Coprolite Analysis: The Early Years

Summary

Volney Jones was one of the first to examine coprolites found in Eastern Kentucky caves. By today’s standards, his technique was primitive, but it did provide information about early human diets. During the mid-1950s Eric Callen pioneered the study of coprolites when he looked at coprolites from the site of Huaca Prieta de Chicama in the coastal region of Peru. Later, in the early 1960s Callen worked in Mexico with Richard MacNeish at Tehuacan. Callen worked in isolation at McGill University in Canada where he was little appreciated for his coprolite work. By 1970 he joined Richard MacNeish in Ayacucho, Peru for the first major coprolite study in South America but died there unexpectedly of a heart attack. After his death others refined Callen’s techniques leading to a slow expansion of coprolite analysis from different areas new ways to sample and analyze coprolite contents. Soon, studies included pollen, phytoliths, plant macrofossil, faunal and insect remains as part of the analysis. Those studies advanced our knowledge of diets and laid the groundwork for the future of the discipline, which now includes not only the basic studies but also additional searches for isotopes, DNA, steroids, amino acids, parasites, and more.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20916