certainly not a festival dinner. We should look afresh at the herds of
animals handed over to Xenophon’s men as part-payment for their
services, which explicitly included yokes of oxen (Xen.Anab. 7.2.36),
while the 600 cattle that were part of thefinal payment suddenly look
much more interesting than the historian was prepared to admit (Xen.
Anab. 7.7.53).^57 Six hundred quality cattle, offered for sale at Byzantion,
would have solved the sacrificial needs of a gargantuan consumer such as
the city of Athens at a stroke, while the price could be negotiated to suit
the seller.
In order to get some idea of meat consumption in these better-
provided parts of the north Aegean, we can consider the evidence that
is now accumulating about the deposition of animal waste at Adjiyska
Vodenitsa (ancient Pistiros), in central Bulgaria. Animal bones have been
recovered in a good state of preservation, in quantities well in excess of a
metric tonne by weight, from an excavated areac.3000m^2 , or one third of
a hectare. A broad survey of 25–30 per cent of the tens of thousands of
bones recovered up to the year 2000 showed that most of the material
belonged to domesticated species, but also included some wild animals.
The use of underground storage pits for the deposition of animal waste
has enabled the investigators to identify‘consumption events’, which can
be distinguished from general patterns of animal waste disposal within
accumulated layers of soil, particularly in the vicinity of the fortification
wall, where there seems to have been a tendency to dump larger animal
parts (Fig. 7.3, Sample 1).^58 A lined pit, which had also been recut (grid
square D19/21), contained at its base a burnt offering, including charcoal
lumps, around the base of a grey wheel-made bowl. Associated with the
grey bowl were several butchered animal parts, including hare, dog, and
domestic fowl. Shells of freshwater mussels were also present. As well as
the scarcer species, the remains of at least one suckling pig, a similarly
young lamb or kid, and half the skull of a puppy were found. A worked
astragalus of a sheep or goat was also recovered.
Another similar pit, D19/02 (Fig. 7.3, Sample 3), which, like D19/21,
contained a large quantity of ceramic and some metalfinds, also yielded
a butchered cattle skull and another mandible, perhaps belonging to a
pair rather than a single beast, and three articulating lower limbs from
a cow, perhaps the same cow. Although the cattle skull belonged to a
youngish, perhaps castrated bull, the mandible was from a mature
animal and the lower limbs cannot be assumed to come from either of
(^57) See Ch. 1 and n.33.
(^58) Stallibrass 2010, 58 Table 4.1, and 58–63 for discussion; cf. also Archibald 2002b;
2002c.
Dining cultures 291