Deer have been central to human cultures throughout time and space: whether as staples to hunter-gatherers, icons of Empire, or the focus of sport. Their social and economic importance has seen some species transported across continents, transforming landscape as they went with the establishment of menageries and park. The fortunes of other species have been less auspicious, some becoming extirpated, or being in threat of extinction, due to pressures of over-hunting and/or human-instigated environmental change. In spite of their diverse, deep-rooted and long standing relations with human societies, no multi-disciplinary volume of research on cervids has until now been produced. This volume draws together research on deer from wide-ranging disciplines and in so doing substantially advances our broader understanding of human-deer relationships in the past and the present. Themes include species dispersal, exploitation patterns, symbolic significance, material culture and art, effects on the landscape and management. The temporal span of research ranges from the Pleistocene to the modern day and covers Europe, North America and Asia.

Papers derived from international conferences held at the University of Lincoln and in Paris.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Deer Dispersal and Interactions with Humans
  • Chapter 1: Genetic Analyses of Natural and Anthropogenic Movements in Deer
  • Chapter 2: Historic Zoology of the European Fallow Deer, Dama dama dama: Evidence from biogeography, archaeology and genetics
  • Chapter 3: Human–Deer Interactions in Sardinia
  • Chapter 4: Enduring Relationships: Cervids and humans from Late Pleistocene to modern times in the Yukon River basin of the western Subarctic of North America
• Cervid Exploitation and Symbolic Significance in Prehistoric and Early Historic Periods
  • Chapter 5: Hunting, Performance and Incorporation: Human–deer encounter in Late Bronze Age Crete
  • Chapter 6: Archaeozoology of the Red Deer in the Southern Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Region during Antiquity: Confronting bones and paintings
  • Chapter 7: The Italian Neolithic Red Deer: Molino Casarotto
  • Chapter 8: Evidence for the Variable Exploitation of Cervids at the Early Bronze Age Site of Kaposújlak–Várdomb (South Transdanubia, Hungary)
  • Chapter 9: Red Deer Hunting and Exploitation in the Early Neolithic Settlement of Rottenburg-Fröbelweg, South Germany
  • Chapter 10: Red Deer Antlers in Neolithic Britain and their Use in the Construction of Monuments
  • Chapter 11: Antler Industry in the Upper Magdalenian from Le Rond du Barry, Polignac, Haute-Loire, France
  • Chapter 12: Deer (Rangifer tarandus and Cervus elaphus) Remains from the Final Gravettian of the Abri Pataud and their Importance to Humans
  • Chapter 13: Deer Stones and Rock Art in Mongolia during the Second–First Millennia BC
• Zooarchaeological Analyses from the Roman and Medieval UK
  • Chapter 14: Chasing Sylvia’s Stag: Placing deer in the countryside of Roman Britain
  • Chapter 15: Deer and Humans in South Wales during the Roman and Medieval Periods
  • Chapter 16: Making a Fast Buck in the Middle Ages: Evidence for poaching from Medieval Wakefield
  • Chapter 17: ‘Playing the stag’ in Medieval Middlesex? A perforated antler from South Mimms Castle – parallels and possibilities
• Landscapes
  • Chapter 18: Forest Law in the Landscape: Not the clearing of the woods, but the running of the deer?
  • Chapter 19: Parks and Designed Landscapes in Medieval Wales
  • Chapter 20: Preliminary Fieldwork and Analysis of Three Scottish Medieval ‘Deer Parks’
• Post-Medieval Hunting in the UK
  • Chapter 21: English Icons: The deer and the horse
  • Chapter 22: Femmes Fatale: Iconography and the courtly huntress in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance
• Deer Management
  • Chapter 23: Supplemental Feeding and our Attitude towards Red Deer and Natural Mortality
  • Chapter 24: Estimating the Relative Abundance of the Last Rhodian Fallow Deer, Dama dama dama, Greece, through Spotlight Counts: a pilot study