Bayesian modelling of Late Antiquity carcass exploitation: insights from the roman villa of Saelices el Chico (Salamanca, Spain)

Climate-driven socio-economic change during Late Antiquity remains a topic of debate, especially over the extent to which climatic instability shaped economic structures and subsistence strategies within the Roman Empire. While the effects of political fragmentation have been extensively documented for urban contexts, responses of rural households remain less understood. With this in mind, the present study investigates diachronic shifts in husbandry and hunting strategies at the Roman villa of Saelices el Chico, a rural settlement in western Hispania occupied from the 3rd century AD until the early medieval period. Using a zooarchaeological and taphonomic dataset of 351 faunal remains, we examined how husbandry and hunting practices evolved across a period coinciding with the Late Antique Little Ice Age (c. 540–660 AD). To address biases inherent to small archaeological samples, skeletal part representation was analysed by fitting Bayesian hierarchical generalised Poisson regressions, using a standardised food utility index and a bone density index as predictor variables. Results indicate a clear shift in husbandry dynamics toward more flexible taxa, alongside a marked increase in wild species – particularly red deer − during the latter occupation. Bayesian modelling revealed only weak associations between skeletal-part representation and either the utility nor bone density predictors, suggesting that neither factor alone adequately explained the observed patterns of assemblage formation. Taphonomic evidence points to intensive, human-driven carcass processing, with absent-to-limited carnivore interference. Rather than an abrupt collapse, these patterns suggest progressive economic rearrangements in response to climatic instability and political transformations, exemplifying the adaptive capacity of rural villae during Late Antiquity.