Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Zooarchaeology stands at the crossroads of social and natural sciences by studying the relationships between human and nonhuman animals. From the onset, the discipline borrowed and adapted analytical tools from other fields; for example, to identify animal skeletal remains, document taphonomic processes, or inform animal behavior. Over the past 20 years, the use of stable and radiogenic isotopes, ancient DNA, geometric morphometrics (GMM), 3D imaging, data science, and proteomics, to name a few, has revolutionized the practice of zooarchaeology. These methodological advances have dramatically increased the range and scope of questions that zooarchaeology can address while deepening our understanding of past human/animal relationships. However, using these new techniques is not without its challenges, particularly concerning the reproducibility and accessibility of these methods. Costly equipment, state-of-the-art facilities, or large research budgets are often necessary, possibly restricting access to these approaches, particularly for our colleagues from the Global South. This symposium invites papers presenting the most recent advances in zooarchaeological methodology. We propose that the papers showcase how the latest analysis techniques are pushing the discipline forward while reflecting on how this work could be implemented and more accessible to underprivileged regions of the world.