Hello everyone
I'm doing my dissertation on the diet of the roman military between 100 BC and AD 200. I've found quite a few articles and books that discuss this subject but i was wondering if anyone knows of any databases for archaeological field sites in which i could look for any bone fragments found? Or of anyway for me to search through field reports in order for me to be able to start to build my own table of bone fragments found in roman military sites?
Any help for would be massively appreciated
Thank you
Bruce
On the Kops plateau (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) a full meal was trown into the latrines and has been recovered as such. Lot of bone fragments in there. Best contact Museum het valkhof, as they have the full find on display.
A good way into this would be to take a recent report, like (say) the Carlisle Millennium volume (and I was only reading the environmental report this evening for a little project I'm working on), and work backwards through the reports they cite. Carlisle also has a DVD with loads of data on it (includes quantification of the animal bone).
The report also has a ton of information on the macro and microfossil evidence for plant species, include cereals and weeds of cultivation.
I'm sure if you got in touch, Oxford Archaeology North (who edited the report) would give you finer-grained detail, should you need it.
Mike Bishop
Thank you everyone, all those ideas are really good and seem to be quite useful for me. Will start to look at them all in depth now and i keep everyone posted on my findings, just in case someone else is interested!
If anyone else comes up with anymore idea they would still be hugely appreciated.
Bruce
You might try looking up the excavation report on Segontium by Casey & Davies (CBA Research Report 90). If memory serves, there is a section there on the bone finds. One of the things that they found was that there was a change over time (the site was occupied for around 300 years), with a switch to cattle, rather than pigs and mutton and also that the animals got bigger, suggesting that local farmers who supplied the military were breeding bigger beasts to order.
Mike Thomas