Of mice and sparrows: Commensal faunas from the Iberian iron age in the duero valley (central spain)

This paper aims to emphasize the importance of imported commensal faunas in archaeological contexts by reporting on the earliest known house sparrows and house mice from the Iberian peninsula. The finds, which date to the Iron Age of a hinterland area of the peninsula, have been identified on the basis of osteomorphological and osteometrical criteria, which are specified in the text in order to demonstrate the reliability of the identification. The temporal and geographical coincidence of these remains in the two sites analysed with those of donkey and, secondarily, chicken remains and faunal remains of littoral origin, lends support to the hypothesis that these animals arrived with the earliest trans-Mediterranean colonizers to the southern shores of the Iberian peninsula and spread involuntarily thereafter as ‘side-products’ of the Phoenician commercial routes throughout the Iberian hinterland.