Sheep and goat are often herded together and show morphological similarities in their skeleton. Being able to identify archaeological remains of these two taxa to species level is particularly important for understanding and characterising past herding practices. Discrete criteria are now available to identify a large number of their bones and teeth, and quantitative approaches have been developed for post-cranial elements but not for mandible and isolated teeth. In this paper we explore the discriminating potential of geometric morphometrics to identify modern sheep and goat third lower molar and mandible and its application on archaeological specimens. The size and shape of the mandible and the third lower molar of 143 modern specimens (101 sheep and 42 goats) were quantified using 2D-landmark and sliding semi-landmarks geometric morphometric approaches. The results show that sheep and goat differ in terms of the size, shape, and form (i.e. size and shape together) in both studied elements. Classification accuracy of the two species reaches 93.3% (CI: 90.0–95.7%) for third lower molar shape, 62.7% (CI 57.1–68.6%) for third lower molar size, 95.2% (CI: 92.0–97.4%) for mandible shape and 84.0% (CI 81.6–86.8%) for mandible size. Form does not provide better classification than shape alone. Sex and age appear to have little impact on the ability to differentiate between sheep and goat, despite the two species displaying distinct sexual dimorphism and changes through age. The same methodology was then applied on 32 Middle Ages third lower molars from Missignac-Saint Gilles le Vieux, Aimargues, France. The identifications obtained through geometric morphometrics were only partially congruent with the identifications based on visual observations calling for caution in the interpretation and further investigations. Further research should include molecular identification of the archaeological specimens to assess whether the geometric morphometric identification can be made with confidence for all periods and all geographic areas. Nevertheless, the results obtained with the newly developed geometric morphometric protocols represent an important contribution toward a better understanding of past livestock husbandry practices.

绵羊和山羊经常聚集在一起，在它们的骨骼中表现出相似的形态。能够在物种水平上识别这两个分类群的考古遗迹对于理解和表征过去的放牧实践尤为重要。现在可以使用离散标准来识别它们的大量骨骼和牙齿，并且已经开发了用于颅后元素的定量方法，但不适用于下颌骨和孤立的牙齿。在本文中，我们探讨了几何形态计量学在识别现代绵羊和山羊第三下磨牙和下颌骨的鉴别潜力及其在考古标本中的应用。使用二维标志和滑动半标志几何形态测量方法对 143 个现代标本（101 只绵羊和 42 只山羊）的下颌骨和第三下磨牙的大小和形状进行了量化。结果表明，绵羊和山羊在大小、形状和形态方面存在差异（IE大小和形状一起）在两个研究的元素中。两个物种的分类准确率达到 93.3% (CI: 90.0–95.7%) 第三下臼齿形状, 62.7% (CI 57.1–68.6%) 第三下臼齿, 95.2% (CI: 92.0–97.4%) 下颌骨形状和 84.0% (CI 81.6–86.8%) 为下颌骨大小。形式不能提供比单独的形状更好的分类。性别和年龄似乎对区分绵羊和山羊的能力几乎没有影响，尽管这两个物种表现出明显的性别二态性并随年龄而变化。然后将相同的方法应用于来自法国艾马尔格的 Missignac-Saint Gilles le Vieux 的 32 颗中世纪第三下磨牙。通过几何形态计量学获得的识别与基于视觉观察的识别仅部分一致，需要在解释和进一步调查中谨慎。进一步的研究应包括考古标本的分子鉴定，以评估几何形态学鉴定是否可以对所有时期和所有地理区域进行可靠的鉴定。然而，使用新开发的几何形态测量协议获得的结果代表了对更好地了解过去畜牧业实践的重要贡献。进一步的研究应包括考古标本的分子鉴定，以评估几何形态学鉴定是否可以对所有时期和所有地理区域进行可靠的鉴定。然而，使用新开发的几何形态测量协议获得的结果代表了对更好地了解过去畜牧业实践的重要贡献。进一步的研究应包括考古标本的分子鉴定，以评估几何形态学鉴定是否可以对所有时期和所有地理区域进行可靠的鉴定。然而，使用新开发的几何形态测量协议获得的结果代表了对更好地了解过去畜牧业实践的重要贡献。