Bottom’s up: a zooarchaeological approach to site classification in Anglo-Saxon England (Matilda Holmes)

Bottom’s up: a zooarchaeological approach to site classification in Anglo-Saxon England (Matilda Holmes)

I am currently investigating the provisioning and animal economy of English sites during the Saxon period for my doctorate, using animal bone data from both published and grey literature site reports. Typically, such temporal and geographically ranging studies are underpinned by the use of broad site classifications (e.g. village, town, monastery, farmstead). However, for the Saxon period in England, the classification of sites has tended to be rather confusing and unstandardised, in part reflecting the widespread social, economic and political changes occurring throughout England between AD450 and 1100. Such site classifications are often based on a ‘top down’ approach, based on archaeological expectations, settlement size, and building typologies. This approach is not without problems, not least of which are those inherent in forming interpretations built on pre-conceived expectations. An alternative approach is to characterise the nature of a site by means of the material culture. In this paper I will present the results of a zooarchaological analysis of Saxon sites to explore the extent to which sites can be classified on the basis of their animal economy from ‘bottom up’.

Matilda Holmes, University of Leicester

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