Archaeology Labs Tour!
-See ongoing research for
projects in New Mexico,
California, and beyond!
-Meet advanced
undergradate archaeology
track students!
-Learn about opportunities
for independent study, senior
thesis projects, and other
ways to engage with high
level scholarship!
Archaeology Labs Tour!
Friday, May 13th,
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To participate:
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1. Talk/email to your TAs
2. Discuss your interests
3. TAs will send lists of recommended
students to me next week
4. I will contact you by email with details and
invite you to join us!
5. Bring questions and dress for lab
environments
PALEOECOLOGY &
BIOARCHAEOLOGY
Studying Environment,
Human Ecology, & Subsistence
Charlotte Cooper, UCSC
Anthropology 3 Lecture
Lecture Outline:
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What is zooarchaeology?
Taphonomy & Actualistic Studies
How do bones help us understand past
subsistence and paleoenvironments?
To study diet & paleoecology:
Bones, teeth
Artifacts
Seeds, shells, pollen, etc.
Zooarchaeology
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Study of animal remains,
with archaeological aims
Bones, teeth, shells, fish
scales
Zooarchaeologists train as
archaeologists, also study
with zoologists, botanists,
paleontologists
Must Consider:
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Taphonomy
Taphos - burial, nomos - law or system
Processes affecting remains from death
to recovery (excav.)
 Term from paleontology
 Differential preservation → “biases”
 Postmortem processes “bias” samples,
but add info on humans & ecology
Taphonomy & Zooarchaeology
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Analyze for traces of modifying
agents (taphonomy is part of site
formation processes, recall last
lecture):
human (butchery, tool-making, etc.)
 non-human (carnivores, weathering
etc.)
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Aided by actualistic research
Actualistic Research
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Methodological approach, middle-range theory:
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Create “experiments” on bones to see the resulting
modifications of human behaviors or non-human
processes
Compare bones from those controlled experiments
with what is seen on bone from archaeological sites
Conclude that the probable cause of modifications
in both cases may be the same/different
Actualistic Research: Examples
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Human impacts on
bone:
 Butchery
(cutmarks)
 Cooking (burning)
 Making tools from
bones (awls)
 Transport of carcasses
from hunting site to
basecamps (Nunamuit,
by Binford)
Actualistic Research: Example
Now, what can archaeological
bones tell us about the past and
subsistence?
Before leaping to inferences from
faunal specimens, how do we
count animals in a site?
NISP = Number of Identifiable (to
species level) Specimens in a sample
 MNI = Minimum Number of Individuals
 that must have been acquired to get
the total of bones in sample
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Example: 16 left jaw bones at a site mean that a
minimum of 16 animals contributed left jaws
Overview of what we can know:
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Site use:
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Diet:
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Species choice
Hunting/transport methods
Social context:
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Dating via collagen
Seasonality
Gender, class, ethnicity
Environment:
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Context of sites and changes in environment
Site Use: Seasonality
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Migratory species present
seasonally
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Antler & tooth development
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fish (e.g. salmon), birds (e.g.
swallows)
Age of animal at death, used
with known birth season to
determine season of harvesting
Example Olsen-Chubbuck bison
kill site
Note: seasonality of the site
may ≠ total span of site use
by humans
Diet, Hunting, Transport
Pinniped indet.
Species NISP at CA-MNT-234
2
3
7
62
123
Otariid indet.
33
Arctocephaline indet.
Zalophus californianus
195
Arctocephalus
townsendi
Callorhinus ursinus
Eumatopias jubatus
20
Phoca vitulina
11
675
Enhydra lutris
Mammal
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Species selection
Nutrition in parts of carcass
(meat, brains, marrow)
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Hunting techniques (technology)
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Domestication of animals, herding
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Transport of whole carcass or
portions
Peak at 1110-1200
AD: City covered six
miles, 20,000 residents
 Agriculture (corn,
squash, sunflowers)
Various
groups in a society may have differing access
toDivine
chief,
elite class,
animal
foods
commoners
age, gender, class
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Subsistence & Social Relations
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Chief=control food
Needsurpluses
good contextual
relations (separate areas with
(stored
crops,animal
meat, fish)
different
remains, etc.)
 How might
Cross-check
withthis
human bone isotopes
look in bones?
Examples:
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Ethnicity: element selection, butchery techniques, cuisine
(including preparation, presentation, disposal of food)
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Jun Sunseri @ El Rito (colonial N.M.)
Class:
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Cahokia
Paleoenvironments
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Species’ requirements and biology reflect
environment
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microfauna better than macrofauna (shorter life
cycles and not as quick to migrate)
size/quality of an animal’s population is dependent
upon the environment
Understand human reaction to environmental
stochasticity by species available/chosen
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Includes theory of behavioral ecology, optimal
foraging
Reconstructing Paleoenvironments
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Example: Moss
Landing, CA
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Northern fur seal
paleoecology
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Value: fatty, large
How much human
hunting would have led
to seal extinction?
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10% female seals locally
leads to extinction
within 100 years.
Other Approaches to Diet:
Stable Isotope Analysis of Human Bone
Fine-grained: reflects individual intake
 Carbon ratios [12C:13C]: plant foods
 Strontium:nitrogen ratios=sea vs land
animal foods
 Cemeteries: show gender and class
differences in diet in a population
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To learn more, see next week’s faunal
activity in section…
50,000 B.C.—Gak Eisenberg
invents the first and last silent
mammoth whistle.