Osteological evidence for the draught exploitation of cattle: First applications of a new methodology

Although the aetiology of bone pathologies in cattle is poorly documented, various deformations in the skeleton have been attributed to draught exploi tation in the archaeozoological literature. This paper summarizes the resul ts of an osteological study that was undertaken on the feet of modern draug ht oxen. This led to the definition of a series of draught-related anomalie s. In an attempt to describe the pathologies in a more consistent and quant itative way, a scoring scale for each individual bone pathology was establi shed. The developed method is applied to cattle remains from four Roman and one late medieval site. The distribution of the observed pathological indi ces (PIs) on the first phalanges is interpreted in terms of the age structu re of the cattle populations, and the possible modes of cattle exploitation and meat consumption in various settlement types. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.