The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North
Abstract Reindeer are the only domestic cervid and have formed the cosmologies and practical daily lives of numerous peoples in the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. The questions of when, how, and where reindeer domestication originated and how it developed remain one of the scientific en...
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ftunivoulu:oai:oulu.fi:nbnfi-fe2023071290554 2023-07-30T04:02:00+02:00 The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North van den Berg, M. (Mathilde) Wallen, H. (Henri) Salmi, A.-K. (Anna-Kaisa) 2022 application/pdf http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi-fe2023071290554 eng eng Springer Nature info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Arctic Cervidae Domestication Human-reindeer relationships Reindeer herding Zooarchaeology info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion 2022 ftunivoulu 2023-07-12T22:59:26Z Abstract Reindeer are the only domestic cervid and have formed the cosmologies and practical daily lives of numerous peoples in the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. The questions of when, how, and where reindeer domestication originated and how it developed remain one of the scientific enigmas of our time. The practice of reindeer castration is an essential feature of all communities practicing reindeer herding today. It has probably been one of the most important interventions in the reindeer’s life cycle and biology that marked the start of domesticating human-reindeer relationships long ago. Castration is and has been essential for reindeer taming, control, training, herd management, and ritual practices. Unsuitably, to this present day, there are no methods zooarchaeologists can employ to distinguish a reindeer gelding from a reindeer bull in the archaeological record. In this current paper, we outline a new method that presents the possibility of differentiating between full males, castrated males, and females based on osteometric features. We measured the leg bones and pelvis of the complete or partial skeletons of 97 adult modern domestic reindeer individuals to determine the precise effects castration has on skeletal size and morphology. We explored our osteometric dataset with different statistical methods. We found a clear separation of the two male groups in the radioulna, humerus, and femur but in the tibia and metapodials to a lesser extent. Osteometric depth and width were generally more affected than the longitudinal axis. Females were easily distinguishable from castrates and full males based on nearly every bone measurement. Our analysis shows that reindeer castration can be proven through osteometric analysis. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Rangifer tarandus Jultika - University of Oulu repository Arctic |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Jultika - University of Oulu repository |
op_collection_id |
ftunivoulu |
language |
English |
topic |
Arctic Cervidae Domestication Human-reindeer relationships Reindeer herding Zooarchaeology |
spellingShingle |
Arctic Cervidae Domestication Human-reindeer relationships Reindeer herding Zooarchaeology van den Berg, M. (Mathilde) Wallen, H. (Henri) Salmi, A.-K. (Anna-Kaisa) The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
topic_facet |
Arctic Cervidae Domestication Human-reindeer relationships Reindeer herding Zooarchaeology |
description |
Abstract Reindeer are the only domestic cervid and have formed the cosmologies and practical daily lives of numerous peoples in the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. The questions of when, how, and where reindeer domestication originated and how it developed remain one of the scientific enigmas of our time. The practice of reindeer castration is an essential feature of all communities practicing reindeer herding today. It has probably been one of the most important interventions in the reindeer’s life cycle and biology that marked the start of domesticating human-reindeer relationships long ago. Castration is and has been essential for reindeer taming, control, training, herd management, and ritual practices. Unsuitably, to this present day, there are no methods zooarchaeologists can employ to distinguish a reindeer gelding from a reindeer bull in the archaeological record. In this current paper, we outline a new method that presents the possibility of differentiating between full males, castrated males, and females based on osteometric features. We measured the leg bones and pelvis of the complete or partial skeletons of 97 adult modern domestic reindeer individuals to determine the precise effects castration has on skeletal size and morphology. We explored our osteometric dataset with different statistical methods. We found a clear separation of the two male groups in the radioulna, humerus, and femur but in the tibia and metapodials to a lesser extent. Osteometric depth and width were generally more affected than the longitudinal axis. Females were easily distinguishable from castrates and full males based on nearly every bone measurement. Our analysis shows that reindeer castration can be proven through osteometric analysis. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
van den Berg, M. (Mathilde) Wallen, H. (Henri) Salmi, A.-K. (Anna-Kaisa) |
author_facet |
van den Berg, M. (Mathilde) Wallen, H. (Henri) Salmi, A.-K. (Anna-Kaisa) |
author_sort |
van den Berg, M. (Mathilde) |
title |
The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
title_short |
The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
title_full |
The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
title_fullStr |
The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
title_full_unstemmed |
The osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the North |
title_sort |
osteometric identification of castrated reindeer (rangifer tarandus) and the significance of castration in tracing human-animal relationships in the north |
publisher |
Springer Nature |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi-fe2023071290554 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Rangifer tarandus |
genre_facet |
Arctic Rangifer tarandus |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
_version_ |
1772812729296355328 |