What Happened in That Pit? An Archaeozoological and GIS Approach to Study an Accumulation of Animal Carcasses at the Roman Villa of Vilauba (Catalonia)

Abstract

Some of the deposits of animal remains documented throughout prehistory and history are clearly something other than ordinary waste from meat consumption. For the Roman period and based on their characteristics, these assemblages have been classified as butchery deposits, raw material deposits, deposits created for the hygienic management and disposal of animal carcasses, or ritual deposits. However, some are difficult to classify, and the parameters that define each of them are not clear. Here, we present a unique deposit from the Roman villa of Vilauba (Catalonia). A total of 783 cattle remains were found in an irregular-shaped 187 m2 pit originally dug to extract the clay used in the construction of the villa walls around the third quarter of the 1st century AD. The application of a contextual taphonomy approach, with the integration of archaeozoological variables, stratigraphy and context, and a GIS analysis, allowed us to document the nature and formation of this singular assemblage. It consisted of the carcasses of 14 cattle individuals from which the meat had been removed to take advantage of it by preserving it. Therefore, the parameters that characterise the refuse of this activity are presented here as a baseline for other studies.

Keywords

• cattle herd
• disease
• meat preserves
• Roman economy
• faunal remains
• contextual taphonomy