Richard Chuang

Where are the Donkeys? The Mule Provisioning of Romano Britain.

Supervisor: Dr. Jaco Weinstock

Abstract:

The use of mules as pack animals is commonly found in Roman records both in text and illustrations. However, faunal remains have been identified as mules are extremely scarce in Romano Britain assemblages due to the difficulty of distinguish the trivial differences between equine species. This proposed study is an attempt of using biomolecular methods, namely, real-time PCR, to solve the current disputes on mule identifications. Furthermore, isotopic analysis will be used in order to test whether military equines within Romano Britain were produced locally or provisioned from specific breeding centres from other parts of the Roman Empire.

email: rc7g10@soton.ac.uk