Zooarchaeology Beyond Food: Osteobiographies of Early Medieval Dog and Pig Skeletons at the Divičmeđ Site (Serbia)

Zooarchaeological studies of the early medieval contexts are very scarce in present-day Serbia. Only a few studies dealing with the role of animals in funerary rites or the animal economy of settlements are currently available. For the first time, a detailed analysis of two complete animal skeletons from one early medieval settlement in the country will be presented in this paper. Excavations at the multilayered archaeological site of Divičmeđ in central Serbia have revealed the remains of a fortified early medieval settlement dated to the tenth–eleventh centuries. The excavations inside the settlement ramparts, among other features, revealed an oven most likely used for pottery production. A completely preserved dog skeleton was discovered at the bottom, while a pig skeleton was found in the oven’s upper layers. These skeletons indicate secondary use of the oven and prompt further questions about possible cultural impact and depositional scenarios, and they also shed light on the everyday life management within the settlement. In this paper, an interdisciplinary approach will be applied to dog and pig skeletons, which will further give us a rare opportunity to reconstruct their osteobiographies. Radiocarbon dating of the skeletons will provide us with the absolute chronology necessary for a better understanding and reconstruction of deposition processes. This study will also help us to address research questions about broader contexts of human–animal interactions in the country during the early medieval period