Animal bones from Iron Age settlements in Scania, Southern Sweden

This data is a compilation of the zooarchaeological record from Iron Age settlements in Scania, southern Sweden. It consists of data from various technical reports produced between 1961 to 2019, by different analysts. Published reports and unpublished but archived communications are included. This data may be of interest to anyone interested in archaeological themes involving animals in any kind, such as economy, animal husbandry, animal production, hunting, fishing, and so on. It may also be of paleozoological interest, as it contains valuable fauna historical information such as presence of wild species of different kinds.  

The database is the basis for the published catalogue included in the book "Animal husbandry in Iron Age Scania, with a catalogue" published 2022. The book is open acess and you can download it via this link: https://www.ht.lu.se/en/series/9128370/

The data can bee accessed through a one .csv-file, which is an export of the data set which was originally recorded in a MS Access-database. Both files are published in this version. The dataset consists of data on 130 animal bone assemblages from 101 Scanian settlement sites.

The original Access-database, with two levels, one (Site) with descriptive information on the archaeological site (totally 12 variables), and one (zooarch-overview) with quantitative data on number of specimens, in general and per recorded taxa (totally 35 variables). Presence of bird, fish, amphibian and wild mammalian taxa is also included. 

Included is a READ ME (.csv) describing the data set in more detail.

ERRATA (READ ME-file): No of observations is 130, not 131.