Legends, legions and the Roman eagle

Holmes, Matilda

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.02.006

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Golden eagles are unlikely to live in urban settlements as they nest in the forests and on cliffs, well away from people (Mulkeen and O'Connor, 1997, p. 442;Holmes, 2020, p. 77). On the other hand, the natural occurrence of white-tailed sea-eagles overlaps with human habitation, which might be the reason why they are more abundant in the archaeological material than the golden eagle (Bochenski et al, 2016, p. 665;Holmes, 2020;Mulkeen and O'Connor, 1997, p. 441-442;Serjeantson, 2009, p. 376). White-tailed sea-eagles have known to be commensal at least since the beginning of animal husbandry, which provided them with carcasses to scavenge on (Serjeantson, 2009, p. 376, 378).…”

Section: Eagles As Scavengersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning of Eagles in the Baltic Region. A Case Study from the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Klaipėda, Lithuania (13th–14th Century)

Ehrlich

Piličiauskienė

Urbonaitė-Ubė

et al. 2020

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In this paper, we examine archaeological bird remains from Klaipėda Castle (Ger. Memel), western Lithuania. The castle was built in 1252, and during the Middle Ages, it was the northernmost castle of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The castle together with its adjacent town were subjected to wars and changing political situations over the centuries, but nevertheless represented a socially higher status. The studied bird remains were found during the excavations in 2016 and have been dated by context to the Middle Ages – from the end of the 13th to the beginning of the 14th century. Our aim is to introduce and discuss the bird remains with an emphasis on two species – the white-tailed sea-eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) and golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). Most of all, we are interested in their role in expressing people’s social status, use in material culture, and significance as a food source. Our analysis showed that in Klaipėda, the eagles were probably used for raw material and possibly for feathers, but not for hawking and food. Alternatively, they could have been killed for scavenging. Other species identified in the assemblage such as chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), grey partridge (Perdix perdix), geese (Anser sp.), ducks (Anatinae), and great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) were mainly interpreted as food waste. This article presents the first concentrated study on bird remains from Klaipėda and is one of the first discussions about the meaning of eagles in the Baltic region.

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Section: Eagles As Scavengersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meaning of Eagles in the Baltic Region. A Case Study from the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Klaipėda, Lithuania (13th–14th Century)

Ehrlich

Piličiauskienė

Urbonaitė-Ubė

et al. 2020

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“…The nature of bird exploitation in this social context also helps us to characterise contemporary culture, in this case of peasant society. Moving from the social to ritual, two interesting papers dealing with different parts of the world -Roman Britain (Holmes, 2020) and native North-America (Watson, 2020) -explore the symbolic value of the eagle in diverse societies. Holmes' paper also gives an insight into military culture.…”

Section: This Volumementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Documentary and iconographic sources are mentioned in several papers (e.g. Watson, 2020;Holmes, 2020), but Dyer's (2020) paper in particular discusses medieval poultry keeping from the perspective of the textual evidence. Hinton's (2020) work uses both old texts and images to tackle a different and very interesting subject -how were birds fed, as opposed to how they contributed to human food.…”

Section: This Volumementioning

confidence: 99%