Animals at Ashton: Diet and human-animal dynamics in a Romano-British Small Town

The animal bones from the Roman-period small town at Ashton represent an excellent opportunity to examine animal husbandry, consumption, and relationships in the province of Britain. Analysis of this large dataset provides data for a key gap in our understanding of how small towns functioned in the Nene Valley region, which has been increasingly well-studied in recent years. The data showed that although Ashton possessed a strong iron-working industry, the site was more geared towards the production of animals in a manner similar to local rural sites than it was to the pattern of requisitioning seen in larger towns. Significant changes throughout the site’s occupation show that although an increasingly urban pattern builds up through the third century, a sudden shift occurs in the mid-fourth to early fifth century that results in a return to a more self-sufficient style of animal husbandry due to the decreased pressures of taxation and the decline of imperial control. In addition to this important economic data, patterns of ritual behaviour can be tracked both in the earlier exclusively pagan periods as well as into the Later Roman phases when a substantial Christian population is in evidence. The presence of animals in economy, industry, ritual, and personal expression create a picture of a rapidly evolving site, as it moved from one extreme of involvement in imperial exchange to the other, and then back again.