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Dear Jen -- There are indeed ligaments in the distal part of a horse's limbs which would be enclosed in the hoof capsule. Please allow me to suggest that you purchase something I wrote, which contains very clear "virtual dissections" of horse limbs, as well as detailed discussion of the composition of all the horny tissues and their underlying generative coria. The item is the 2003 "Inner Horseman" newsletter available by going to the bookstore section at www.equinestudies.org (n.b. ORG not COM). The cost is $25 for around 250 pages on CD-Rom disk. As to gluemaking: It is not necessary to remove the hoofs at all in order to make glue. In fact, hoof removal is quite difficult. For example, when I teach a carcass dissection class, of course the students want to see what's inside the hoof capsule and we do need to remove it. What we do then is first remove the limb at the hock or knee. Then we go get a bucket while we boil two teakettles of water. While the water is boiling, we cut all the way around the coronet band as deeply as the scalpel will penetrate, and then use a set of sharp farriers' nippers to cut the buttresses open from the back. It is also necessary to nip the rim of the capsule -- as if you were trimming a live horse, but cutting up so high he would have bled. These cuts are all for the purpose of reducing the attachment that the capsule naturally has to the underlying dermal tissues. Finally, we put the limb into the bucket, pour the boiling water over it, and leave it sit for about 20 minutes. The heat from the boiling water then denatures the remaining internal connections. After 20 mins. when the hoof is removed from the bucket and replaced upon the dissecting table, it is usually possible to grab the capsule with big plumbers' pliers, while somebody else holds the upper end of the limb, and pull the capsule off "clean". Sometimes, however, even all of this is not enough and we then resort to using farriers' pull-offs, which we use to grab horizontally one of the buttresses that we had previously cut. The pull-offs are then rolled forward, so as to force the wall of the hoof to peel away in much the manner of a sardine tin. The sole is peeled off separately. I tell you this merely to illustrate that getting the hoof capsule off is a big lot of work. To make glue, all you really have to do is throw the distal limb in a pot of boiling water and leave it on the boil there for a number of days. It doesn't hurt if there is hide, tendon, or bone in the mix too, though the most efficient way would be to throw in only the most distal part of the limb. The easiest point for disarticulation would be the "ankle" joint, i.e. the metacarpo-phalangeal joint, or else just chop through the 2nd phalanx. Of course at Vindolanda I think we had a gluemakers' shop. I also think we had a bowmakers' shop and a leather shop and somebody that made tool handles out of bone -- all in addition to the butcher. My surmise is that all these people cooperated together in a kind of assembly-line process. What I envision is that carcasses would first be treated by the tanner or the tanner and butcher working together to remove the skin. Then the limbs would be delivered to the butcher who would disarticulate the meatier joints from the hock up but leave the long tendon that invests the semitendinosus muscle without cutting it (this is easy). Then the limb with the long tendon still attached would be loaded on a cart and trundled down the street to the bowmakers', who would snip out the tendons. Then the remains would be shifted to the gluemaker, who would chop off the hoofs and throw the (partial) pasterns + coffin bone + capsule into his boil-pot. Last of all, the cannon bones and perhaps carpal and tarsal bones would go down to the toolmakers' place to be turned into knife handles, game pieces, awls, and other useful objects. I can't solve the mystery of the cut-marks on the solar surface of your coffin bone, except to note that even a deep gash here, that transected the insertion of the tendon of the deep digital flexor muscle, would not help in removing the capsule. From Vindolanda I do have one hoof that has been hatcheted right through. It is conceivable that hoof capsule + coffin bone might have been crudely axed into chunks (the blows would need to be quite heavy), and the mark you have represents a whack that didn't go all the way through. -- Deb Bennett > Hello All. > > I have recently had an equid 3rd Phalanx from a mid-late Iron Age context > with cut marks on the centre of the sole, where I think a ligament > attachment occurs. I am assuming that this is from disarticulating the > carcass, but I am idly wondering whether or not it could be from removal > of the hooves. Has anyone got any ideas on this or seen any evidence of > hoof removal in horses? > > As a bit of a tangent from this I am also curious about the glue making > process (I confess to knowing nothing about). Could anyone point me in the > direction of any literature on the process and which may suggest if glue > making could be identified from a zooarchaeological assemblage or would > even leave an assemblage behind? > > Sorry no pictures at present, but I might be able to sort some out if > interested. > > Many thanks > > Jen > Hello All. > > I have recently had an equid 3rd Phalanx from a mid-late Iron Age context > with cut marks on the centre of the sole, where I think a ligament > attachment occurs. I am assuming that this is from disarticulating the > carcass, but I am idly wondering whether or not it could be from removal > of the hooves. Has anyone got any ideas on this or seen any evidence of > hoof removal in horses? > > As a bit of a tangent from this I am also curious about the glue making > process (I confess to knowing nothing about). Could anyone point me in the > direction of any literature on the process and which may suggest if glue > making could be identified from a zooarchaeological assemblage or would > even leave an assemblage behind? > > Sorry no pictures at present, but I might be able to sort some out if > interested. > > Many thanks > > Jen