VIKING UNST PROJECT: FIELD SEASON 2008 - Nabo

may also be possible to add flax to the list of cultivars, although it is too early to make afirm judgement on current data. This might suggest the presence of successful mixedagricultural economies within Viking and Late Norse Unst, not just the more specialisedeconomies such as those indicated by Sandwick (Bigelow 1985:118-124). Further analysiswill clarify these results and allow firmer conclusions to be drawn. As previously stated(Bond et al. 2007: 79), these assemblages are very exciting since they represent the firstsystematically sampled deposits of their kind from Viking and Late Norse Unst.The environments and settings vary greatly between Hamar and Underhoull and soilconditions contrast significantly. The opportunity to compare detailed datasets from thesetwo quite different settlements will help add considerably to our understanding of howpeople in this period adapted to and exploited their local environments. Early evidenceindicates that there are similarities in terms of the cereals utilised and perhaps grown by theinhabitants of the settlements, as well as the types of environments exploited for fuel. Byintegrating results from detailed archaeobotanical analyses with other lines of economicand environmental evidence it will be possible to develop a more detailed understanding ofViking and Late Norse societies within Unst.4.3 MAMMAL BONESJ.E. Cussans4.3.1 HamarIn the 2007 season the Hamar site yielded two pieces of poorly preserved mammal bone(Cussans 2007). This year only one bone was recovered from Hamar but this time thepreservation was good. The bone was recovered from context [396] an orange-brown layerin the upper room of House 1 containing large angular rubble. The bone was a right sheeppelvis and was generally well preserved; it showed some signs of weathering with the bonesurface being flaky in some areas approximating to Behrensmeyer’s (1978) weatheringstage 2. No other signs of bone modification were noted.Examination of the various sexually dimorphic features of the pelvis based oncharacteristics determined by Boessneck (1969) and Hatting (1995) and the pubic indexdevised by West (1990) the specimen was determined to be that of a castrate. Theinterschiatic angle, the acetabulum and the pubis all had much more of a femalemorphology. However the dorsal angle of the ilium did not have a male or femaleappearance but was most similar to that of a weather castrated at one month old (Hatting1995). Finally measurements of the pubis (breadth and length, see West 1990) were takenand the pubic index (PBx100)/PL) was calculated giving a value of 28.6 falling just belowthe range for Soay males and right in the middle of the range for Soay castrates (ibid.).Hence it would seem that this particular specimen was castrated reasonably early in life,probably at about one month of age, allowing it to develop a morphology closer to that of afemale than a male.56