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Robert,

If you want to go for internal furntiure we have a red deer jaw bone hearth
surround and cattle metapodial hearth surround from the Iron Age in the
Hebrides. Along with other 'strange deposits' on/in floors.

There seems to be a trajectory from Bronze Age human foundation burials under
houses (one of which appears to have been curated for a few hundred years) -
including a butchered boy - to animal burials to conspicuous repeating elements
around hearths - invisible to visible etc - but that just my theory....

We have written a paper - if anyone wants it I can email it to them as I am not
sure when it will be out.

There are also folk tales of skulls (dowsed in beer) being buried under
foundations in the medieval period - sorry shall rack my mind for full
references. Knucklebone floors etc have been mentioned on zooarch before.

I am collecting incidents of whale bone in architecture for my own purposes - so
if anyone know of any examples - apart from the Thule, and the whalebone arches
in whitby, lewis and near the golden cap in dorset - I would be grateful.  As
for whalebone arches - anybody know the social history of why they started to
appear - all to do with commercial whaling I guess.

Also very fond of the tale of the dead whale (jonah) that toured the uk on the
back of a lorry in the 1970s - but thats another story.

enough for now.

jacqui

Jacqui Mulville
Lecturer in Bioarchaeology
School of History and Archaeology
Cardiff University
Cardiff
CF10 3XU