Please summarize the below article in approximately 100 words: Archaeozoologists
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Question
Please summarize the below article in approximately 100 words:
Archaeozoologists
In the Near East, the excavator of an archaeological site is just as likely to dig up faunal remains as potsherds or lithic debris. Consisting mostly of the durable parts of animals (bones, teeth, shells, etc.), these materials usually represent the garbage left over from past meals and food preparation activities. As garbage, they owe their deposition to human agency and thus, in that sense, are just as "cultural" as other artifactual remains. Yet, more often than not, unworked animal bones and shells have been given short shrift by archaeologists principally because, in and of themselves, they have not been considered as artifacts. This is not to imply that faunal remains have been ignored altogether, but it is probably fair to say that the degree of attention paid to them has been directly related to the antiquity of the deposits and inversely related to the cultural complexity exhibited. Thus, the study of Pleistocene faunas has always been integral to the investigation of early homonids, while, until recently, the number of reports dealing with faunal remains from historic period sites in the Near East could be counted on the fingers of one hand. But why study animal bones at all? For prehistoric periods, the answer is relatively easy -they provide the only source of information on one important dimension of ancient economies. For most of human prehistory, people were hunters and gatherers, the wild animals being exploited varying with time, space, and cultural tradition. Through accurate identification of faunal remains and analysis of their attributes, using techniques such as those to be described below, it is possible to investigate such economic and ecological features as seasonality of settlement and scheduling of resource utilization, selection of prey (for example, by age or sex), carcass utilization, and even the sharing of food resources by the ancient inhabitants of a site. But what about later periods when written records provide information on animal husbandry practices (as in Mesopotamia), or when pictoral representations show animals being hunted, herded, slaughtered, and butchered (as in Egypt)? The answer to this question is that faunal analysis provides the researcher with a different perspective, an additional dimension. Written and pictoral information tends to be selective and thus incomplete; the same is true of animal bone data but in a different fashion. For example, at Catal Hiuyiik, the 7th/6th millennium Neolithic town in what is today Turkey, hunting scenes dominate the wall paintings. While these scenes may provide important clues to the ideology of the ancient inhabitants, they provide very little information about the economy, a fact attested by the overwhelming dominance of bones from domestic cattle in the faunal record. In Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the archival and representational materials deal primarily with animals kept by or for large estates (whether religious or secular); little is known of the exploitation of animals by villagers or of the actual consumption practices of urban dwellers. In brief, those faunal remains which are the durable debris of ancient meals provide us with the consumers' view--often very different from a scribe's or draftsman's or priest's opinion of contemporary or ideal practices. Thus, the answer to the following question can be approached only through faunal analysis: To what degree did religious prohibitions against the consumption of certain types of animals actually affect such activities? Tell Hesban in Jordan is one of the few sites where the question has been asked. There, the consumption of pork apparently reached its height during the Byzantine period, and although decreasing in importance, the keeping of domestic pigs clearly did continue into Islamic times. During this later period, also, a relatively large number of wild boar bones were identified, "some with prominent incision marks testifying to the consumption of swine flesh" (Andrews University Seminary Studies 16/1, 1978, p. 264). The reasons for the relative neglect of faunal remains from culturally more complex sites are not difficult to understand. Archaeologists dealing with such sites have tended to have their training in such humanistic disciplines as classics, art history, philology, or ancient history, while prehistorians trace their ultimate intellectual ooriginsto geology, paleontology, and natural history. The division between "prehistory" and "archaeology" is still maintained in Europe, and even in the United States most prehistorians find their homes in departments of anthropology, while a great many of those dealing with the Bronze Age and later periods have other affiliations. In any case, without the active interest and support of archaeologists and without an intellectual framework suited to its inclusion, faunal analysis had only very limited opportunities to develop. The situation was made that much more difficult by the fact that, until the mid-1960s, those individuals who carried out faunal studies in the English-speaking world were zoologists or paleontologists with usually only a secondary interest in these "too old" or "too young" animal remains. About 20 years ago, however, the whole nature of archaeology, as it was conceived and practiced particularly in North America and Great Britain, began to change. Simultaneously there was a sizable influx of new students, there was funding available for field research, and there developed an increasing inter est in ancient economies, in the relationships of humans and their environments, and in the processes of change in ecological relationships through time. Since archaeologists could not find a sufficient number of trained personnel able or willing to carry out the specialized studies necessary to answer their ever more elaborate questions, they encouraged their students to seek training in the relevant fields. The result has been a remarkable growth in the number of individuals who carry out faunal studies, together with increased attention being paid to the recovery of faunal remains from archaeological sites. Faunal analysis carried out by Central and East European researchers has taken a rather different course. These individuals, trained princi pally in comparative anatomy and veterinary medicine, have long been interested in the development of domestic animals. During the middle of the last century, the recovery of faunal remains from "Swiss