Faunal Remains: Results by Species

Abstract

IntroductionThe faunal remains from the original excavations were studied by Frederic Fraser and Judith King of the then Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History), and the bird bones were identified by Marjorie Platt of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. The collection was noted as being important because it contained several animals now absent from the fauna of this country and there was enough material to give an impression of the composition of the fauna at the start of the postglacial period in Yorkshire (Clark 1954, 70).Clark, in his synthesis chapter, highlights the importance of red deer, roe deer, elk, aurochs and pig [sic] in terms of their relative abundance and suggests that it is likely that the 'total bag' of these species would have been twice as much. In doubling these figures and then converting to dead weight, clean carcass weight and calories, he suggested that a group of four families (comprising an active man, a moderately active woman and three children) could live off this food supply (approximately 50,000 kg) for 6 1/4 years (Clark 1954, 16). However, it was noted that it cannot be assumed that all the meat was consumed on site and some could have been dried for use elsewhere.We now know that the nature of occupation was highly complex: the site is much larger than previously thought, it spans c. 800 years and the faunal remains that survive are only likely to be a small percentage of what was used and deposited. In addition, we know that Clark did not retain everything: bone, antler and flint appear to have been purposefully deposited in several parts of the backfill which will have skewed previous analyses. What had been collected was then dispersed across a number of museums mainly around England, but also farther afield, which makes it harder to re-examine.The faunal remains found in the recent excavations at Star Carr are generally in fairly poor condition ( Chapter 22). Nevertheless, even some of the really badly preserved bones have revealed important data using both traditional zooarchaeological techniques, as well as biomolecular approaches such as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) and stable isotope analysis. Our recent excavations have resulted in the discovery of some new species to add to Clark's list. In addition, the open area excavation, 3D plotting, application of GIS and the dating programme allowed us to take a new approach and consider the variability of the data through time and across space (see Chapter 7).How to cite this book chapter: Knight, B., Milner, N., O'Connor, T., Elliott, B., Robson, H. K., Buckley, M., Witkowski, P., Charlton, S., Craig, O. and Collins, M. 2018 The faunal remains from 2004-2010 were initially assessed by Sarah Viner, Rachael Parks and Cluny Johnson (reports in the ADS) but the whole assemblage has been reanalysed by BK who has been the faunal remains specialist since 2012 and was onsite throughout the 2013-2015 seasons. A large quantity of sediment was also sampled for flotation (see Chapter 15) and a signific...