A team of archaeologists from Cardiff University have conducted state-of-the-art, multi-isotope analyses on more than 250 animal remains found in six middens across Wiltshire and the Thames Valley and dated them to the Late Bronze Age (2,900 to 2,500 years ago).
These remains are believed to be scraps left by people after large, communal feasts, and they’re made up of a variety of different animals, including sheep, pigs and cattle.
After killing, butchering and eating these animals, people threw their remains into piles that, over time, grew into enormous mounds known as ‘middens’. The largest of these middens, located in Potterne, Wiltshire, covers an area roughly the same size as five football pitches and contains as many as 15 million bone fragments.
The results of these latest multi-isotope analyses reveal where these animals were raised by examining the chemical make-up of their remains and identifying regional markers.
Some, like the sheep found in a midden in East Chisenbury (just 10 miles north of Stonehenge in Wiltshire) were raised locally; while others, like the pigs found in a midden in Potterne (also Wiltshire) were transported from as far as northern England.
The breadth of results from Potterne suggest that it was a meeting place for people who lived both locally and far away. A similar range of results was observed amongst remains found in Runnymede (Surrey), suggesting it was also a major hub, although for people with a particular taste for beef rather than pork.
“Our findings show each midden had a distinct make up of animal remains, with some full of locally raised sheep and others with pigs or cattle from far and wide,” says the study’s lead author Dr Carmen Esposito.
“We believe this demonstrates that each midden was a lynchpin in the landscape, key to sustaining specific regional economies, expressing identities and sustaining relations between communities during this turbulent period, when the value of bronze dropped and people turned to farming instead.”
At the end of the Bronze Age there was a shift to wetter conditions, which is thought to have impacted farming practices and productivity. Professor Richard Madgwick - a co-author of this recent study - thinks this climatic instability, along with economic instability caused by a drop in the value of bronze, may have driven people in southern Britain towards feasting.
“These events are powerful for building and consolidating relationships both within and between communities, today and in the past. The scale of these accumulations of debris and their wide catchment is astonishing and points to communal consumption and social mobilisation on a scale that is arguably unparalleled in British prehistory,” explains Madgwick.
Find out more about the study: Diverse feasting networks at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain (c. 900-500 BCE) evidenced by multi-isotope analysis, published in the journal iScience.
Top image: East Chisenbury midden under excavation. Credit: Cardiff University
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