A Decade in Bones: One Career and the Realities of Zooarchaeology in CRM

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Academia: Zooarchaeological Case Studies from CRM and Other Nonacademic Spaces" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Zooarchaeologists working in Cultural Resource Management are often tasked with dual roles to be considered full-time employees. Specialized analysis such as those completed by zooarchaeologists are not always a regular part of a project’s scope. This may be due to time or budgetary constraints but may also come down to a general lack of interest or understanding in the data potential of faunal remains. While not every site will produce a faunal assemblage, those that do are likely to benefit from detailed faunal studies. In CRM and other non-academic fields, the task of illustrating the value and possibilities of faunal data is left up to those who are most passionate about this specialization. In this paper, I look back at a decade of work as a CRM zooarchaeologist to detail the ebb and flow of this type of work as well as the possibilities of answering important research questions with zooarchaeological data. I also challenge my fellow zooarchaeologists to consider what additional research questions could be answered by working in collaboration with academic zooarchaeologists. The ultimate question being: how can we improve our working relationships with our academic counterparts to elevate zooarchaeology in our field?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Beyond Academia: Zooarchaeological Case Studies from CRM and Other Nonacademic Spaces

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52113