GIAP (ICAC) researcher Abel Gallego-Valle is presenting in the 1st ICAZ Medieval Period Working Group, which is taking place in Bergen (Norway) on 28 & 29 September 2022.
28/09/22 Session 1: Southern Europe
“What to do to quench your sheep: the use of dental microwear to study feeding management systems in the NE Tarraconensis during Late Antiquity”
Abel Gallego-Valle, Lídia Colominas, Josep Maria Palet (Landscape Archaeology Research Group, Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology)
Abstract
Feeding animal management systems are an important key aspect into the study of agro-pastoral societies and their livestock practices. They are the method to sustain the domestic herds in order to procure the necessary animal resources for the sustainability of the community.
With this communication we want to contribute to this issue, studying feeding animal management systems from three Late Roman sites and two Visigoth sites located in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.
To investigate this little-studied topic, we analysed the dental microwear pattern present in sheep and goat molars recovered from each archaeozoological assemblage. This technique allows the characterisation of the last intakes done by the animal. Therefore, the type of cud used by humans to feed their herds during the last days/weeks of animal’s life can be proposed.
In order to better understand and interpret the archaeological microwear data, we designed and created the first dental microwear reference collection from domestic sheep and goats through a controlled food trial. The comparison of the archaeozoological data with the reference microwear data, and their contextualization with the current available paleoenvironmental record, allowed to propose different possible strategies used by the Late Roman and Visigothic agro-pastoral communities from the Tarraconensis region to feed their sheep and goats flocks.
