Animal Bone Metrical Archive Project (ABMAP)

University of Southampton, 2003

Data copyright © Dale Serjeantson unless otherwise stated


English Heritage logo

Primary contact

Dale Serjeantson
Research Fellow
Archaeology
University of Southampton
Avenue Campus
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
England

Send e-mail enquiry

Resource identifiers

  • ADS Collection: 348
  • doi:10.5284/1000350
  • How to cite using this DOI

    • Digital Object Identifiers

    Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

    Citing this DOI

    DOIs should be the last element in a citation irrespective of the format used. The DOI citation should begin with "doi:" in lowercase followed by the DOI with no spaces between the ":" and the DOI.

    doi:10.5284/1000350

    DOIs can also be cited as a persistent link from another Web page. This is done by appending the DOI Resolver with the DOI. This would look like:

    http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1000350

    However, if it is possible it is best to hide the URL in the href property of the <a> tag and have the link text be of the form doi:10.5284/1000350. The HTML for this would look like:

    <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1000350">doi:10.5284/1000350</a>
    Sample Citation for this DOI

    University of Southampton (2003) Animal Bone Metrical Archive Project (ABMAP) [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] (doi:10.5284/1000350)

University of Southampton logo

Introduction

The Animal Bone Metrical Archive (ABMAP) database contains 68010 measurements from 26984 bones of domestic animals from more than 100 archaeological assemblages from excavations in southern Britain. The mammals included are cattle, sheep/goat, sheep, goat, pig, horse and dog and the birds included are domestic fowl and goose. The assemblages are from all periods from Neolithic to modern, with most from the later periods.

The database gives zooarchaeologists and others the opportunity to find data with which to compare their own individual bone or assemblage and to research size change in domestic animals from prehistory to the present day.

The measurements and definitions follow those of Driesch (1976) A Guide to the Measurement of Animal Bones from Archaeological Sites with a few from other sources. The sources for measurements are listed in the Overview.

How to use the database

From the Query page, you can search the database and download the results to your own computer. The Query page contains hints to help you formulate your queries and further assistance and information can be obtained by clicking on Help on the navigation bar. The Overview page also gives details of the data fields and has some hints and tips for the most efficient means of retrieving data.

Feedback

Try it out - and if you have found the data useful, please complete the Feedback form. If you have a large database of measurements from an assemblage which could usefully be made more widely available, we may eventually be able to add it to ABMAP. Please contact us if you have data - published or unpublished - which could be added, with a note of the period(s) and number of measured bones.