A Review of Animal Bone Evidence from Central England

The aim of this project was to produce a review of the animal bone evidence from Central England from Mesolithic to Modern times. The dataset collected for this purpose consists of details gleaned from excavation reports (or specialist bone reports), concerning vertebrate remains (of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) found primarily on archaeological sites. These details include the full bibliographic reference, summary descriptions of each site (for instance, its type, location and dating) and of the bone assemblages recovered. Quantitative information (such as the number of identified bone fragments for each species) is reproduced from the site reports. Other descriptive or interpretative information (such as the type of butchery patterns noted, or the age-profile of a certain animal) is presented in summary form, in such a way as to allow regional and temporal comparisons to be made. The database is available to query online or can be downloaded as a series of csv files for local use.