SHORT REPORT Animal Bones from the Late Neolithic Site of Ponte da Azambuja 2 (Évora, Portugal) M. NABAIS a * AND F. RODRIGUES b a Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK b Crivarque, LDA, Torres Novas, Portugal ABSTRACT Neolithic faunal assemblages are scarce in Portugal, and although some trends related to the beginning of domestication are now becoming understood, more data and further zooarchaeological analyses are necessary to fully understand them. Ponte da Azambuja 2 is a set of three Late Neolithic ditch enclosures located in the Alentejo region, Southern Portugal. It was discovered in 2008 by the archaeological unit Crivarque during the construction of a new irrigation system. Ditch enclosure 1 was excavated in two trenches, Locus 1 and Locus 2. A small faunal assemblage was recovered, showing high fragmentation mainly due to post-depositional processes, which made the interpretation rather problematic. Although animal herding strategies are difficult to assess, it was possible to confirm the domesticate status of some of the taxa. Domestication appears to have been complemented by hunting – both red deer and leporids being present. The identification of burning, cut marks and worked bone confirms an anthropogenic faunal accumulation. Worked bone fragments suggest needle production and the production of potential ornaments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: ditch enclosure; Late Neolithic; Ponte da Azambuja 2; Portugal; zooarchaeology Introduction As recently demonstrated by synthesis works performed for mammals (Valente & Carvalho, 2014) and birds (Pimenta et al., 2015), zooarchaeological evidence for the Portuguese Neolithic is still scarce. Most data come from the Portuguese Estremadura and Alentejo – the centre and south regions of the country – and mainly from the Late Neolithic. Knowledge of the Early and Middle Neolithic is even scarcer. Therefore, it is hard to understand any possible patterning of Neolithic fau- nal assemblages (i.e. species preferences, age at death) and the beginning of animal domestication in Portugal. As summarised by Valente & Carvalho (2014), the Portuguese Early Neolithic (ca. 5500–4500 BC) marks the beginning of domestication. This event is charac- terised by the predominance of caprines and cattle in the scant assemblages available. Suids are also present, but their domestication status is still difficult to assess for the whole of the Neolithic period owing to their close similarity (Rowley-Conwy, 1992; Davis, 2002; Albarella et al., 2005). Although herding practices seemed to have been established at this time, people were also relying on wild animals, like red deer. However, equids are gener- ally absent from these early assemblages. The first megalithic structures appear in the Middle Neolithic (ca. 4500/5000–3200 BC), when slight changes of animal provision strategies occurred (Valente & Carvalho, 2014). Some sites show a ten- dency to specialise more on domesticated animals, like Pena d’Água, where about 75% of the assemblage com- prises caprines (Valente, 1998; Carvalho et al., 2004; Carvalho, 2008; Correia et al., 2015), whereas Costa do Pereiro (Carvalho, 2008) shows a predominance of wild game (65%), and only 12.5% of the assemblage is derived from domesticated animals (the remaining 22% are of unknown status). However, faunal data for this period are meagre, and they need to be treated with caution until further excavations and zooarchaeological studies are conducted. Major changes occurred during the Late Neolithic (ca. 3200–3000 BC), not only in the types of settlement – with the appearance of large ditched enclosures and hilltop open-air sites – but also within faunal * Correspondence to: Mariana Nabais, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PY London, UK. e-mail: mariananabais@gmail.com Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 28 March 2016 Revised 2 August 2016 Accepted 3 August 2016 International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. (2016) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/oa.2551