Animal remains from medieval and modern Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal: Excavations at the Neo-Realism Museum

• Autor(a) principal: Detry, Cleia
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Pimenta, João
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/30485

Vila Franca de Xira is a town some 32 km north-east of Lisbon on the right bank of the Tagus river. Excavations undertaken there in 2006, prior to the construction of the Neo-Realism Museum, uncovered some 20 meters of a relatively well preserved Roman road. Overlying the road were 13th century (Medieval) and Modern Period (15th/16th century) levels. Faunal remains, recovered from all these levels, indicate which taxa were consumed by the inhabitants and which were kept as companions. Most of the faunal remains are left-overs of food eaten in ancient times and include bivalves, presumably collected in the Tagus estuary, as well as the commonly found domestic species like cattle, sheep, goats, suids (pig and wild boar) and chicken. Bones of rabbits, geese, cats and otter were also present. Despite the small size of the sample, the few osteometric data indicate that cattle were larger in the Modern period than in the 13th century. This corroborates previous studies on the history of this animal in southern Portugal.