The Prehistoric Settlement of Britain by Richard Bradley

Author:Richard Bradley [Bradley, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781317612865
Google: 9hYcBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-10-24T05:58:15+00:00

One curious aspect of this predominance of red deer is its occurrence in areas outside its natural habitat and beyond at least its modern distribution. Some of these sites were on small islands, on which it could hardly have been supported. One example is the Orcadian island of North Ronaldsay; Arthur MacGregor, in discussing the bones from Burrian broch, suggested that venison was brought here from elsewhere (1974, p. 105). The special importance of this animal on South Uist is emphasised by a curious find from an Iron Age house at Drimore (Fairhurst, 1971, p. 80). Here the centre of the hut floor contained a circle of about twenty unburnt jaw bones. Another example comes from Dun Mor Vaul (McKie, 1974). Here the initial problem is that pollen analysis has shown a completely open landscape, which would not be very suitable for roe deer, despite its representation among the bones. This contrasts with the poor representation of pig. In her report Noddle argued that the phases in which young domestic animals were killed would reflect the periods in which resources came under most pressure. It is particularly interesting that the main evidence for hunting is not in these periods of strain. For this reason it would appear that hunting was more than a supplement to the basic diet. It was actually practised most while the site functioned as a broch. The faunal analysis for this site has been misused and Table 7 offers the basic evidence. This represents the minimum number of animals in each phase and not the gross number of bones. Bird bones are considered separately.

McKie has claimed that a high proportion of game bones is characteristic of sites in this region (1977, pp. 219 ff.) and if brochs were socially eminent forms, this could offer at least some explanation. On the shoreline, as in inland areas, hunting may have changed from an economic to a social practice.

Although there is every reason to expect that hunting would be complemented by the use of other resources, this is not easy to prove, even for the Mesolithic period. In later prehistory, when hunting was a minor supplement to farming, the evidence for other practices remains extremely slight. Plant foods will normally survive only in waterlogged or carbonised deposits and specialised techniques may be needed to recover them. Fishbones are brittle and usually poorly preserved, and the same applies to bird bones. In each case the sample from conventional excavation will be both small and distorted. The opposite applies to shellfish, which are very well represented, although their numbers belie their low nutritional status. The following account is necessarily based on data of poor quality and until more sophisticated analysis becomes available, discussion can only be conducted in the most general terms.

TABLE 7: Distribution of animal bones at Dun Mor Vaul

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