Taphonomic and taxonomic comparisons of bird and mammal remains from Tse-whit-zen

Summary

Birds are often relatively scarce in Northwest Coast shell middens in comparison to fish, mammal and shellfish. However, large numbers of bird bones have been recovered from Tse-whit-zen. In fact, bird bones are both more numerous and more identifiable than mammal bones at the site. In the largest house structure, 47% of the bird bones greater than ¼" in size were identified to taxon (79% of those were identified to element). In contrast, the mammal identifiability rate ranged from 7% to 16%. The differences are driven primarily by fragmentation rates, with mammal bones experiencing a high level of pre-depositional crushing, presumably for grease extraction. Despite the major differences in fragmentation, the percent of burned bones is broadly similar between birds and mammals (32-33%). The interpretation of the burning patterns, however, is different for birds vs. mammals. Mammal bones appear to have been burned as part of the grease extraction process, whereas the bird bones often reflect the effects of roasting whole birds over open flames. Murre, duck and deer dominate the Structure 1 assemblages during both chronozones 3 (1450-1000 BP) and 4 (700-350 BP), with an apparent pulse in Pinniped and pelagic bird taxa around 700 BP.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Preliminary Results from the Tse-whit-zen Project: Zooarchaeology and Geoarchaeology of a 2000 yr old Lower Elwha Klallam Village on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington State

Keywords

Spatial Coverage