When animals get under your feet: Histological analysis of animal burials from beneath Hebridean roundhouses (Richard Madgwick and Jacqui Mulville)

When animals get under your feet: Histological analysis of animal burials from beneath Hebridean roundhouses (Richard Madgwick and Jacqui Mulville)

A diverse range of burial rites were employed for both humans and animals during later Prehistory in the Outer Hebrides. The Atlantic island practice of burying people below floors in the late Bronze/Iron Age has attracted considerable interest, not least in the discovery of composite bodies (Parker Pearson et al 2005, 2007). Histological analysis raised the possibility that the composite body may have been mummified, as microbial attack had begun, but had then been arrested.

Animal burials are also relatively common as foundation deposits beneath roundhouse floors, however their modes of treatment have received less attention with the most recent review (Mulville et al 2003) having been published before the human burial practices were fully explored. In light of recent findings relating to the human remains, It is now time to return to these animals, construct a new interpretative framework that will allow us to examine their role in life, in death and in deposition and also to re-consider their role in relation to the human burials that preceded or accompanied them.

Through macroscopic and histological analysis of these skeletons, this poster considers the biographies of these animals, why and how they were killed and in what manner they became incorporated within homes. Were these animals buried complete as individuals? Were they processed and consumed as food with only a representative offering placed in the house? A particular focus will be on comparing the manner of death and the ritualistic post-mortem treatment of human and animal bodies’. We have examples of animals slaughtered with the house whilst others were killed and butchered elsewhere. The relationship between the whole, unprocessed burials and those that are disarticulated, butchered and consumed before burial will be explored. The presence of potentially mummified burials that have been subjected to preservational techniques, akin to the humans, is assessed. Initial work on bone microstructure has suggested some animals have unusually well preserved remains and this can be linked to the preferred methods of slaughter and burial. Finally what is the relationship between those animals exploited as food remains (as evidenced by bones, isotopes and residues) and those sacrificed and deposited.

Richard Madgwick and Jacqui Mulville, Cardiff University

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