Tag: animal bones
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On Animal Teeth, or Why I’m Not a Dentist
Since my last post using comparative anatomy was rather popular, I figured I should write a similar post for this week, starting with the most important part of the skeleton for zooarchaeologists (in my opinion) – teeth! In my experience, teeth are the best skeletal elements to recover. Why? They’re one of the more easily
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On Seals, the Dogs of the Sea
The other day, a group of archaeologists (myself included) stood around trays of assorted animal bones from a recent surface collection. It was just a cursory glance at the assemblage, but of course the mind immediately starts identifying bones that jump out at you. “That’s a dog mandible…that’s a cow tooth…that’s bird, for sure…and that’s…a
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On Fish, the Bane of All Archaeologists’ Lives
Well, not all archaeologists… Here’s the thing about fish bones: they can, and will most likely, be small and fragile in your assemblages. How small and fragile? So small, if you sneeze you might blow a couple hundred of them off your finds tray. So fragile, you might snap a few with a tweezer. So
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On Birds, or Why Light Bones Freak Me Out
Maybe this is a real “duh” moment for me, but the first time I picked up a bird bone (and a rather large one at that), I was genuinely freaked out by how light their bones are! Thinking back, of course, it seems a bit obvious why bird that fly would need relatively lighter bones,
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On Zooarchaeology, or Looking at Dead Animals All the Time
When you’re an archaeologist, you become very aware of how little the general public knows about what archaeologists do. Fair enough, of course…most people conjure up the image of Harrison Ford (at his peak handsomeness) when they think of archaeologists. It’s not uncommon to get the same sort of questions at the annual family gathering:
Animal Archaeology 