Conquest by Cattle

以生物量衡量，牛是当今最重要的动物。而在现代世界，这种压倒性的相关性的基础无疑是在罗马时期奠定的：众所周知，帝国的扩张伴随着牛的数量和质量的惊人增长。这些动物的绝对数量迅速增加，品种的多样性也随之增加。在其他任何时期，这种家畜的平均年龄都没有这么高。然而，人们对这些变化的情况知之甚少。“用牛征服”旨在缩小这一差距。该项目将分析英国南部铁器时代晚期和罗马时期的牛的遗骸。几何形态计量学和稳定同位素分析的结合将允许绘制这些动物生活的详细图景。同位素分析将向我们提供有关饮食变化、季节性运动和地理起源的信息，为了解不同牛种群的传记奠定基础。这将得到肢体骨骼的几何形态分析的补充，特别是黄芪、跟骨和后足。已经证明，这些元素显示了家畜生活史的痕迹，例如它们被用作牵引性动物或由于过度劳累而导致的骨骼病理。但《牛的征服》将进一步尝试建立几何形态计量学作为解决罗马牛的另一个难题的关键：成功地识别不同的品种。古代文学资料清楚地表明，罗马世界有着令人难以置信的高度的牲畜专业化和繁育。厚重的土壤应该由体型较大的品种耕作，而牛奶最好是从体型较小、脾气较好的奶牛那里获得。大型白色公牛是稀有动物，但在特定的牺牲中受到青睐，比如在胜利时做出的牺牲。动物考古学家一直热衷于为这种已证实的品种找到考古证据，但这些方法根本无法证实记录中存在不同的品种。这是因为传统的度量标准，即各种骨骼元素的长度和宽度测量，可能会受到各种因素的严重扭曲，如阉割、营养不良或疾病。人们经常说，罗马时期的骨骼测量结果比英国铁器时代的骨骼测量结果显示出更多的变化，但这是由于品种的改变而不是畜牧习惯的改变仍有待证实。然而，几何形态计量学最近被应用于牛的脸颊牙齿，并在物种水平上成功地识别，这特别有趣，因为牙齿比其他骨骼元素受表观遗传因素的影响更小。这位博士将尝试改进方法，使之能够在考古记录中识别不同的物种。在用所描述的方法收集相关数据后，《牛的征服》将最终从全球化研究的最新理论方法和对原始语言的古代文献的彻底解释中构建一个解释框架。通过这种方式，我们将能够理解在罗马时期，牛对西方世界正在显现的重要性，这是我们从未经历过的。

Measured by biomass, cattle are today's most important animal. And the foundations for this overwhelming relevance in the modern world were undoubtedly laid during the Roman period: It is a well-known fact that the spread of the Empire was accompanied by an astonishing rise of cattle in both quantity and quality. The absolute numbers of these animals increased rapidly while the diversity of breeds also did. And in no other period had this domestic animal such a high average age. Yet, the circumstances of these changes are poorly understood. 'Conquest by Cattle' aims to close this gap.The project will analyse cattle remains from the late Iron Age and Roman period in South Britain. The combination of Geometric Morphometrics and Stable Isotope Analysis will allow drawing a detailed picture of the life that these animals had. Isotope Analysis will inform us about dietary changes, seasonal movement and geographical origin, forming the baseline for understanding the biographies of different cattle populations. This will be complemented by Geometric Morphometric Analysis of limb bones, especially the astragali, calcanea, and metapodia. It was already demonstrated that these elements show traces of the life history of domestic animals, such as their use as traction animals or skeletal pathologies due to overworking. But 'Conquest by Cattle' will further try to establish Geometric Morphometrics as the key to solve yet another puzzle that surrounds Roman Cattle: The successful identification of different breeds.The ancient literary sources make it clear that the Roman world had an incredibly high degree of livestock specialisation and breeding. Heavy soil should be ploughed by a bigger breed, whereas milk would be best gained from small and easy-tempered cows. Big white bulls were rare animals, yet favoured for specific sacrifices like the ones made during a triumph. Zooarchaeologists have been keen on finding the archaeological evidence for this testified breed variety, but the methods could simply not verify the presence of different breeds in the record. This is because Traditional Metrics, i.e. length and breadth measurements on various skeletal elements, can be heavily distorted by various factors like castration, malnutrition, or diseases. It was often remarked that the bone measurements during the Roman period show a greater variety than those of the British Iron Age, but that this is due to breed-alteration rather than changing husbandry practices remains to be proved.However, Geometric Morphometric was recently applied on bovine cheek teeth and allowed the successful identification on species-level, which is especially interesting as teeth are less influenced by epigenetic factors than other skeletal elements. This PhD will try to refine the method to an extent which allows the identification of different breeds within the archaeological record.After gathering the relevant data with the described methods, 'Conquest by Cattle' will finally construct an interpretational framework out of the recent theoretical approaches from Globalisation Studies and the thorough interpretation of ancient literature in its original language. This way, we will be able to understand the emerging importance of cattle for the western world during the Roman period like we never did.