Dear Jacqui,
I think that zooarchaeologists have assumed for a long time that in
most cases what they study is a small percentage of what was
originally deposited - this is due to scavenger activities as well as
to lots of other factors. However, I believe that there is huge
variability and it is probably not a good idea to try to estimate a
survival percentage to be applied to all sites.
If what we find represented just the leftovers of scavengers'
activities I would expect to find on all sites very high frequencies of
gnawing. Although this is sometimes the case, in many other sites
the frequency of gnawing is in fact quite low. I think that this is
because we may underestimate the amount of material that was
subject to prompt burial. This is easily spotted when found in
primary deposit, but in many other cases such material will have
been reworked at a later stage when the bones are already dry and
not anymore palatable for dogs. I think that this is the main -
though no the only - reason why we find material in secondary
deposition that has little gnawing, and whose formation, I think, has
been little affected by scavengers' activity.
This is not to deny that scavengers have a very important role in
the formation of bone assemblages, but just to remind that there
are other equally important factors.
Cheers,
Umberto
Umberto Albarella
Department of Ancient History and Archaeology
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT
U.K.
tel. +44/121/4147386
fax. +44/121/4145516
email [log in to unmask]
http://www.bham.ac.uk/BZL
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|