Bleats from the north : Evaluation of osteological methods with support of archaeogenetics to distinguish between sheep and goats

Abstract: This study is an extension of the author's previous thesis (Theorell 2013) and focus on the analysed tibia, the humerus and the proximal and distal part of the radius of sheep bones from Gotland and goat bones from City of Falun. Methods for bone elements assessed in this study are compiled and evaluated by Zeder and Lapham (2010). The bones were then geneticallyspecies identified and the results were compared. Seven of thirteen criteria for both sheep and goat reached 100% of correct identification.Best performing criteria were on humerus and distal radius for both sheep and goats. The results for the complete bone assessments divided for the species showed best performance ongoats. Worst performing bone is the tibia. High performing criteria were found on all thetypes of bones used in this study which can be used to distinguish between sheep and goats.