Animal husbandry during Early and High Middle Ages in the Basque Country (Spain) Carmina Sirignano a, * , Idoia Grau Sologestoa b , Paola Ricci a , Maite Iris García-Collado b , Simona Altieri a , Juan Antonio Quir  os Castillo b , Carmine Lubritto a a Second University of Naples, Department of Environmental Science and Technology (DiSTABiF) and CIRCE Lab, Via Vivaldi 43, I-81100, Caserta, Italy b University of Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Department of Geography, Prehistoryand Archaeology, Calle F. Tom as y Valiente s/n, E-01006, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain article info Article history: Available online 27 June 2014 Keywords: Livestock management Feeding practices Foddering practices Animal palaeodiet Kill-off patterns Stable isotopes abstract This work presents a preliminary approach to the characterization of animal husbandry practices in the province of  Alava (Basque Country) and Trevi ~ no (Burgos, Castilla y Le on) during Early and High Middle Ages. The faunal remains recovered at the rural sites of Aistra (6the12th c.), Zornoztegi (4the12th c.), Zaballa (8the13th c.), Dulantzi (5the7th c.) and the castle of Trevi ~ no (10the11th c.) were analysed. The zooarchaeological analysis, based on taxonomic identification, biometry and the study of the kill-off patterns, was integrated with carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis performed on collagen extracted from fauna bones. Results indicate sedentary animal husbandry integrated with intensive agriculture. Other bioarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental records were also considered in the interpretation, suggesting short distance vertical transhumance. Important transformations of the hus- bandry patterns throughout the Middle Ages, which can be related to socioeconomic changes and modifications of the landscape, were also verified. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Medieval animal husbandry in Spain is a complex topic that can be tackled from different perspectives, such as documentary evi- dence or zooarchaeology. Available documentary evidence pro- vides a very partial insight into this research topic. Most written sources deal with the management of large herds of animals, owned by the aristocracy and monasteries, but they rarely consti- tute a valuable source for analysing the reality of peasant com- munities. Documentary evidence is more numerous and more detailed for the later periods of the Middle Ages, but the limitations are still huge for the first medieval centuries. Spanish traditional historiography on medieval animal husbandry has mainly worked on three topics: the management of monastic herds, large scale ovine transhumance, and the provisioning of towns. These three points constitute true historiographical genres and have motivated a remarkable number of research efforts (Escalona, 2001; García de Cort azar and Martínez Sopena, 2003). Moreover, the study of peasant communities in the northern Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically in the Basque Country, has always been affected by two preconceptions: on one hand, the predominance of pastoral and semi-nomadic societies after the collapse of the Roman Empire and until High Middle Ages and, on the other, the idea that, from Pre- historic times, traditional societies were based on animal hus- bandry. In this context, this paper contributes to understand the evolution of animal husbandry practices along Early and High Middle Ages in the Basque Country, through the zooarchaeological analysis of several fauna assemblages and the analysis of stable isotopes of a sample of these faunal remains, leaving aside such historiographical paradigms. Zooarchaeology is the archaeological discipline that studies the interaction between humans and animals through the study of animal remains recovered in archaeological sites. Animals were goods that had a social function in past societies, determined by cultural attributes that were originated by the possession, man- agement and distribution of livestock and animal by-products (O'Connor, 1992). Utilizing animal remains as evidence, zooarch- aeology can address a wide range of archaeological issues such as consumption patterns and, in an indirect way, production systems (O'Connor, 2008; Reitz and Wing, 2008). Some of the methods more commonly used by zooarchaeologists to approach the study of subsistence strategies are taxonomic identification and analysis of * Corresponding author. E-mail address: carmina.sirignano@unina2.it (C. Sirignano). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.05.042 1040-6182/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International 346 (2014) 138e148