arabia. Journal of Oman Studies 12:
235-260.
Regards,
Mark
P.S. please note that my work email is now changed to: [log in to unmask]
Dr. Mark Beech
Senior Resident Archaeologist
Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS)
P.O. Box 45553
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
Tel: +971 - 2 - 6934515 (office)
Tel: +971 - 50 - 7527407 (mobile)
Fax: +971 - 2 - 6810008
Email:
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Websites:
http://www.adias-uae.com
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mjb117
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