Age and season of pig slaughter at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) as detected through a new system for recording tooth wear

TY - JOUR

T1 - Age and season of pig slaughter at Late Neolithic Durrington Walls (Wiltshire, UK) as detected through a new system for recording tooth wear

AU - Wright, Elizabeth

AU - Viner-Daniels, Sarah

AU - Parker Pearson, Mike

AU - Albarella, Umberto

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to express their thanks to Sebastian Payne, who gave us permission to expand upon his original recording system, Sylvia Warman, who kindly gave us permission to present data from her PhD thesis, Anton Ervynck, who provided raw data from Vilvoorde, and Annie Grant who gave us permission to use her tooth wear chart. We are also grateful to Ben Chan and Oliver Craig for many stimulating discussions about the interpretation of the site. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) provided the funding for the Feeding Stonehenge Project (Grant number: AH/H000879/1 ), without which this work would have not been possible. Thanks also to Peter Rowley-Conwy for his suggestions, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this paper. Publisher Copyright: © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

PY - 2014/12/1

Y1 - 2014/12/1

N2 - The recording of tooth wear is essential for the investigation of age in zooarchaeological assemblages, but most tooth wear methodologies apply only to mandibular teeth, thereby neglecting potentially valuable maxillary data. The large sample of pig maxillary jaws and teeth recovered at Durrington Walls has provided the opportunity to design a new recording method for maxillary as well as mandibular jaws. Work on previously excavated animal bone material from Durrington Walls (Albarella and Payne, 2005) suggested the possibility of seasonal pig killing at the site, but the issue has not, until now, been explored in detail. This paper therefore has a dual purpose: to describe the new method for recording tooth wear on pig teeth; and to use the new information from both the mandibular and maxillary teeth to explore pig age at death and seasonality at Durrington Walls. The results provide evidence of differential deposition of pigs of different ages at Durrington Walls, with one midden context containing younger pigs brought to the site to provide meat for predominately winter-based feasting events, and other contexts containing remains of older pigs (mainly in their second year) deposited in both domestic and more public locales also predominantly in winter. The study highlights the usefulness of maxillary teeth for our understanding of past systems of pig exploitation as well as the desirability of recording their wear in animal bone assemblages.

AB - The recording of tooth wear is essential for the investigation of age in zooarchaeological assemblages, but most tooth wear methodologies apply only to mandibular teeth, thereby neglecting potentially valuable maxillary data. The large sample of pig maxillary jaws and teeth recovered at Durrington Walls has provided the opportunity to design a new recording method for maxillary as well as mandibular jaws. Work on previously excavated animal bone material from Durrington Walls (Albarella and Payne, 2005) suggested the possibility of seasonal pig killing at the site, but the issue has not, until now, been explored in detail. This paper therefore has a dual purpose: to describe the new method for recording tooth wear on pig teeth; and to use the new information from both the mandibular and maxillary teeth to explore pig age at death and seasonality at Durrington Walls. The results provide evidence of differential deposition of pigs of different ages at Durrington Walls, with one midden context containing younger pigs brought to the site to provide meat for predominately winter-based feasting events, and other contexts containing remains of older pigs (mainly in their second year) deposited in both domestic and more public locales also predominantly in winter. The study highlights the usefulness of maxillary teeth for our understanding of past systems of pig exploitation as well as the desirability of recording their wear in animal bone assemblages.

KW - Ageing

KW - Late Neolithic

KW - Seasonality

KW - Sus

KW - Tooth eruption

KW - Tooth wear

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908309587&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.009

DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2014.09.009

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84908309587

SN - 0305-4403

VL - 52

SP - 497

EP - 514

JO - Journal of archaeological science

JF - Journal of archaeological science

ER -