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Taken from British Archaeology Janaury/February 2006:
unearthing the ancestral rabbit
What did the Normans do for us? One traditional answer is bring rabbits. New evidence suggests that Romans might already have done this, a small animal being eaten in Norfolk as early as 50BC–100AD.
The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), prized for its meat and skin, is assumed to have been introduced from the continent after 1066. They were reared in artificial warrens (often now called pillow mounds and marked by placenames such as "warren" and "coney"), and from the start were also a pest that ate young crops.
Claims have been made for the Romano-British rabbit, but it has been difficult to prove a burrowing animal to be as old as the feature in which its remains were found. Bones from an excavation at Thatcham, Berkshire, apparently sealed with early mesolithic artefacts some 10,000 years ago, were of a modern-sized rabbit and have been shown by radiocarbon dating to be recent.
Excavation in 2001 at Lynford, Norfolk, funded by Ayton Products in advance of quarrying, may have produced the definitive pre-Norman rabbit. Six bones were in a rubbish pit that also contained the only sherds of a local late iron age or early Roman pottery type, amongst extensive iron age settlement.
Recently studied by Simon Parfitt, Natural History Museum, the bones have fine cuts on them and two have their ends chopped off. "There is no doubt they are butchery remains", says Parfitt. Julie Curl, animal bone specialist and David Robertson, former project manager at the Norfolk Archaeological Unit, say the find is "of huge significance".
Two further rabbit bones have been found at Beddingham Roman villa, East Sussex. David Rudling, University of Sussex, says the bones were in late third century ad fill over a disused bath house. One bone is darkened by charcoal in the earth, and thus, says Rudling, unlikely to be intrusive. Parfitt says that at both sites the bones are from smaller rabbits of southern Mediterranean type, supporting Roman attributions.
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