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Livestock size and the Roman-Early Anglo-Saxon transition: Britain in North-West Europe

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A Correction to this article was published on 22 March 2023

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Abstract

This study contributes to reconstruct the socio-economic dynamics of change at the Roman-Early Anglo-Saxon transition in Britain through zooarchaeological analysis. Contemporary assemblages from the nearby European mainland are used to provide a term of comparison. The results indicate that typical Roman husbandry practices survived into fourth century Britain: the animal economy focussed on cattle, livestock improvements, and surplus production, which allowed to feed the taxation cycle and to supply the army and town dwellers; on the other hand, the zooarchaeological evidence highlights substantial changes in the aims and scale of animal exploitation in the post-Roman period. Such discontinuity demonstrates the key role formerly played by the Roman state in shaping local animal economies and in integrating food production practices throughout the north-western provinces. At the same time, the more generalized animal husbandry strategies of post-Roman settlements respond well to the needs of self-sufficient communities. Cattle decreased in size, as large, robust animals were no longer needed; on the other hand, the large size of sheep and other domesticates, improved in Roman times, benefitted Early Anglo-Saxon herders, and were often maintained. This evidence suggests that post-Roman communities did not simply cope with adverse economic conditions but reacted appropriately to the new circumstances.

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Data availability

The data collected by the corresponding author and used in this paper (faunal assemblages with 'Rizzetto 2020' under the field 'Reference' in Tables 1 and 2) are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the many archive curators for providing access to relevant material, as well as all the colleagues who contributed key information on faunal assemblages and provided complementary data. We would also like to thank the three anonymous peer reviewers for their comments and suggestions. We are grateful to the University of Sheffield for a Faculty of Arts and Humanities PhD Scholarship Award 2015–2018, granted to Mauro Rizzetto for the PhD project on which this article is based. We are much less grateful to the University of Sheffield Executive Board for its decision to close the Department of Archaeology, based on a flawed review process, as well as for its complete disrespect of staff, students, and the wider community.

Funding

The PhD project on which this article is based was funded by a University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities PhD Scholarship Award 2015–2018, granted to Mauro Rizzetto. This sponsor was not involved in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, the writing of the article, and the decision to submit the article for publication.

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  1. American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Athens, Greece

    Mauro Rizzetto

  2. Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Umberto Albarella

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Mauro Rizzetto: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. Umberto Albarella: conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, supervision, writing—review and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mauro Rizzetto.

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Rizzetto, M., Albarella, U. Livestock size and the Roman-Early Anglo-Saxon transition: Britain in North-West Europe. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 14, 65 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01494-y

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