Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 89

The bishop’s beef. improved cattle at early modern Skálholt, Iceland
Skalholt SU 454 Bos taurus Bone Element Distribution
Lower Hindlimb
Lower Forelimb
Hindquarter
Forequarter
Figure 2. Bos Taurus bone element distribition
on both maxillary and mandibular cattle
tooth rows, (figures 3 and 4), indicate
that the majority came from young adult
animals. Figure 4 presents the maxillary
tooth wear state while figure 3 presents
the mandibular wear state for the avail-
able cattle jaws, making use of the Grant
(1982) method, with age estimates rela-
tive to tooth eruption and wear from
Grigson (1982).
Light and medium wear account
for roughly 84% of the sample of maxil-
lary tooth rows (out of 44 samples). This
strongly suggests that these cattle were
slaughtered when they were three years
old or older (Grigson, 1982). The signi-
ficantly smaller number of M3 molars
showing heavy wear implies that there
were few older animals, meaning older
than four to eight years, represented in
this dump. The mandibles tell a similar
story, suggesting that the majority of the
20 25 30 35 4C
% MAU
Cattle Bones No. of bones %
Adult & juv. 887 99.66
Neonatal 3 0.34
Table 3. Adult/Juvenile and Neonatal Cow
bones
cattle represented by unit 454 lived until
sometime after their third year, yet not
into old age, eight years or more. Due to
the much larger sample size of maxillary
tooth rows, the M3 maxillary tooth wear
data should be emphasized over the man-
dibular tooth wear data, with its much
smaller sample size of seven tooth rows.
It’s important to note that dental wear is
only a relative indicator of age. Different
levels of erosion and plant composition,
for example, can either inhibit or increase
the levels of tooth wear in a grazing ani-
mal (Figs 3 & 4).
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