Meat Supply of Alakul Miners at the Bronze Age Vorovskaya Yama Copper Mine (Southern Trans-Urals)

In this paper, we analyze what can be learned about the meat supply of the Alakul miners of the Late Bronze Age using archaeozoology, Sr-isotope analysis, and radiocarbon dating techniques. The study is based on a sample of domestic animal bone originating from the Vorovskaya Yama copper mine site in the southern Trans-Urals. The site functioned over a period of about two centuries starting around 1600 BCE. Cattle, caprines, and horses constituted the herd; the bones of young-adult cattle and caprine individuals predominating in the sample were mainly between 2–2.5 years of age. While the obtained species composition proportions are concomitant with those from ordinary Alakul settlement sites, due to the absence of embryos and newborns, we hypothesise that adult animals were deliberately supplied to the mine site for the purposes of slaughter and consumption. The Sr-isotope compositions in the enamel of the fourteen individuals may reflect the grazing regions within the southern Trans-Urals from which the animals may have been sourced (both near the site and up to 20–100 km eastwards of this location). Mine operation seasonality is indirectly indicated following cementum increment analysis showing that five out of seven studied animals were slaughtered during the warm season.