Description

Summary: 1 fragment of ox jaw from Bishops Cannings G76, Wiltshire.

Research results

In her PhD with the university of Leicester, Banfield (2018) re-examined the osseous assemblages Beckhampton Road, West Kennet and Cold Kitchen Hill long barrows, as well as material held by other institutions from a number of Neolithic long barrows in the Avebury and Salisbury plain areas. She takes a post-humanist approach to these materials, seeking to re-analyse and re-emphasise faunal assemblages which garnered little attention from the original excavators and in initial post-excavation analyses and publication. In doing so, she illustrates both the potential importance of human-animal relations to the communities who contructed these monuments, but also the significant meaning these remains may have conveyed.

The jaw of a domesticated cattle skull, found as part of animal bone group B1 and one of three cattle bone groups deposited on the pre-mound surface along the length of the Beckhampton Road longbarrow. The cranium was found in one peice but has since fragmented, although from this and other skeletal elements it is possible to identify that this individual was approximately 7-9 years old at death and that the skeleton was exposed for a considerable amount of time prior to the construction of the barrow. Considered with notable features of the other cattle bone groups (B4 and 5), Banfield suggests that these deposits were clearly deliberate, and demonstrate the importance of the community's relationships with domesticated cattle.