Zooarchaeology (Other Keyword)
126-150 (1,173 Records)
While behavioral ecology approaches to human subsistence in archaeology often focus on calories, nutritional content is another aspect that can influence a resource’s desirability. In particular, fats are an important dietary source of easily digestible calories for hunter-gatherers. Proximate composition (fat, protein, moisture, and ash) is presented here for several fish species commonly found in archaeological sites along the central California coast, and combined with data drawn from the...
The bigger the cow the better she is’: new archaeological perspectives on livestock ‘improvement’ in late medieval and early modern England (2013)
In recent years, zooarchaeologists have become increasingly interested in exploring the timing and nature of ‘improvements’ in animal husbandry in later medieval and early modern England. These studies have identified that size and shape changes occurred from the 14th to the 17th centuries. However, the picture is complex: outlying sites experience later developments than central localities and there is considerable variation in the timing of size changes for different species at different...
The Biggest Party of All? Zooarchaeological Analysis of an Oversized Late Inca Banquet at Pachacamac (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pachacamac is a major archaeological site on the central coast of Peru, occupied from the 5th to the 16th centuries, AD. This paper reports the results of an interdisciplinary study of a late Inca context discovered in building B4, excavated in 2016 and 2018 by the Ychsma Project (ULB). A series of analyses were conducted, including zooarchaeological ones,...
Bighorn Sheep Bone Caches in the Lava Tube Caves of El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rugged volcanic landscapes of El Malpais National Monument contain over 400 lava tube caves, some of which harbor the most southerly perennial ice in North America. Many of the caves also house the material record of precontact human use in the form of internal architecture, ceramic, and other artifacts. Caches of...
Bighorn Sheep Processing in the White Mountains, California (2015)
Previous research in the eastern Great Basin using stable isotope analysis of faunal remains suggests that bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) responded to climate change by shifting their ranges to higher elevations during warm intervals. A shift in sheep ranges would have increased travel and transportation costs for central place foragers based in lower elevation valleys. We expect that hunters responded to the increased costs in a number of ways, including altering settlement strategies and...
Bio-cultural exchange and human health - past and present (2016)
There is growing concern about the impact of biological exchange on human health, the WHO correlating shifts in biodiversity with the decline of medicinal biota and the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. Paradoxically, human desire to improve health and well-being has been the very motivation behind the worldwide translocation of many species. This is, in part, because ethnomedicine tends to target preferentially species that are exotic, the belief being that geographical distance is...
Biological exchange in the Swahili world: archaeofaunal and biomolecular evidence (2016)
The Swahili coast, stretching from Somalia to Mozambique, has a long history of engagement in western Indian Ocean trade, from at least the first century CE according to documentary evidence. One result is the widespread use of animals of Asian origin – particularly zebu cattle (Bos indicus) and chicken (Gallus gallus) – in African subsistence systems today. However, tracing these animals’ arrival and spread is complicated by their osteological similarities to indigenous taxa and by poor...
Bird Behavior and Biology: A Consideration of the Agentive Role of Birds in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2018)
As one of the only classes in the animal kingdom capable of flight, birds are privy to a realm of movement that humans can only partially control. Birds possess specific traits and engage in a variety of behaviors that directly affect the mechanics of capture and use, such as gregariousness and flock size, preferences in nesting and feeding locations, wing strength and readiness to flush, and aggressiveness and territoriality. Human-bird relationships also move beyond the semantics of capture to...
Birds in Ritual Practice and Ceremonial Organization in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Birds have remained one of the most symbolically valued animals in human cultures, from prehistoric past to ethnographic present, and across the globe. Especially in the North American Southwest, whole birds and their parts have been an integral part of Pueblo ceremonial life for centuries. Their ritual and symbolic value has been demonstrated both...
Birds of a Feather? Bird Conservation and Archaeology in the Gulf of Alaska (2017)
Gulf of Alaska islands provide habitat for substantial populations of both seabirds and migratory waterfowl, which have been under threat from mammal introductions and landscape degradation for more than 200 years. Bird management drives decisions in this island region and focuses on the eradication of invasive species and restoration of island landscapes to their "natural" state. However, given that people and climate have influenced these landscapes for thousands of years, we ask: how do we...
Black Bear Use through Time in the Southern Appalachians (2017)
Historic accounts of Fort San Juan, a Spanish garrison built near the native village of Joara in the late 1560s in western North Carolina, inform us that chiefs from neighboring towns brought "meat and maize" to the soldiers on various occasions. Based on the high proportion of bear in the fort faunal assemblage, it seems likely that the foods gifted to the Spaniards included bear meat. A recent zooarchaeological study suggests that native peoples provisioned the soldiers with some prime bear...
Bodies Shaping Bodies: Using Butchery to Trace Human-Animal Relationships (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While our relationship encompasses far more than just the dinner menu, food is one of the key ways in which human and animals lives and bodies directly shape one another. Indeed, beyond just the act of eating, how human and animal bodies meet in the context of procurement and processing can...
