INTRODUCTION

Domesticated animals can be kept for reasons other than to provide food. In addition to meat and milk, cattle (or more specifically oxen) were important beasts of burden; pulling carts and farm machinery. Sheep provide wool in addition to meat and milk; and it is only pigs that are solely raised for meat. Judging from the butchery marks seen on cattle and sheep bones, their role in providing meat was important. Nearly all the meat consumed in late Iron Age and Roman Britain came from cattle, sheep and pigs; and virtually all our information about this comes from the animal bone evidence. Using the animal bones to map consumption patterns is fraught with difficulties, some of which have been outlined in Chapter 2, but certain broad patterns do emerge; and it is clear that the meat eaten by different communities depended on spatial, chronological and social factors.

BEEF, LAMB OR PORK?

The study of animal bone from Romano-British sites only became standard practice in the 1970s; prior to that it was not unusual for them to be ignored and discarded. As the number of such studies grew, it became apparent that the proportions of cattle, sheep and pigs present varied in a systematic way on different types of site.