The first of RSG's winter series of talks commences with the group's Annual General Meeting.

Once business is concluded we are lucky enough to have a talk by Dr Clare Rainsford on animal bones in ritual contexts.

Clare Rainsford is a freelance zooarchaeologist working in York, UK, with a particular interest in ritual uses of animals in the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods in Britain. She worked for York Archaeological Trust on the faunal remains from the large-scale multi-period Hungate excavations in York, and has been zooarchaeologist for the Teffont Archaeology Project and PASt Landscapes for the past decade, which have excavated Roman sites including two Late Roman shrines and the Deverill villa. Clare's PhD explored the role of animals in early Anglo-Saxon mortuary practices in eastern England. In Surrey, she has assessed the cremated bone assemblage from Charlwood, from which a joint publication with Tony King (University of Winchester) is forthcoming.