Body Mass Estimates of Dogs in North America by Geography, Time, and Human Cultural Associations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs of North America share a long history of interaction with humans, yet little is known about how humans managed their dogs prior to modern breeding practices that became popular during the sixteenth century. European colonists recognized a few indigenous dog “breeds” and described these dogs as primarily “wolf-like” in appearance and phenotypically...
Bone and Antler Organic Pressure Flakers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Animal Resources in Experimental Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bone has been used as a raw material for a range of activities for at least two million years. The criteria for determining whether a bone was used—or shaped and then used—have been established by archaeologists following decades of experimental research. In contrast, the antiquity of using bone for pressure flaking stone is less well...
Bone Marrow as Part of the Local Cuisine at Fort St. Joseph, a French Fur Trade Post in Southwest Michigan (2017)
Analyses of the large faunal assemblage from the eighteenth-century Fort St. Joseph site (20BE23) in Berrien County, Michigan, are becoming more concerned with the question of "food or furs?" With over 70% of the identified animal remains coming from white-tailed deer, we are trying to discern whether broken longbones are the result of removal of marrow for subsistence, or if they may have also been used to prepare hides. In contrast to late prehistoric and early historic Native American sites...
Bone Preservation, Specimen Identifiability, and Outcrop Shape – A Preliminary Investigation of Early Pleistocene Taphonomy at Koobi Fora, Kenya (2018)
Fossil bone surface assemblages include differential specimen preservation (weathering stage, cortical surface exfoliation, polish, roundedness, fracture type) and identifiability (taxonomic or anatomical precision). Three 1x1 meter inventory squares placed on steep, moderate, and minimally sloping areas of a fossiliferous outcrop test whether outcrop shape is a megabias that influences assemblage attributes. A digital elevation model created from drone-captured aerial imagery describes outcrop...
Bones are not enough: analogues, knowledge and interpretive strategies in zooarchaeology (1991)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
Bones Left Behind: Living Spaces at a Residential Compound at Cerro la Virgen, a Rural Chimu LIP Settlement (2018)
Cerro la Virgen (CLV) is a town-sized LIP site located in the Moche Valley a few kilometers from Chan Chan, the administrative and political center of the Andean polity of Chimu. Previous studies have focused on ceramics and regional politics (Keatinge 1974, 1975), the kinds of plant and animal remains found in residential dumps (Pozorski 1976, 1979; Billman et al in press), and multiple lines of evidence for the nature of the political relationship between the residents of CLV and the...
Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Bonfire Shelter: A Zooarchaeological Reevaluation of Bone Bed 2 (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonfire Shelter is a rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon, a short tributary of the Rio Grande in West Texas, that contains three distinct bone beds of varying ages. The middle bone bed, Bone Bed 2, is a Paleoindian-aged deposit dating to ~12,000 years BP. Bone Bed 2 was originally interpreted as the remains of one or more bison mass kills;...
Bread, Beer, and Beef: Diet of Seventeenth-Century Harvard College (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While historical documents can provide a plethora of information for the historical archaeologist, they are often incomplete in revealing holistic images of the day-to-day life of humans that lived centuries ago. This poster presentation outlines my ongoing research on the diet of students at seventeenth-century Harvard College. In particular, I address...
Breadth of Fresh Air: A Continued Examination of the Reversed "Crab-Shell Dichotomy" in Grenada’s Pre-History (2018)
In a previous paper, we examined past faunal studies from Troumassoid period (AD 800-1600) sites in Grenada, concluding that an expansion of diet breadth likely occurred during this time. Our conclusion contradicted the traditional "crab-shell" dichotomy proposed by Rainey and Rouse, but confirmed findings from elsewhere in the Caribbean. Presented here is a continuation of this work, with new faunal analyses incorporated from recently excavated inland, western, and earlier (Saladoid) sites, as...
Bridging the "Kansyore gap": Continuous Occupation and Changing Subsistence Strategies at Namundiri A, Eastern Uganda (2018)
Environmental heterogeneity and climatic instability in the mid-Holocene (~8,000-3,000 BP) are linked to increased socioeconomic diversity in East Africa. Increasing aridity ca. 6,000-5,000 BP encouraged early herders to migrate south into the region, while local hunter-gatherers intensified their reliance on ecologically-rich environments. Kansyore hunter-gatherers of the Lake Victoria basin established specialized subsistence systems that incorporated heavy pottery-use and seasonal site...
Bridging the Divides at Azoria: Environmental Archaeology at an Archaic Greek City (2018)
Excavations at the Archaic (7th-6th centuries B.C.) city of Azoria on Crete demonstrate the value of intensive environmental archaeology for understanding an historical Greek context. Texts document the important role of food and dining to ancient religion and politics; however, ancient authors presented a normative picture and excluded details they assumed were common knowledge. Studying plant and animal remains can "ground-truth" ancient sources on foodways and provide contextual nuances not...
Brief Introduction To the Zooarchaeology / Paleoecology of Upper Kachemak Bay in Light of the 1977 Excavation of Chugachik Island (Sel 033), Kachemak Bay, Alaska (1977)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.