Assessing the human-animal relationship at Villaggio delle Macine (Latium, Central Italy): A zooarchaeological approach to Bronze Age Italian lakeside settlements

Abstract

This article presents four unpublished zooarchaeological assemblages, including two newly investigated ones, from the surface deposit of a lakeside settlement in Central Italy; the Villaggio delle Macine (VDM), dates from the late Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age (1900–1600 BCE). The potential significance of the differences and/or similarities between these four assemblages was evaluated through contingency table statistical tests.These data complement and enrich the previously known zooarchaeological studies from the site and are contextualised with further interdisciplinary analysis (e.g., palynology and palaeobotany), to assess the human-animal relationship at VDM. All in all, this overview highlights the relevance and uniqueness of this site, in line with the richness and variety of its archaeological remains.Furthermore, the zooarchaeological framework of VDM is compared to coeval lakeside settlements in Northern Italy and rare open-air settlements in Central Italy: this comparison, statistically tested by Correspondence Analysis, allows for the identification of trends in species variety, percentage of occurrence and subsistence strategies. The results of this work confirm that VDM’s faunal assemblage stands out for its particular predominance of red deer over domestic mammals. Such a unique feature in the Italian Bronze Age panorama of settlements, possibly related to a combination of hunting and defensive subsistence strategies, seems to find parallels in the central Mediterranean region with only a few other Protohistoric sites, mainly lakeside settlements.