ABSTRACT

Timber 2 from the mill sluice was submitted for dendrochronological analysis to the Department of the Environment's Laboratory at Sheffield. An analysis of the age at death of cattle, sheep and pig has been made but with a collection of this size, caution is necessary in the interpretation. Dog and cat were represented by four fragmentary bones. Of the small wild mammals, the remains of the rabbit and fox, both burrow dwellers, may have been modern intruders. The wild species, with no more than one individual of each present, were mute swan, duck, probably pintail, partridge, redwing; mistlethrush, a corvid, probably rook, and a jackdaw. The high proportion of bones of fully-mature sheep and cattle suggest that the animals present here were those slaughtered at the end of their working lifetime. The importance of cattle as draught animals and sheep as wool producers at this time was too great to allow of their premature slaughter.