A Review of Animal Bone Evidence from Southern England
This project, funded by English Heritage, aimed to review the animal bone evidence from Late Bronze Age-Late Iron Age sites from southern England. The Regional Review report, for which this database serves as a feely available online appendix, provides a synthetic review of published faunal assemblages. Key themes include: animal husbandry; diet and economy; agricultural diversification and specialisation; and the nature of 'special deposits'. Assessments of species frequency and relative abundance confirm that domestic mammals predominate.
A total of 108 site reports were recorded in the database. These 108 'site' records correspond to reports from excavations at 101 separate monument locations. These sites generated 154 distinct 'assemblage' records for faunal assemblages. Wherever possible a full suite of data was recorded for each assemblage, including: mammal, bird and other taxa present; species quantification, ageing, sexing, body part representation, butchery and metrical observations for the main domestic mammals; and details of associated bone groups. This standard suite of information was collected wherever available and free-text note fields enabled additional observations to be recorded. All data and interpretations summarised in the database are based on the information provided in the published faunal reports.