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Fallow deer (Dama dama dama) management in Roman South-East Britain

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Abstract

This paper presents new carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope data for European fallow deer (Dama dama dama) in Roman Britain and discusses results in light of evidence from classical texts, landscape archaeology, zooarchaeology and the limited available samples of metric data. The new isotope data presented here are from Fishbourne Roman Palace (Sussex), two sites on the Isle of Thanet (Kent) and a further two sites in London. In spite of small sample sizes the data make an important contribution to the very limited corpus of scientific research on the species and provide new resolution to the nature of fallow deer movement and management in Roman Britain.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted as part of the Dama International Project, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (standard grant no. AH/I026456/1). We are grateful to Rhiannon Stevens for her opinions on the data presented in this paper and to the two anonymous reviewers. Thanks also go to Lena Strid and Rebecca Nicholson for submitting and providing information on the samples from the East Kent Access Road. Data from Monkton, previously published by Sykes et al. (2011a) was acquired through a radiocarbon dating project funded by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Dating Service.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU, UK

    Richard Madgwick

  2. Department of Archaeology, University of Nottingham, Humanities Building, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Naomi Sykes & Holly Miller

  3. Fishbourne Roman Palace, Roman Way, Fishbourne, West Sussex, PO19 3QR, UK

    Rob Symmons

  4. Department of Archaeology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 2HE, UK

    James Morris

  5. NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, Kingsley Dunham Centre, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham, NG12 5GG, UK

    Angela Lamb

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  1. Richard Madgwick
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Correspondence to Richard Madgwick or Naomi Sykes.

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Madgwick, R., Sykes, N., Miller, H. et al. Fallow deer (Dama dama dama) management in Roman South-East Britain. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 5, 111–122 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-013-0120-0

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