Human vs. Nonhuman Bone: A Nondestructive Histological Instrument

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Species identification is one of the first steps in the analysis of bone fragments in archaeological and bioarchaeological contexts. Current methods for taxa identification include morphoscopic, histological, and DNA analyses in order to assess what is present in an assemblage for zooarchaeological research, forensic significance, and NAGPRA considerations. This preliminary study uses an MA1000 AmScope camera microscope to examine the longitudinally fractured surface of cortical bone fragments to gauge if taxa identification is possible from fragmentary remains without morphologically identifying features. This technique is testing for a notable difference in human vs. bovid vs. cervid cortical bone cortices without the use of destructive histological or DNA analyses. The results of the study show there is a statistically significant association with positive bone identification between taxa, an accuracy measure of 65.6% for all taxonomic groups, 96.2% accuracy of identifying human bone correctly, and 7.9% misidentification of nonhuman bone as human. Future dissertation research will include more taxa, field portable DinoLite, and rigorous reliability and validity frameworks to test the accuracy and consistency of results. This instrument has promise as a teachable resource for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and forensic scientists alike based on the diverse backgrounds of blind study participants in this project.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32470