Description

Summary: 1 bag of animal bone from Blackberry Field, Potterne, a late bronze/ early iron age settlement excavated by Lawson et al 1983-85.

Research results

The animal bone from context 3125, Balckberry field, Potterne, excavated by Lawson et al 1983-1985. The excavations sampled roughly 1% of the massive midden at Potterne, which covers roughly 3.5ha and is upwards of 1m deep in places. Middens are a phenomena particularly associated with the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in central southern England, and are thought to represent build ups of refuse from large scale feasting events held repeatedly over a long period of time.

The remains of a goat from this context were sampled for Ancient DNA analysis as part of a wider study of animal domestication (Daly et al. 2018). This sample was taken as a control and the study focuses on the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, where they suggets that the genetic variation of goat populations suggests that goat domestication occured multiple times across time and space, rather than spreading from a single event. Amognst those sampled, the goat from Potterne is most closely related to the Neolithic population of western anatolia and the Balkans.