Animal husbandry and neolithic mining: New insights from the variscite mines at gavà (Barcelona)

Abstract

Husbandry practices have played an important role in the socioeconomic organization of mining societies… This paper presents the results of a zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis of the faunal remains recovered from Mine16 at Gavà (Barcelona). Analyses of the faunal remains were used to determine the importance of livestock in subsistence practices, the origin of the faunal assemblage and the depositional dynamics of the faunal assemblage in the fill inside Mine16. The mining activities at Gavà did not replace specialized subsistence production, but rather complemented it. The results suggest that the faunal remains found in the mines comprised production and consumption waste, providing new and complementary evidence of settlement activities associated with mining.