Dear All
I think this is a really marvelous thread. Quite apart from some very
sound advice on the preparation of specimens, the carrion-associated stories
are really excellent. This is clearly a potential oral history project and
all these wonderful tales should be saved somehow as part of our collective
sub-disciplinary history. And these stories are such wonderful windows onto
what we do and how we interact with normal people. Some of the negative
outcomes are probably worth saving too- there was the time I failed to
compete successfully with arctic foxes for that caribou carcass...they are
cute but voracious.
All the best
Tom
Dr. Thomas H. McGovern, Prof.
Director, Hunter College Zooarchaeology Laboratory
Coordinator, CUNY Doctoral Program Archaeology
Coordinator, North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO)
Address:
Dept. of Anthropology
Hunter College CUNY
695 Park Ave.
New York, N.Y.10021
email: [log in to unmask]
dept. office phone: 212 772 5410
Fax: 212 772 5423
lab phone 212 772 5656
-----Original Message-----
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anthony Legge
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] processing specimens
The several methods for cleaning specimens have been much discussed over the
years; my own collection was almost all prepared by defleshing and the
gentle boiling, followed by oxidation with Sodium perborate. This hasn't
come up in discussion. Is there a reason why? These crystals look like sugar
and a lot is scattered over a defleshed skeleton (say 1kg for a sheep). Very
hot water is then poured on, giving rise to strong release of oxygen (stand
well back!). When cool, the bones can be easily scrubbed clean of ligaments
and so on. Specimens that I prepared 30 years ago show no signs of
deterioration. On the other hand, a bull calcaneum left too long in a
biological detergent solution was very significantly eroded.
An alternative is burial, but make sure that this is in well aerated
conditions, either in an active compost heap or in a well drained garden
soil. Again, beware very acid sandy soils which can damage bone surprisingly
quickly. Burial tends to produce brown stained specimens, presumably from
degraded haemoglobin.
My best carrion story involves collecting feral pig skeletons in Australia,
from animals shot near to the NSW-Queensland border. The partially defleshed
carcasses were saved for about a week, then put into sacks, and tied onto
the outside of a Land Cruiser - not possible inside! The journey back to
Canberra was a drive of hundreds of miles, with only ONE set of traffic
lights on the way, these in the main street of a small town. Imagine, nice
warm Sunday evening, everyone out for a stroll along the main street, and
the traffic lights turned red.....if you don't believe me, ask Jim
O'Connell.
Best,
Tony Legge
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