Taphonomy and contextual zooarchaeology in urban deposits at York,UK

Zooarchaeological research on assemblages from deeply stratified sites in historic towns is complicated by the reworking of bones through intercutting and disturbance. Conversely, structural association with buildings and property boundaries may allow detailed spatial analysis, and interpretation at a close contextual level that reveal small details of people’s lives. Five years of excavation at the Hungate site in York has yielded a very large animal bone assemblage ranging from Roman to early modern times. Assessment of this assemblage has focussed on identifying context groups of good integrity and high research value. In this paper, we present preliminary results from Hungate to show the potential of contextual analysis in urban deposits, and the challenge presented by redeposition and time-averaging.