Animalscapes and Empire

Aims and Objectives

Animals have always been central to the creation, use and perception of landscape and environment. This project is putting animals back into the landscape in order to inform on human society and ideology. Animalscape research could be applied to any place or period but as a case study this project is exploring, through the analysis of archaeological animal bones, how landscape and environment were used to negotiate cultural identity during the Iron Age/Romano-British transition, a pivotal but poorly understood period in British history.

For more details please go to the project summary document

Progress and Highlights

Year 1

• The project has focused on re-recording of the animal bones from Fishbourne Roman Palace, Sussex. This material was originally examined by Grant (1971) at a time before modern zooarchaeological techniques had been developed. Our re-analysis has demonstrated significant over-sights in the 1971 report.

• Other species misidentifications have also been highlighted. Perhaps most importantly a number of bones originally identified (and frequently cited) as the great bustard ( Otis tarda ) a rare Down/Wold-dwelling species, have been shown to belong to the common crane ( Grus grus ), a fenland/marshland inhabitant. This single re-identification has, therefore, changed our view human-animal-landscape interactions in the Roman period.

• At a more detailed scale, new spatial analysis of the Fishbourne assemblage has provided an insight into how landscape and environment were structured at the settlement level; the location of kitchens, refuse dumps and boundaries revealing something of Iron Age and Roman attitudes to the world around them.

(Grant, A. 1971. The animal bones, pp.337-387 in B. W. Cunliffe (ed.) Excavations at Fishbourne 1961-1969 . London : Society of Antiquaries. )

Year 2

• The project has developed from the site-based analysis of animal bones, the focus of research in the first year of study, into a wider regional synthesis of faunal data from the study area.

• The data suggests that significant differences existed between local rural farmsteads, the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum (now the modern city of Chichester ) and the elite site at Fishbourne Roman Palace.

• Across the Iron Age/Romano-British transition many farmsteads seem to have developed from mixed-farming, subsistence-based settlements into more specialised producer sites, probably in response to the urbanisation which took place at Noviomagus .

• At Fishbourne Palace ageing and skeletal evidence of the domestic mammals suggest that herds and flocks were being kept within the estate's boundaries and so may have been signifiers of social space.

• In terms of wild animals, the first osteological evidence of wild boar from the area has been demonstrated through analysis of pig teeth. This find, along with the Fishbourne hare and deer remains (three species of deer are represented), indicates that the Roman elite frequently hunted in this region.

• The project is also beginning to elucidate people's relationship with the air and water. Following on from the highlight of the first year of research (in which the great bustard specimens, identified in the 1971 report (Eastham 1971), were re-identified as common crane) other migratory birds, including two quite rare species of duck have been identified.