Remains of man-made materials and animal bones are analyzed to gleam knowledge of the culture of past societies, such as animal domestication, nutrition, and crafts and trades. Reliable documentation and archiving of excavation findings in contemporary archaeological digs relies on mapping disparate horizontal regions into grid squares, and by establishing the age of deposits by an analysis of vertical (stratigraphic or cultural) layers (Fig. 1). The numerous cat bones uncovered in the town market area of the Schild excavation (1971-1975) were assigned to both early (11th and 12th century) and later (13th and 14th century) settlements in medieval Schleswig-Gottorf. The famous castle of Gottorf, which had been the residency of the former dukedom of Gottorf and is now the Schleswig-Holstein Archaeological Museum (Archaeologisches Landesmuseum), has kept this collection of medieval skeletal remnants of cats from the Schild excavation for the past 30-years.
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