A Cat Skeleton from the Balatlar Church Excavation, Sinop, Turkey

SIMPLE SUMMARY: A cat skeleton was unearthed during the 2015 excavation season at the Early Byzantine Balatlar Church complex, by the northeastern Black Sea coast of Turkey. The cat was buried with a human individual. The inhumation was dated back to the period between the end of the 6th century AD and the first half of the 7th century AD. The sex of the human individual remains unknown and the cat has been identified as a female house cat. The skeletal remains in the region of the abdominal cavity, occupied by the stomach in living animal, revealed the remains of a rodent and a house sparrow, eaten only recently prior to cat’s death. This can be interpreted as an indirect proof of the cat’s role as an efficient pest controller, alongside that of being a pet animal. Presenting the zooarchaeological and archaeological evidence, we argue that the Balatlar cat and her possible owner in the “2015-Grave-14” burial chamber demonstrate the most significant direct archaeological evidence of a cat–human relationship in the Byzantine world so far. ABSTRACT: In the 2015 excavation season, an east–west oriented burial (2015-Grave-14) built with large dimension stone blocks was unearthed on the south edge of “Area IVi” at the Balatlar Church in Sinop, on the northeastern Black Sea coast of Turkey. In this grave, which is dated between the end of the 6th century AD and the first half of the 7th century AD, a human skeleton was found with the head to the west and a cat skeleton was carefully placed next to the right femur. This study on the burial and the cat skeleton within it shows that, compared to the Roman period, the status of cats reached a higher level during the Byzantine period. It was found that alongside of being a pet, the Balatlar cat was a young healthy female individual that instinctively hunted rodents and birds, given that the remains of a rat and a sparrow were found in the region of the abdominal cavity, corresponding with the stomach location in the living animal. The grave presents the most significant direct archaeological evidence of a pet–human bond recorded at any Byzantine site so far.