New Methods in Zooarchaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Wolfhagen.

Zooarchaeologists reconstruct age- and sex-specific animal mortality profiles in order to examine past human strategies of animal exploitation. Traditionally, animal age structures and sex ratios were derived from complementary but distinct data (e.g., age via epiphyseal fusion data, sex via bone morphology or metrics), though recent research has highlighted the value of integrating these data. This paper describes how zooarchaeologists can further that integration by fitting standard...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pam Crabtree.

In the past 15 years, we have seen significant methodological developments in zooarchaeology, including the uses of isotopic studies, aDNA, and geometric morphometrics. However, all of these methods depend on careful identification of animal bone materials and the preservation of their archaeological and stratigraphic context. This paper discusses basic methods of identifying, recording, archiving, and storing zooarchaeological collections in ways that will make them amenable to research by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Welker. Jonathan Burns. Jennifer Haney. Sarah McClure.

Planned military provisioning recorded in historic documents likely decreased variability in soldiers’ diets and resulted in widespread use of domestic livestock. However, faunal remains from Fort Shirley, a French and Indian War fortification in Western Pennsylvania, indicate a heavy reliance on wild resources, particularly deer. Comparisons with other fortifications examined archaeologically reveals a breadth of functional and dietary differences between sites. First, the term "fort" describes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Linderholm. Ardern Hulme-Beaman. Allowen Evin. Keith Dobney. Greger Larson.

Research into animal domestication has now broadly established the geographic and temporal origins of the major livestock species, but has failed to do so for dogs. We will apply ancient DNA (aDNA) and geometric morphometric (GM) techniques to archaeological canid remains, of which we have examined ~4000 specimens across the globe through multiple time periods. Using this multifaceted approach, we expect population level distinctions revealed by aDNA analyses to be mirrored by GM analyses. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Neusius. Bonnie Styles.

The newly formed Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG) has brought zooarchaeologists together with funding from the US National Science Foundation. Our group is seeking to preserve Archaic period faunal databases from the interior portions of the Eastern Woodlands in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), an international digital repository for archaeological databases and records of investigations. Members of the EAFWG have uploaded over 28 separate datasets representing more than 14...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deanna Grimstead. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman.

Carbon (δ13C), oxygen (δ18O), and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopes from cattle, caprine, and small mammal teeth from two historic-period Spanish missions and modern cattle were assayed with the goal of reconstructing historic ranching practices in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern North America. Carbon isotope ratios from modern cattle indicate that it is possible to distinguish cattle free ranged within upper elevations desert habitats compared to lower elevation free ranged or possibly foddered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christian Gates St-Pierre. Krista McGrath. Keri Rowsell. Matthew Collins.

ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) is a well-established technique for the identification of archaeological bone. In this study, we apply a refined ZooMS method to worked bone points in order to analyse them in a completely non-destructive fashion. The traditional ZooMS technique requires destructive analysis of a specimen, which is obviously problematic when dealing with intact rare artefacts. The bone points are part of large assemblages of bone tools and manufacturing debris...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt. Alex Badillo. Lindsey Kitchell. Gary Motz.

In this paper, we evaluate the efficacy of two methods, namely photogrammetry and 3-D laser scanning, for the purpose of identifying cultural modification of bone, specifically canid teeth. Instances of dogs with altered canine and carnassial teeth have been observed in Plains Native American archaeological assemblages as well as in the ethnographic record of the Late Prehistoric era. The identification of this type of cultural modification will help interpret ways in which animal and human...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alan Outram.

This paper considers the use of lipid residue analyses as an integral part of zooarchaeological research. It critically assesses the different types of information that can be gained from the study of both animal bones and lipid residues. It is not the intention to provide detailed consideration of the methods of lipid residue analysis, but instead to concentrate on zooarchaeological interpretation, drawing out, from examples, the different methodologies’ strengths and weaknesses in relation to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luc Doyon.

This study examines the morphometric variation of Aurignacian bone, antler and ivory projectile points, the first continental-wide occurrence of hunting armatures made from animal material during the Early Upper Paleolithic. Morphometric analysis is a powerful instrument that separates and quantifies variation of both shape and size thereby allowing exploration of both functional and stylistic variation of an object. Applied to armatures from the Western Mediterranean region (Grotte de...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rick Cantryll.

In 1982, Pohl and Feldman questioned whether the ancient Maya had been in the process of domesticating white-tail deer. The possibility that the Maya actively managed deer populations in proximity to human settlements deserves detailed consideration. Although white-tail deer remains are abundant in zooarchaeological assemblages, comprehensive size and demographic studies have not yet been undertaken to help establish which motives might inspired efforts toward herd management. A lack of metrical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Whitcher Kansa. Eric C. Kansa.

The scholarly community is giving data increasing attention in recent years, and solutions for data management are emerging. However, seeing data management primarily as a matter of compliance means that we face continued data loss, as many datasets enter repositories without adequate description to enable their reuse. Furthermore, because many researchers have little experience reuse of public data, they lack understanding and incentives to consider changes in their own research practices to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Beasley. Ian Orland. John Valley. Margaret Schoeninger.

One goal of zooarchaeological inquiry is to reconstruct past environments. This presentation will highlight a new method to identify paleoprecipitation records from the stable oxygen isotope values (δ18Oen) recorded in tooth enamel. Seasonal rainfall patterns are reconstructed using a secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) to generate high-resolution serial spot analyses (13 µm spots) of δ18Oen. Additionally, this presentation will address the specific issue of identifying diagenesis...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Vivian Scheinsohn. Pablo Marcelo Fernández. Mercedes Grisel Fernández. Florencia Garrone. Mercedes Salado.

The application of traditional zooarchaeological methods in the analysis of faunal specimens recovered in Acevedo 1 site (Chubut, Argentina) led us to a low level of taxonomic identification. Therefore we decided to implement new ways to strengthen its information capacity. We joined hence the Laboratory of Forensic Genetics of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (LGF-EAAF), which had developed locally a protocol for identify animal species in forensic contexts by Cytochrome b analysis. As...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas.

Mobility is key to the survival and adaptation of human and animal populations. In all cases, having the ‘right of way’ is necessary to move across territories. How was it in the past? How humans decided about mobility in the context of demographic growth and increase of social complexity that occurred in Europe in the first millennium BC? Strontium isotopic ratios are a powerful tool for investigating mobility in the past. This paper offers a review of strontium isotopic ratios for Western...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Otárola-Castillo. Max Price. Jesse Wolfhagen.

Zooarchaeologists address some of today’s “big-questions” related to human evolution, social competition and exploitation, big-game hunting and the origins of domestication. These questions are frequently answered by systematically observing the appropriate zooarchaeological assemblages and quantifying and analyzing suitable data. Techniques used throughout data collection and analysis include sampling, frequency distributions of bone counts, butchery marks , taphonomic modification, and GIS...