Hi Danielle,
some years ago I worked on a Late Iron Age (Viking Age) rural bone material from eastern middle Sweden. The site was in the province Östergötland near the town Norrköping. The Viking Age site consisted of a farm that was believed to have been the house of a local chief. In the following centuries it became a royal farm. One house was intrpreted as a building for cultic activities. Just outside one of the wall there was a substantial midden of discarded things, i.a. a lot of bones. Among these was found a deposition of amulets, hammers for the god "Tor". Close to this deposition there was a concentration of cranial elements of female pigs (male cranial part were distributed in more random way). Female pigs were connected with the godess "Freja". Large part of the bones in this midden looked like bones do in refuse heaps, "normal" butchering and skeletal element representation. But there were some exceptional pieces too. In many cases the long bones of cattle had been hacked in a violent and systematic way. The marks on the bones were deep and made with a metal tool, either an axe or a long heavy kvife. The bones had been hold perpendicular hacked repeatedly from top to bottom on one side, then turned and a new series of hacking, then turned upside-down and hacked in the same manner again. There had been no intention to split the bone for marrow extreaction (the marrow cavity was never opened. I have not come across similar "violence" against animal bones in other Iron Age sites. The site is called Borg. When I did this work there were no digital cameras and I took no "analog" photos. There was never a printed bone report but I have a manuscript file and original data and figure with the distribution of pigs according to sex if you are interested.
Another type of violence have been documented in connection with slaughtering and butchering of dogs and horses in funeral contexts. I have seen dog cervical vertebrae cut off when the dog was decapitated with a metall edge. Similar cutmarks have been found on horse bones, both for killing and for butchering (horses were only eaten ritually).
Leif Jonsson
Gothenburg Museum of Natural History
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