In this paper, we examine archaeological bird remains from Klaipėda Castle (Ger. Memel), western Lithuania. The castle was built in 1252, and during the Middle Ages, it was the northernmost castle of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The castle together with its adjacent town were subjected to wars and changing political situations over the centuries, but nevertheless represented a socially higher status. The studied bird remains were found during the excavations in 2016 and have been dated by context to the Middle Ages – from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 14th century. Our aim is to introduce and discuss the bird remains with an emphasis on two species – the white-tailed sea-eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) and golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). Most of all, we are interested in their role in expressing people’s social status, use in material culture, and significance as a food source. Our analysis showed that in Klaipėda, the eagles were probably used for raw material and possibly for feathers, but not for hawking and food. Alternatively, they could have been killed for scavenging. Other species identified in the assemblage such as chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), grey partridge (Perdix perdix), geese (Anser sp.), ducks (Anatinae), and great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) were mainly interpreted as food waste. This article presents the first concentrated study on bird remains from Klaipėda and is one of the first discussions about the meaning of eagles in the Baltic region.
The majority of medieval and early modern fish, bird, and mammal remains in Estonia originate from urban contexts, but a promising site for archaeological faunal finds outside the towns appears to be Kastre (Varbek) in central‐eastern Estonia. The site was a castle and customs station that belonged to the Tartu (Dorpat) bishop and was first founded at the end of the 14th century on the bank of the Emajõgi River, between Lake Peipsi and Tartu town. River traffic was controlled there; inter alia trade between the Hanseatic towns of Novgorod in western Russia and Tartu, historical sources show, “duty on fish” was collected there in the 15th and 16th centuries. Large numbers of fish, mammal, and bird remains were gathered from the castle during archaeological excavations in 2001 and analysed for the current study. Faunal material reflects animal products consumed most probably by the castle staff, whereas the evidence of fish processing in the castle may refer to the value added to fish for resale. Any direct connection to the customs tax by the faunal remains has not been proven but indirectly hypothesized. Thus, a large amount of fish remains including long‐distance imports, together with the evidence of fur processing and presence of farm animals in the castle, may indicate the duty taken on the trade and/or fishing rights on the Emajõgi River.
Investigating the origins of goose domestication relies on successful identification of this species and, specifically, distinguishing it from its wild, morphologically similar, form. Here we present the first attempt to separate wild and domestic geese recovered from Estonian archaeological assemblages using a combination of morphometrics and stable isotope analysis. To this aim, measurements from 159 archaeological bones were compared with modern specimens. Twenty-five archaeological samples were chosen for stable isotope analysis based on their morphometrics. The results of this paper show that bones identified as "domestic" by their size and shape had significantly higher δ 15 N values compared with those identified as "wild." The higher δ 15 N could be a result of dietary differences, for example, the role of manured crops and/or animal protein in the diets of domestic geese.
It has been hypothesised that the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) was introduced to the area of what is now modernday Estonia around the PreRoman or Roman Iron Age. However, none of the earliest chicken bones found in the area had been radiocarbon dated and due to a complex contextual background, the question of its first appearance has been left open. With the aim of finding the earliest evidence for the chicken in Estonia, we looked into the zooarchaeological material from twelve archaeological sites, including burial grounds, settlement sites, and hillforts. The earliest evidence had been reported at four of these sites, but during the taxonomic reassessment, no chicken bones were identified. From the remaining eight sites, nine chicken bones were radiocarbon dated by AMS. The sample from a stonecist grave at Rebala (northern Estonia) was dated to 200 calBCE -5 calCE, which means that this individual is the earliest confirmed chicken in Estonia. The other dates range from the PreViking Age to the Modern Period, with some of them illustrating the complicated nature of faunal remains in archaeological contexts. Although this study elucidates the first appearance of the chicken in Estonia and in the Baltic region in general, its origin, ways of exploitation, and the extent of its spreading remain to be studied.
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