Abstract
Herbivore livestock dung has been identified in archaeological sites around the world. Focusing on dung from the ubiquitous Old World herbivorous domesticates - sheep, goats and cattle - this review deals with the materials found within dung that have relevance to archaeology. The natural and anthropogenic/cultural taphonomic processes that affect the preservation and identification of livestock dung, and the archaeological information that can be extracted through detailed studies of the context and content of identified livestock dung in archaeological sites is modeled and discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 205-218 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Journal of Archaeological Science |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Some of the data presented in this review is a result of numerous studies conducted in Kenya and Israel and funded by the National Science Foundation , the Wenner-Gren Foundation , the Israel Science Foundation , and the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science , Weizmann Institute of Science , Israel. I thank Steve Weiner and Fiona Marshall for their inspiration and support, and Ofer Bar-Yosef for commenting on an earlier version of this paper. I would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.
Keywords
- Archaeology
- Dung
- Formation processes
- Identification
- Taphonomy
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Archaeology
- Archaeology