Hi All,
On the counting of stable places to assess herd size. It is not uncommon for small farmers in say for instance Bavaria, Germany who live on a 400 year old farmstead with not too modern stables to use a couple of the adult cattle spaces (remove the partitions) as a space for calves and young animals. So counting places isn't that straight forward.
I was able to make the above observations during frequent holiday trips to this area when I was younger (c. 15 years ago). Another very interesting observation concerns the back wall of the old farmhouse just above the stable back entrance and the manure heap: the skulls of a lot of the former bulls were nailed onto it! Our farmer housed the bull for the whole village. Cows were walked to his farm to be served. As the bull eats more and is a bit more dangerous to keep, he was paid for housing him.
That's it for now.
Best wishes, Jessica Grimm
Wessex Archaeology
Salisbury, UK
-----Original Message-----
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Thoma sH. McGovern
Sent: 13 November 2008 15:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] how many cattle does a farmer need.....
Hi All
This is really interesting thread indeed, and as several have noted
probably a fairly complex question involving both biology and social
organization of herding. One approach may be to do some measurements of
surviving animal buildings or pens- in the N Atlantic (at least in Iceland
and Greenland) cattle need winter shelter and several folks have used cattle
byre size (in sq m or trying to count stalls) as a measure of absolute
cattle numbers kept on Viking-Medieval sites. Also there is an amazing early
18th c stock record for most of Iceland (farm by farm, with cows, bulls,
immature separated) called Jarđabók which is a wonderful (if sometimes a bit
tricky) source for early modern conditions. I am cc'ing to some colleagues
who know more than I do on such things and who are currently working on pens
and such in Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes. Orri and I are working on a
paper for Journal of the North Atlantic (JONA- on line only, have a look)
which has a go at some of these issues and we will post a draft as soon as
its done. If people want excel versions of the Jarđabók data we have some
available, but it would be a good idea to consult with Orri before making
major use of these.
Orri, Christian, Christian, and Oscar- can you hit reply to all so any
responses go to the whole Zooarch list? MANY thanks.
Hope this helps.
All the best
Tom
Dr. Thomas H. McGovern, Prof.
Director, Hunter College Zooarchaeology Laboratory
Coordinator, CUNY Doctoral Program Archaeology
Coordinator, North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO)
Address:
Dept. of Anthropology
Hunter College CUNY
695 Park Ave.
New York, N.Y.10021
email: [log in to unmask]
dept. office phone: 212 772 5410
Fax: 212 772 5423
lab phone 212 772 5656
-----Original Message-----
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Serjeantson D.
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 12:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] how many cattle does a farmer need.....
This is a most interesting correspondence, and I would like to add two
thoughts .....
1. Crofting agriculture, and the cattle and sheep numbers to which crofters
were restricted - is not a model for earlier societies in Scotland, let
alone anywhere else. (I can supply refs .....)
2. It is unlikely that cattle in Neolithic Europe were only kept at the
household level. As soon as any kind of ranked society emerged, cattle herd
sizes must have been the main mark of distinction, which would play havoc
with attempts at averaging.
But don't be discouraged from the attempt,
Dale
Dale Serjeantson
Archaeology
School of Humanities
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
UK
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http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/profiles/serjeantson.html
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5488
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