Archeozoology

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Yesterday, I visited the Hurlers and the Cheesewring. As I approached from the car park, there were grazing cattle, sheep and horses right amongst the stones. As I wandered the site, ravens would often perch upon the stones and buzzards were hovering in the distance.

Trying to imagine the flora and fauna surrounding the neolithic/ bronze age sites often takes up a lot of my thoughts, both when on and off site. It seems so integral to understanding our ancestor's and their world yet I have had great difficulty in finding much information on the subject.

Whilst at the Hurlers another visitor wandered past with a couple of malamute husky dogs- As far as I understand, the breed most similar to our ancestor's hounds. Adding this to all the previously mentioned beasts( with the exception of the horses) , I was given a nice visual insight in to some of the fauna contemporary with the ancient landscape. This has tickled my curiosity further and I am redoubling my efforts to investigate.

Does anybody have any information, titbits, personal ideas or directions to relevant websites to help me on my quest. I am certainly no zoologist or botanist, Archeo or otherwise but would like to know about anything from degrees of forestation to geographical locations of bears to dragonfly populations and all that's in between.

Thankyou kindly

jonny pocket wrote:
Does anybody have any information, titbits, personal ideas or directions to relevant websites to help me on my quest. I am certainly no zoologist or botanist, Archeo or otherwise but would like to know about anything from degrees of forestation to geographical locations of bears to dragonfly populations and all that's in between.

Thankyou kindly

Hi jonny pocket,

It's a fscinating field that - in my experience - seems to be mostly locked up in academic papers. I did score a copy of Colin Burgess' "The Age of Stonehenge"the other day, but that mostly deals with anthropogenic archaeology. You might try Oxbow Books:

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/

They have this which looks interesting:

Animals in the Neolithic of Britain and Europe.

I keep meaning to buy a copy of "Fairweather Eden"by Mike Pitts, but it always slips my mind....

Peace

Pilgrim

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