Fragmented analysis, fragmented interpretation: The necessity of integrated faunal and human analysis for identifying and understanding ritual contexts

• Integrating human and faunal analysis provides much greater understanding of 'ritual' contexts. • Human and faunal remains should be recorded using a unified system that allows for comparison of the post-mortem treatment of the remains. • Use of this methodology on the assemblage from the Roman ritual shaft from Nescot, Ewell, Surrey, England, showed that humans and dogs were treated in similar ways, but differently from the other animals in the shaft. • The cosmological relationship between dogs and humans in Roman Britain is more complicated than previously recognised. Recognising and understanding ritual practices in the past is a notoriously difficult process in archaeology. This is further hampered by variable approaches and recording systems used for human and animal remains, particularly when they are comingled within the same ritual deposit. Often this fragmented approach means that the treatment of faunal and human remains cannot be directly compared, obscuring the role of humans and animals within the ritual. This paper seeks to illustrate the necessity of using integrated taphonomic recording and analysis on human and animal remains in order to address the complexities of ritual in the archaeological record using a case study from a ritual shaft from first century AD Roman England. The integrated analysis revealed a complex relationship between dogs and humans that has not previously been recognised in Romano-British material.