Talking to Our Selves? An Applied Zooarchaeology Citation Analysis

Summary

Applied zooarcheology has been on an apparent upward swing, gaining practitioners and seeing an increasing number of publications in natural science journals. Whether the intended consumers (conservation biologists, land managers) are receiving the message remains uncertain. We used a two-phase process to survey the literature pertaining to applied zooarchaeology: 1) keyword searching for highly cited applied zooarchaeology publications in Google Scholar; and 2) tracking of specific articles reflecting different scales of applied zooarchaeological research (species, community, ecosystem). For each source type, we organized bibliographic information in Excel and collected Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) for the publication source to characterize the overall type of discipline(s) citing this work, whether archaeology, conservation biology, or related fields. We then assigned subject categories to each source by using the Library of Congress Linked Data Service to identify broader, discipline-level terms under which related LCSH could be grouped, allowing analysis of which publications were primarily within the boundaries of anthropology/archaeology, which were overall more closely associated with specific disciplines beyond anthropology/archaeology, and which were more interdisciplinary in nature. Preliminary results indicate a significant concentration of citing sources in the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology, suggesting that the product remains to be adequately marketed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20479