Bones of dogs are found on most archaeological sites of
holocene date in several continents. The presence of tooth marks on
the bones of other species often suggests that a recovered assemblage
has undergone scavenging by canids and may be taphonomically biased.
An actualistic study monitored the destruction, weathering
and burial of bones of modern sheep and deer that had died naturally
and been scavenged by foxes. The assemblages recovered after three
years are biased severely towards certain element types and have
suffered the preferential loss of young bones or epiphyses. Subcollections
within the sheep assemblage indicate that relative
frequencies of elements are different in residual and carnivore transported
assemblages.
Comparisons with work by other researchers indicate that:
(1) inherent factors influence element survival rates, and
(2) the patterns of element frequencies in assemblages from
carnivore-scavenged carcasses are consistent across a wide range
of environmental settings.
The results of the actualistic study were applied to some
Romano-British material from a military site in northern Britain.
Several of the ungulate bones show tooth marks and patterns of
breakage that are very similar to those observed in the actualistic
study. It is very likely, therefore, that this assemblage was
scavenged by dogs (bones of which were also recovered). The relative
frequencies of elements of the sheep-goat and cattle assemblages match
those of the modern sheep assemblage, suggesting that whole carcasses
of both species were deposited at the site. The paucity of certain
element types can be explained by the activities of scavenging canids
together with a bias against the recovery of smaller bones, and need
not be the result of cultural practices such as trading.
A new method is suggested for the demographic analysis of
archaeological faunal assemblages that overcomes some of the biases
caused by the preferential loss of unfused epiphyses
