Analysis of insects from a middle Bronze Age well at Yarnton, Oxfordshire, revealed a very unusual assemblage of scarabaeoid dung beetles. The high ratio of Onthophagus to Aphodius would nowadays seem appropriate to Southern France. Some of the species such as Onthophagus taurus and O. nutans are now extinct in Britain. The only other similar assemblage is from the Wilsford Shaft, which is of similar date, and it is possible that their presence implies a brief warm climatic episode. A more general review of Scarabaeoidea showed that the British fauna has undergone substantial change with archaeological records of eleven species which are now extinct or very rare.
Among the animal bones recovered from a late Roman well at Great Holts Farm, Essex, were some cattle bones of a very large size. These may derive from animals imported from the continent. The presence of sparrowhawk and thrush bones might represent early evidence of hawking, although the use of the raptor as a decoy is also possible. In general the animal bones indicate a relatively affluent lifestyle and overseas contacts.
Continuing study of the huge middle and late-Saxon vertebrate assemblage from Flixborough, North Lincolnshire, has shown that the inhabitants of this important settlement were consuming whale and dolphin meat. More than twenty fragments of these marine mammals have been recovered from only 10% of the material so far recorded. These animals may have been caught at sea or, more likely, in the nearby Humber estuary where they may have been stranded. It is possible that they represent trade with the nearby east coast fisheries, although the almost negligible quantities of marine fish from the site appear not to support this theory. More specific identification of the species of whale and dolphin will provide valuable information about the past distribution of cetaceans since all are rare or uncommon visitors to these waters today.
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Chemical analysis of medieval human skeletons from York has shown that more sea-food was eaten by monastic brethren than by lay-folk, a reflection perhaps of the dietary rules of many religious communities which forbade the consumption of meat but allowed fish to be substituted. Sea-food is richer in the stable isotope 13C than the meat of land animals and vegetable crops. This difference is transmitted to the bones of the consumer, so by analysing human bones for carbon stable isotopes we can obtain a broad impression of the importance of sea-food in the diet. Skeletons from the monastic cemetery at the Gilbertine priory at York Fishergate were richer in the stable isotope 13C than were a group of lay-folk buried in the church nave at the same site. The results suggest that religious edicts may have been exerting an influence over monastic eating habits, at least for the first two centuries of the priory's existence from which the burials derive. The monastic group also showed less dental caries than the lay-folk. Previous research has suggested that caries may be inhibited by a heavy sea-food diet, so the distinctive monastic diet may have helped protect the brethren from tooth decay, although other as yet unidentified dietary differences may also be involved.
Excavations at Eynsham Abbey, Oxfordshire, have shed further light on food consumption and production in a religious house. Excavated deposits came from the frater, the kitchen, and the outside area where food was butchered and waste disposed-off. The bones showed remarkable continuity in food consumption from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. Over this period there was a small increase in mutton consumption at the expense of pork and bacon. Fish and birds were consumed in quantity, although (even in a house which followed the Benedictine rule) beef was the most frequent meat. Thanks to excellent preservation and retrieval of material from the kitchen floor, there was plenty of evidence for the consumption of foods permitted on non-meat days: fish and birds, mostly chicken and goose. Most of the sites in England from which fish remains have been recovered and analysed have had marine fish (herrings, flatfish, and cod) but the fish from Eynsham Abbey, at least until the thirteenth century, were mostly freshwater fish such as pike and cyprinids, something more often found in continental Europe than in Britain. The evidence for the age at death and the relative numbers of cocks and hens shows how egg production was a major reason for keeping these birds and the quantities of eggshell in the samples confirms this.
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Most of the animal bones from King Henry VIII's castle at Camber, near Rye, East Sussex, belonged to cattle and sheep. Their large size when compared to earlier medieval remains from other parts of the country indicates that Sussex livestock were already 'improved' as early as the sixteenth century. The Camber assemblage includes very few high status animals. This is not at all surprising since despite being called a castle, it was manned by ordinary soldiers. A cocks’s foot bone (tarso-metatarsus) has a green stain which X-ray analysis indicates is zinc and copper; perhaps this cock was fitted with a brass spur, possible evidence that the gunners whiled away their time cockfighting. This was a popular pastime in sixteenth-century England.
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Analyses of samples from medieval tenements at North Bridge, Doncaster, South Yorkshire have yielded rare evidence for what is probably material used for thatching, in the form of charred and uncharred leaf fragments of saw-sedge Cladium mariscus. Charred material was recorded from four contexts of thirteenth to fourteenth-century date, in deposits interpreted as external surfaces and dumps, and internal surfaces. Uncharred vegetative material formed a large proportion of one of a series of richly organic deposits in a huge pit dated to the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. There were also records of the fruits from deposits spanning the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Given the extremely sharp serrated edges to the leaves of the well named saw-sedge it is difficult to imagine a reason for bringing it to the site other than for roofing (it is, of course, still used in East Anglia for thatching, especially for the ridges, where extra strength and durability are required). It is also possible that turves were used in roofing at this site. Charred remains of the basal twigs and of the roots of heather (as well as charred and uncharred remains of almost every other part of the plant) have been found in small amounts throughout the medieval and early post-medieval deposits at North Bridge along with remains of some other plants which are likely to have arrived in a mat of vegetation cut from an area of heathland or moorland.
A study of the animal remains from post-medieval deposits at North Bridge has provided some interesting corroborative evidence for contemporary historical sources about the industrial nature of this part of the town. A large pit contained cattle horncores and horse bones which almost certainly represent the waste from horn-working and hide preparation. Another large pit contained mainly the feet and heads of sheep and cattle, and could be interpreted as primary butchery waste (from initial carcase preparation) or waste from horn and hide working. What is also clear from these remains is that large scale industrial/craft activities continued in this part of Doncaster from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.