Methods for the examination of cattle, sheep and goat dung in prehistoric wetland settlements with examples of the sites Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen and Alleshausen-Grundwiesen (around cal 2900 BC) at Lake Federsee, south-west Germany

Marlu Kühn, Ursula Maier, Christoph Herbig, Kristin Ismail-Meyer, Matthieu Le Bailly and Lucia Wick

Environmental Archaeology, 2013, vol. 18, issue 1, 43-57

Abstract: There has been evidence of dung in lakeside and moorland settlements since the beginning of wetland archaeology in the 19th century. While evidence has been found for the easily discernible faecal pellets of sheep and goats, recognition of cattle dung has proven to be considerably more difficult. In this study, we give an overview of evidence for dung remains in prehistoric wetland settlements in Germany, Switzerland and eastern France. Various methods for the analysis of uncharred dung remains are reviewed – analyses of plant macro- and microremains, micromorphology and palaeoparasitology – and are applied to two late Neolithic sites in Germany, Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen and Alleshausen-Grundwiesen. It will be shown that at Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen small ruminants were penned during the whole winter and fed on leaf hay unlike Alleshausen-Grundwiesen, where cattle browsed/grazed in the open during the day and were herded into the settlement during the night – both in summer and in winter.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1179/1461410313Z.00000000017

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