Conquest by Cattle – Multidisciplinary Approaches to Understanding the Population Diversity of Ancient Cattle

Measured by Biomass, cattle are the most important livestock in the world. Arguably, this exalted position was kickstarted during the Roman period, at least for the Mediterranean and Western European world: the average age-at-death peaked, remains are getting more ubiquitous and divers at the same time. Roman literature even suggests that a kind of purposeful proto-breeding of different cattle types was conducted, potentially writing the prologue to our current livestock management praxis, that is characterised by a multitude of available specialised breeds. Yet limitations of traditional zooarchaeological analysis have so far hindered unpicking this ancient boom in population diversity.

The SWW-DTP2 funded PhD-project Conquest by Cattle, conducted at the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, aims to shed new light on the process surrounding the emergence of new cattle types through a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach. At the core of the project is the attempt to push the methodological boundaries of morphometric analysis further, combined with targeted aDNA analysis, branching out into stable isotope and phytolith analysis, all of it hold together by an interpretational framework woven from Roman literature and iconography.

This lecture will explain the underlying logic, challenges, and strategies behind the project, advocating for more collaboration across disciplinary boundaries in order to further all our fields. Preliminary results will be discussed and some light shed on the changing population diversity of cattle in Iron Age and Roman Hampshire.