ABSTRACT
In 1980 and 1981 part of a 4th century cemetery in Nijmegen was excavated by the State Service for Archaeological Investigations in the Netherlands (R.O.B.), within the framework of the Eastern River Area Project. In some graves dishes were found containing animal bones as gifts for the dead. As material for archaeozoological investigation usually only the remains of meals are available: garbage and refuse of meals eaten in the past. One can only find articulated skeletons if complete animals have been buried from which eatable parts have not been cut off. For the two best conserved skeletons of domestic fowl from the graves nos. 190–1 and 197 it is striking that there are no traces of the head and the uneatable parts of the hind legs. The cemetery on the terrain of the nursing-home ‘Margriee, most probably belongs, like the cemetery in the city, to the stronghold on the Valkhof and its surroundings.
