Published by Maney Publishing (c) Association of Environmental Archaeology Methods for the examination of cattle, sheep and goat dung in prehistoric wetland settlements with examples of the sites Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen and Alleshausen-Grundwiesen (around cal 2900 BC) at Lake Federsee, south-west Germany Marlu Kühn 1 , Ursula Maier 2 , Christoph Herbig 3 , Kristin Ismail-Meyer 1 , Matthieu Le Bailly 4 , Lucia Wick 1 1 Department of Environmental Sciences, IPAS Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science, Basel University, Spalenring 145, Basel, Switzerland, 2 Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Referat 85 Feuchtbodenarchäologie, Fischersteig 9, Hemmenhofen, Germany, 3 Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Dep. III Prehistory, Laboratory for Archaeobotany, Goethe University, Grüneburgplatz 1, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 4 Université de Franche-Comté, UFR Sciences and Techniques, CNRS UMR 6249, Chrono- Environnement, 16 Route de Gray, Besançon cedex, France There has been evidence of dung in lakeside and moorland settlements since the beginning of wetland archaeology in the 19th century. While evidence has been found for the easily discernible faecal pellets of sheep and goats, recognition of cattle dung has proven to be considerably more difficult. In this study, we give an overview of evidence for dung remains in prehistoric wetland settlements in Germany, Switzerland and eastern France. Various methods for the analysis of uncharred dung remains are reviewed – analyses of plant macro- and microremains, micromorphology and palaeoparasitology – and are applied to two late Neolithic sites in Germany, Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen and Alleshausen-Grundwiesen. It will be shown that at Alleshausen-Täschenwiesen small ruminants were penned during the whole winter and fed on leaf hay unlike Alleshausen-Grundwiesen, where cattle browsed/grazed in the open during the day and were herded into the settlement during the night – both in summer and in winter. Keywords: Wetland sediment, Dung, Ruminant, Neolithic, Methods Introduction and State of Research In lakeside and wetland settlements excellent con- ditions prevail for the preservation of organic remains due to the perpetually damp and low oxygen milieu. To a large extent cultural layers consist of settlement debris, which also includes human and animal excrement (among others Jacomet et al. 1989, 2004; Maier 2001, 2004). In addition to dung of cattle, sheep and goats, the potential excrement of dogs and pigs are also detected (Körber-Grohne 1982; Séné 1989). By dung we mean the excrement itself while by manure we mean excrement of domestic animals that has been mixed with feed and/or bedding materials. Dung of ruminants has been described in the cul- tural layers of ‘pile dwellings’ since the 19th century. Table 1 and Fig. 1 present an inventory of finds from Neolithic and Bronze Age lakeside/wetland settlements of the north-western pre-Alps. In the middle of the 19th century, Messikomer spoke for the first time of animal dung in the wetland settlement of Wetzikon Robenhausen (in Altorfer 2010, 103). In 1919, Neuweiler (1925; Table 1, Fig. 1) wrote about ‘sheep manure’ in the Bronze Age cultural layer at Zürich-Enge Alpenquai. In the 1950s, sheep and goat pellets from the Neolithic wetland settlement of Egolzwil 3 were researched by Troels-Smith (1955), and in the 1960s, Guyan (1967) described manure deposits at the Neolithic moor settlement of Correspondence to: Marlu Kühn, Department of Environmental Sciences, IPAS Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science, Basel University, Spalenring 145, CH-4055 Basel, Switzerland. Email: marlu.kuehn@unibas.ch © Association for Environmental Archaeology 2013 DOI 10.1179/1461410313Z.00000000017 Journal of Environmental Archaeology 2013 VOL. 18 NO. 1 43