Why Dogs and Horses Were Buried at an Early Medieval Settlement Along the Old Rhine
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Old Companions, Noble Steeds: Why Dogs and Horses were Buried at an Early Medieval Settlement Along the Old Rhine A Zooarchaeological analysis and literary review Elfi Buhrs Front picture: http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2011/12/05/daily-picdump-326/dog-horse-and-little-girl-sitting-on-th-road-black-and-white- old-photo/ Old Companions, Noble Steeds: Why Dogs and Horses were Buried at an Early Medieval Settlement Along the Old Rhine A Zooarchaeological analysis and literary review Elfi Buhrs (S0963151) MSc thesis Archaeology (ARCH 1044WY – 1) I.M.M. van der Jagt and Prof. dr. T. van Kolfschoten Palaeoecology University of Leiden, Faculty of Archaeology Leiden, 17 June 2013 Contents 1. WHY DOGS AND HORSES WERE BURIED AT OEGSTGEEST ............................. 3 2. THE SETTLEMENT OF OEGSTGEEST ...................................................................... 5 3. THE DOG AND HORSE BURIALS FROM OEGSTGEEST ....................................... 7 3.1. Material and methods ............................................................................................... 7 3.1.1. Selection and dating of the material .................................................................. 7 3.1.2. State of the material .......................................................................................... 8 3.1.3. Methodology ..................................................................................................... 9 3.2. Results .................................................................................................................... 12 3.2.1. Burial orientation and anatomical position ..................................................... 12 3.2.2. Representation of skeletal parts....................................................................... 12 3.2.3. Age .................................................................................................................. 14 3.2.4. Shoulder heights .............................................................................................. 18 3.2.5. Pathologies and abnormalities ......................................................................... 19 3.2.6. Horse gear ....................................................................................................... 20 3.3. Archaeological context........................................................................................... 22 3.3.1. Location of the animal graves ......................................................................... 22 3.3.2. Human remains ............................................................................................... 22 3.3.3. Zooarchaeological settlement waste................................................................ 23 4. ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL INDICATIOND FOR EVERY-DAY PURPOSE ........... 26 4.1. A comment on using literary ‘evidence’ ................................................................ 26 4.2. Dog of all trades ..................................................................................................... 28 4.3. The problem with healthy horses ........................................................................... 30 5. DISTRIBUTION AND CHARACTERISTICS OF DOG AND HORSE BURIALS .. 32 5.1. Settlement Deposits ................................................................................................ 32 5.2. Cemetery contexts .................................................................................................. 33 5.2.1. Horse burials ................................................................................................... 33 5.2.1. Dog burials ...................................................................................................... 34 1.1.2. ‘Tribal’ preferences ................................................................................... 36 5.3. The Netherlands: settlement and cemetery contexts .............................................. 38 6. PATTERNS OF RITUAL ......................................................................................... 42 1 6.1. A note on the ‘ritual – controversy’ ....................................................................... 42 6.2. Exploitation and Carcass disposal ..................................................................... 43 6.3. Identifying of ritual killing ................................................................................ 44 6.4. Spiritual motives ............................................................................................... 48 7. DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................... 50 7.1. The dog burials .................................................................................................. 50 7.2. The horse burials .................................................................................................... 51 7.3. Regional tradition ................................................................................................... 51 7.4. Further research ...................................................................................................... 52 8. CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................... 54 ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... 56 REFERENCES.................................................................................................................. 57 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 69 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 70 APPENDICES .................................................................................................................. 71 2 1. WHY DOGS AND HORSES WERE BURIED AT OEGSTGEEST Introduction and research strategy Introduction Excavations at the Early Medieval site of Oegstgeest, situated in the Dutch Rhine estuary, have yielded the burials of three dogs and three horses, some of which were located near human inhumation graves and others nearby a house structure. Studying these burials can lead to better insight into the roles dogs and horses fulfilled for the Early Medieval inhabitants. With animal husbandry as an important part of the settlement’s subsistence strategy, the majority of the animal remains found at Oegstgeest consists of consumption waste of the ‘economically important’ species cattle, sheep/goat and pig. Dogs and horses on the other hand, are underrepresented in the bulk of consumption waste and consequently, in previous zooarchaeological studies. The main goal of this study is to identify why dogs and horses were buried at the settlement of Oegstgeest and how their burials relate to the roles these animals fulfilled in the lives of the humans they lived among. The zooarchaeological data derived from the their remains will be combined with a critical analysis of previous interpretations of Early Medieval dog and horse burials. Thesis structure Chapter 2 comprises a descriptive introduction of the settlement of Oegstgeest. This will be followed by an overview of the methodology used for the zooarchaeological analysis and a detailed report of the data results (chapter 3). In order to place the burials in a local, archaeological contexts, this chapter includes a summary of the archaeological context of the dog and horse burials (chapter 3). Chapter 4 discusses several indications for the every-day use and treatment of dogs and horses, as well as the sometimes ambiguous nature of the zooarchaeological data. This chapter will also contain a short elaboration about the pitfalls of incorporating of written sources to fill in the archaeological gaps. To explore what cultural influence might have been involved in the burial of dogs and horses at Oegstgeest, chapter 5 will discuss Early Medieval burial patterns observed in northwestern Europe, with a special emphasis on previously established correlations between distribution patterns of dog and horse burials and different preferences among different Germanic tribes. The final section of this chapter provides an overview of Early Medieval dog and horse burials that have been found in the Netherlands. This will be followed by an 3 analysis of the ritual aspects of dog and horse burials (chapter 6), with a main focus on identifying sacrificial killing. After both the theoretical framework and zooarchaeological data have been established, the interpretations will be discussed (chapter 7) and presented in the final conclusion of this thesis (chapter 8). Figure 1: Paleogeographic map of the central and southern coastal area of The Netherlands around c. 750 AD (after Dijkstra 2011) 4 2. THE SETTLEMENT OF OEGSTGEEST Settlement structure and regional position Early Medieval Oegstgeest belonged to a cluster of settlements that were situated along the Old Rhine, a meandering river in the central part of the Dutch coastal region. Because the land along this part of the coast had silted up higher than the North Sea’s storm tide level, the influence of sea on the landscape in this region than was less destructive than was the case in, for example, the southern coastal area of the Netherlands. Nevertheless, also in the Rhine estuary water was ever present and habitation was restricted to higher locations in the landscape (Bazelmans et al. 2004, 3-6). Accordingly,