Lake Dwelling" sites provided large bodies of well-preserved material which could be character ized by measurements and compared with speci mens from modern breeds. By the 1920s, sufficient comparative osteology (study of bones) had been carried out in the German-speaking world to permit compilation of definitive methodological compendia. These source books included discus sions of techniques for ascertaining the age at death and sex of animals on the basis of their bones, as well as exhaustive listings of dimensions to be measured. The author of one of the most thorough of these compilations, J. U. Duerst, also carried out one of the earliest studies of faunal remains from a Middle Eastern site, that of Anau, near the Iranian border in what is now Soviet Turkmenistan (published in English in 1908). Because of the language barrier, however, and because of differ ences in the faunas being studied and in the questions being asked, the German approach to faunal analysis either remained unknown to--or was rejected by-most Anglo-American investiga tors until the mid-1970s. Those in America who dealt principally with wild faunas felt little need to record exhaustively every measurable specimen since this apparently contributed little to an understanding of the human utilization of their environment. Those who dealt with domestic stock generally believed that attempts to sort out the lineages of modern breeds on the basis of compara tive osteology and measurements were as misguided as similar attempts which had been made in physical anthropology. The coming together of these two broad traditions of faunal analysis is occurring at the present time. Translations into English of a number of summary articles and of A Guide to the Measurement of Animal Bones from Archaeologi cal Sites (Peabody Museum Bulletin 1, 1976) have made available to a wider audience some of the best fruits of more than a century of German language research. At the same time and often quite independently, Anglo-American researchers have begun to use measurements and morphologi cal attributes of the skeletons in order to determine the age, sex, and size of animals represented in archaeological deposits, and to study changes in prehistoric animal populations through both time and space. On the other side and again often quite independently, a younger generation of European researchers, particularly in Scandinavia and the Low Countries, has turned its attention to more archaeologically-oriented questions. Finally, a series of international conferences, smaller symposia, and the continuing research being done by English speaking investigators on faunas of continental Europe and especially the Middle East have provided the opportunity for increased personal contacts between individual faunal analysts, many of whom now identify themselves as "archaeozoologists" or "zooarchaeologists." The flurry of articles address ing the question of whether this field of study should be termed "archaeozoology," "zooarchaeology," or even "paleoethnozoology" is symptomatic of the fact that those who carry out the analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites have begun to recognize themselves as a group of investigators concerned with a distinctive set of problems, while developing a particular set of analytic methods and theoretical approaches to deal with them. The methods of zooarchaeology are, in some instances, much like those of paleontology. Both disciplines involve identification of usually fragmen tary remains with the occasional exceptional finds of whole skeletons. In addition to a family, genus, or species level identification, however, an attempt is usually made by zooarchaeologists to determine the sex and age at death of the animal represented by the specimen(s) at hand. Such information can be extremely valuable for studying such phenomena as the season of occupation of a site and the scheduling of animal-related economic activities, for determining kill-off patterns, and for gaining insight into animal husbandry practices. Standard techniques used for looking at age distributions in a faunal collection include documenting the fusion (growing together) or non-fusion of articular ends of bones to their shafts and recording patterns of tooth eruption and wear. The results are interpreted using information obtained from similar studies carried out on modern specimens of known age, studies which permit grouping of the archaeological specimens into approximate age classes. Recently, microscopic study of the fine structure of bones, teeth, otoliths, and shells has revealed the existence of incremental structures (layers) which are deposited in regular yet alternat ing fashion apparently on a seasonal, or in shells even on a daily, basis (in a fashion similar to tree rings). Sectioning and microscopic examination of archaeological specimens to observe the same phenomena has met with considerable success, and promises to provide to researchers in faunal studies an important tool for accurate determination of age and season of death. Determination of sex of an animal from faunal remains is carried out by documentation of traits which differ in kind or in size between the two sexes (sexual dimorphism). Thus in the pelvic region of most mammals which bear their young one at a time (for example, humans, cows, goats, and sheep, but not dogs or pigs), there are significant differences between males and females, some of which are observable even on fragmentary material. Secondary sexual characteristics such as antlers in male deer and relatively larger horns in many male bovids can also be useful. Another feature which can some times be employed is the larger overall size of adult males when compared to the females of some vertebrate species. Measurements of the bones will tend to cluster in two more or less widely spaced groups which, on the basis of comparison with modern specimens, can be identified as coming from males and females. Especially when dealing with domestic mammals, however, such groupings are not always so clear because the range of variation for each sex is often considerably wider than in the wild relatives of the same animals. In fact, the presence of a very wide overall range of variation in bone measurements can be a useful piece of evidence for ascertaining the presence of domestic animal remains at a site. Another feature of many early domestic animals which has been docu mented by measurement of faunal remains is that successive generations tended to get somewhat smaller in overall body weight over time, this possibly due to impoverished living conditions (when compared to conditions in the wild) and to human selection (conscious or unconscious) for smaller stock. Domestication studies have long been an important topic in zooarchaeology. Such work has tended to concentrate in Eastern Europe and the Near East on the remains of dog, sheep, goat, cattle, and pig from Neolithic period sites. Recent research on faunal remains from sites in areas distant from this "core area," however, shows that both the idea of domestication and the animals themselves were spread very rapidly. Thus, sheep and pig bones have been identified in seventh millennium deposits on the island of Corsica, where there were no wild ancestors of either animal, and the local domestication of cattle, sheep, and possibly goat has been postulated for the same period far to the east on the margins of the Indus Valley, where ancestral wild stock did exist. In addition, increasing attention has been paid to such secondary domesticates as the camel, horse, donkey, and water buffalo, all of which began to play significant roles in the economic life of Asia at least by the third millennium B.c. In addition to the more "animal-related" aspects of faunal studies, both zooarchaeologists and paleontologists have been paying increasing atten tion to circumstances surrounding the deposition, burial, and preservation of faunal remains, a domain of concern often called taphonomy Because paleontologists generally deal with deposits laid down by geological and geomorphological means, the taphonomic processes that interest them are natural in origin. While many of the factors which affect preservation of archaeological faunal remains may be similar, zooarchaeologists are principally concerned with cultural processes such as butcher ing of carcasses and the fragmentation, disposal, and human redeposition of faunal remains. As a number of researchers have shown, these processes are not only culturally related but often significantly affect what bones of which animals actually turn up at archaeological sites. Furthermore, even within a given site, differential distribution of faunal remains will occur, a phenomenon which presents valuable possibilities for gaining further insight into such cultural features as economic and activity specialization, but also harbors the possibility of serious interpretative distortions if representative portions of all the different types of deposits in a site are not sampled. From the above discussion it should be clear that the analysis of faunal remains from archaeologi cal sites is a dynamic and growing field of research, archaeological in orientation but with strong ties to both zoology and paleontology. Zooarchaeological studies, however, depend for their very success on the availability of good modern comparative collections, on a tradition of careful comparative morphological research, and on the support of personnel in all related disciplines but especially in archaeology. By way of concluding, and as a final example of the value of faunal studies for archaeology, the following case history is presented: "In front of the chariot lay the crushed skeleton of two asses with the bodies of the grooms by their heads..." (C. L. Woolley, Excavations at Ur, 1954, p. 61). "In front of the chariot lay the crushed skeleton of two oxen with the bodies of the grooms by their heads..." (C. L. Woolley, 1954, as revised by P. R. S. Moorey, Ur 'of the Chaldees,' 1982, p. 62). The above quotations come from Sir Leonard Woolley's dramatic account of his finding of "Royal Tomb" 800, the tomb of "Queen Shubad" at Ur. Behind the change of the single word ''asses" to "oxen" lies a bit of detective work by an alert archaeologist (recounted in the journal Iraq 22, 1960, pp. 102-04); with some resulting caution ary tales. Finding an animal tooth in the University Museum (Philadelphia) catalogued as "of one of the asses from the tomb of Shubad," Robert H. Dyson, Jr. sent the specimen to a competent specialist for examination. Identification as "bovid" and not "equid" was forthcoming, a specific determination as "Bos taurus" (domestic cattle) being made later on more complete material in the British Museum. Woolley had made the original "equid" determination on three bases: first, on the assumption that the equid-surmounted double rein ring found in association with the bones in fact reflected the nature of those animals; second, because the animals apparently had no horns; and third, because the Arab workmen identified the jaws as coming from an ass. Unfortunately, similarly mistaken identifications continue to be made even today on similarly questionable grounds by well meaning archaeologists. A major problem with such incorrect determinations is that once they enter the literature, they are difficult to expunge. In the case of "Queen Shubad's asses," one still comes upon occasional references to them as evidence for the domestication of donkeys or onagers (Asian wild half-asses) during the third millennium in Mesopotamia. As a final note, it is possible for a specialist to ascertain even from a published photograph (Ur Excavations Vol. II, 1934, Plate 39a) not only that the Ur animals were "oxen" (taken in the general sense as meaning "cattle") but that one of them was only about 30 months old when it was killed. (This is evident from the state of tooth replacement and wear.) Further information which might have been obtained if a faunal specialist had been present during excavation include the sex and size of the animals, information which would be useful for comparison with cattle remains found in other tombs, as well as in the occupational debris of the site. Was there anything special about the "oxen" which drew the "death chariots?" Perhaps this intriguing question will be asked when the next "Royal Tomb" is found.
Explanation / Answer
The result has been a remarkable growth in the number of individuals who carry out faunal studies, together with increased attention being paid to the recovery of faunal remains from archaeological sites.
In addition to the more "Animal-related" aspects of faunal studies, both zooarchaeologists and paleontologists have been paying increasing atten tion to circumstances surrounding the deposition, burial, and preservation of faunal remains, a domain of concern often called taphonomy Because paleontologists generally deal with deposits laid down by geological and geomorphological means, the taphonomic processes that interest them are natural in origin.
While many of the factors which affect preservation of archaeological faunal remains may be similar, zooarchaeologists are principally concerned with cultural processes such as butcher ing of carcasses and the fragmentation, disposal, and human redeposition of faunal remains.