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Autumn Killing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. S. Higgs  and
J. Peter White
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Extract

It is commonly held in the existing literature that prehistoric peoples were compelled to kill off an abnormally high proportion of their livestock in autumn because of a lack of winter fodder. There is literary evidence for autumn killing in several European localities (n. 1). It is therefore a plausible assumption that earlier cultures are hardly less likely to have been more successful in overcoming this difficulty. This article is concerned to examine whether this assumption is valid.

The inference generally made about autumn killing rests almost entirely on Watson’s report on the Skara Brae bones (n. 2). By the use of Watson’s method such a claim may also be made for the Old Sleaford sheep, and this is shown here. But there are grounds for supposing that such a claim is methodologically unjustified, and we have endeavoured to set out a method by which such claims may be tested.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 37 , Issue 148 , December 1963 , pp. 282 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1963

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References

* We are grateful to Mrs M. V. Jones and to the Ministry of Public Building and Works for permission to use the data from this unpublished site.

(1) Clark, J. G. D., Prehistoric Europe, 1952, 124-5-

(2) Watson, D. M. S., in Childe, V. G., Skara Brae, 1931, 198-204.

(3) We are very grateful to P. A. Mellars of Fitzwilliam House, University of Cambridge for allowing us to study his unpublished material on this point and for discussing it with us.

(4) Silver, L. A., ‘The Ageing of Domestic Animals’, in Brothwell, D. R. and Higgs, E.S., eds., Science in Archaeology, 1963.

(5) Kammlade, W. G., Sheep Science, 1957, 31-4.

(6) Miller, W. C., and West, G. P., Black’s Veterinary Dictionary, 1956, s.v. Dentition.

(7) Stewart, D. M., ‘Store Cattle from the Scottish Hills’, Rep. and Proc. Brit. Soc. Anim. Prod., 1944.

(8) See Notes (3), (4), (5).

(9) Silver, op. cit.

(10) Clark, op. cit.