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Dear bone counting colleagues I suspect that some of the heat generated on this subject over the last few days results from laxity in terminology. Alan Outram wrote about the use of a range of minimum number figures, including not only MNIs but also minimum numbers of body parts, but a number of the replies refer only to MNIs. Strictly speaking this refers (of course) to minimum numbers of INDIVIDUALS and so the biggest drawback of MNIs (sensu stricto) is that, much of the time, the basic unit of observation which faunal specialists wish to analyse and interpret is not a whole animal but some sort of subdivision of a carcase (humerus, distal humerus, proximal radius+ulna, etc.). Because we are all aware of the complicating effects of differential fragmentation, preservation etc., most of us seek to 'filter' our basic records of identified specimens in various ways: by reducing them to minimum numbers of anatomical units (sometimes also called, misleadingly, MNIs); by specifying which 'zones' are present; or by taking some account of fragment size, fragment weight, or whatever. I think these are all methods designed to achieve the same end, to remove some of the 'noise' from simple counts of identified specimens. Of course, some of these methods are more time-consuming than others, but I am not sure that simple NISP are really the least problematic because they are the least manipulated form of data. As someone (Keith Dobney?) pointed out, we use very different definitions of what is 'identifiable' and this variability arguably makes simple NISP very problematic indeed. The various methods of recording zones, minimum units, etc., arguably filter out the worst of these effects. Put another way, one might argue that NISPs and zones/minimum anatomical units differ in terms not of WHETHER but of WHEN (and how explicitly) the raw bone data are manipulated by the analyst. Yours pedantically Dr Paul Halstead Senior Lecturer (part-time!) Dept of Archaeology & Prehistory University of Sheffield Northgate House West St Sheffield S1 4ET. tel. 0114-2222905 (from outside UK: 0044-114-2222905) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%