Images: A Ton of Cattle Bones

A Lot of Bones

A ton of cattle bones from Corinth — (Image credit: Michael MacKinnon)

Archaeologists pulled a metric ton of cattle bones from an ancient Corinth theater, perhaps representing yearly feasts in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.

Collected Bones

Corinth cattle bones — (Image credit: Michael MacKinnon)

Trash cans full of bones collected from the Corinth theater.

Cattle Skull

A cattle skull found in the Corinth bone deposit. Most of the bones were from cows.

Cattle Jawbones

Cattle bones from Corinth — (Image credit: Michael MacKinnon)

Cattle jawbones found in Corinth. Only about a tenth of the bones in the theater have been recovered.

Sorting Bones

Bones from Corinth laid out for sorting and analysis.

Corinth Theater

The western section of the ruined theater where the bones were discarded and found.

Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.