Birds of a Feather: Suggestions for Best Practices in Taxonomic Identification

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Avian bones from archaeological sites have traditionally been overlooked in zooarchaeological analyses in favor of domesticates or larger animals. While an increased number of archaeological avian bone analyses have been conducted in the past 20 years, taxonomic identification methods often vary between researchers. Identification methods can skew interpretation widely. For instance, subtle pathologies may be overlooked as individual variation if appropriate numbers of reference specimens are not used. Over ten years ago, an argument was made to develop a more standard set of procedures for zooarchaeological identification (Driver 2011). This presentation will discuss common barriers to accurate taxonomic identifications, provides suggestions for best practices, and argues that zooarchaeologists should move toward a standardization of methodologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52632