Excavations at the vicarage yard (prästgården) at the famous Late Iron Age magnate centre of Gamla Uppsala, Sweden, have yielded six Viking Age (c. ad 750–1100) boat burials, several containing the remains of domestic dogs. The present study is an osteological examination of the remains of three of these dogs, one each from three boat graves, with a primary goal of morphological reconstruction and a secondary focus on identifying sex, age, and pathology. Two dogs were large, slender sight hounds, while the third was somewhat smaller and of indeterminate type. The preference for sight hounds in high-status graves is consistent with previous results from the contemporaneous nearby boat cemeteries of Vendel and Valsgärde, adding weight to the hypothesis of a shared funerary culture between these sites in the Late Iron Age.

This article examines and compares the evolution of animal husbandry practices in several civitates of Gallia Belgica and western Germania Inferior, as documented by archaeozoological data. It focuses on two neighbouring civitates, those of the Nervii and the Tungri, its aim being to explore the factors that influenced diversity in husbandry practices. In general, it appears that cattle played an important role in the Early Roman animal economy of these civitates. There is evidence that large cattle were primarily bred for use as draught animals. At the same time, the intensive processing of cattle on professional butchery sites, and indications of cattle-related craft activities in urban environments, demonstrate that within the market economy animal exploitation was focused on cattle. Nevertheless, several aspects of animal husbandry practices exhibit geographical differences. Evidence of surplus production of pigs in the countryside of Gallia Belgica suggests that different kinds of agricultural specialization existed within the loess belt. There are also differences in the adoption of Roman agricultural innovations in terms of morphological changes in cattle.

Archaeozoological research of Roman animal bones has a long tradition in Switzerland. In the 1950s, Elisabeth Schmid started analysing bones from the Roman city of Augusta Raurica. On the basis of these analyses she published her Atlas of Animal Bones (1972) which is still in use all over the world today. To date, more than 300,000 bone fragments from different Swiss sites have been analysed. In 2002 a synthesis of Swiss data was published by Jörg Schibler et al.; in that publication, the authors focused on social aspects. They assumed that the Roman animal economy was more or less standardized in the region, and that differences existed mainly between settlement types and within sites. In the last few years, not only have more data been recorded, but also other research questions about functional and regional difference—especially between western and eastern Switzerland (Germania Superior and Raetia)—are becoming more important. These differences show the variability and adaptability of the Roman economy.

This article reviews aspects of the development of animal husbandry in Roman Britain, focusing in particular on the Iron Age/Roman and Roman/early medieval transitions. By analysing the two chronological extremes of the period of Roman influence in Britain we try to identify the core characteristics of Romano-British husbandry by using case studies, in particular from south-eastern Britain, investigated from the perspective of the butchery and morphometric evidence they provide. Our aim is to demonstrate the great dynamism of Romano-British animal husbandry, with substantial changes in livestock management occurring at the beginning, the end, and during the period under study. It is suggested that such changes are the product of interactions between different cultural and social traditions, which can be associated with indigenous and external influences, but also numerous other causes, ranging from ethnic origins to environmental, geographic, political, and economic factors.

Animals from distant lands fired the imaginations of people living in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. This is attested by a considerable wealth of iconographic and written material which has been explored from many perspectives, providing valuable insights into medieval western conceptualizations of the fringes of the known world and the otherness of exotica. However, the physical remains of non-indigenous species – both those recovered from archaeological contexts and extant in private collections – have generally been examined in isolation and rarely incorporated into a broader framework exploring the reception and utility of exotica. This article offers a new perspective on the topic by focusing on the zoological identity of non-indigenous animal body parts as ‘material culture’.