Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2006, Page 90

George Hambrecht
Cattle M3 Wear
* # of elements
Light Wear
Figure 3. Cattle M3 wear
Medium Wear
Wear State + Number of Specimens
Heavy Wear
In order to lessen the “noise”
from such possible variables the fusion
state of selected long bones must be exam-
ined as well. These long bones reinforce
the idea that these cattle lived beyond
their third year, but not much longer than
their fifth year (Fig. 5). As can be seen
from figure 5, 62% of the cattle femurs
in this assemblage had fused distal ends
by the time they were slaughtered. 38%
were unfused, the largest proportion of
long bone fusion in this assemblage. As
this end of the femur does not fuse until
the second half of the animals’ third year
of life, this pattern of long bone fusion
suggests that the majority were killed off
somewhere around that age.
Both the bone fusion and tooth
wear data strongly point to cattle that
were slaughtered within their third and
fifth years of life. This mortality pat-
tern is more indicative of a beef cat-
tle economy than of a dairy economy.
A lifespan between three and five years
would usually take them to or near the
peak of their growth curve, before they
could become effective milk producers
but close to the point where further feed-
ing produced little or no increase in car-
cass size (Trow-Smith, 1951). In contrast,
in zooarchaeological assemblages of less
wealthy, though by no means poor farms
in Iceland, one finds a large amount of
bones from neonates and then again from
older animals, past their prime (McGov-
ern, 2003). This is a typical zooarchaeo-
logical representation of a dairy economy,
in which a population of milk cows is
maintained at a level determined by the
amount of pasture and fodder available
and neonates are slaughtered for herd
population control and in order to save
their mother’s milk for human consump-
tion. This is not to suggest that there was
no dairy economy at Skálholt, only that a
dedicated beef economy was present for
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