Interpreting the immature chicken bones from the Romano-British ritual complex on West Hill,Uley

The prehistoric to post-Roman site of West Hill, Uley in southwestern Britain was excavated between 1976 and 1979, and yielded a quarter of a million animal bones. Part of the site was a ritual complex, and this in particular produced a considerable amount of domestic fowl. A major problem has been to evaluate the immature domestic fowl bones and determine whether all ages are represented. This presents problems because the varieties of fowl represented are unknown. Therefore, can the osteometric data be seen as homogeneous? In fact the distribution of adult measurements suggests that one variety was mainly represented, that a wide range of ages of fowl were sacrificed, and that the selection of birds was probably not entirely random. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.