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Dear Zooarchers, I have just received the following query from Carl Phillips. I have already mentioned to him that I think that it is very unlikely that ostrich bones would be misindentified and that I know of the ostrich bone from Roman Tunisia found by Ariane Burke. Can anybody add any information? Cheers, Umberto Umberto Albarella Dept of Archaeology University of Durham Durham DH1 3LE, UK tel. +44-191-3741139 ------ Forwarded message ------- From: Carl Phillips <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 09:59:23 +0000 Dear Umberto, I hope you are well and happy in Durham. At the moment I am in London and in the final stages of writing an article about Ostriches in South Arabia. And I was wondering if you could help me with one problem that has been niggling away at my brain - i.e. Why aren't ostriches found in the faunal remains from archaeological sites. In Arabia there are many depictions of ostriches being hunted from the 3rd mill BC (if we believe Anati) up until the early first millennium BC. In historical times there are numerous accounts of ostrich being hunted etc. There are many examples of ostrich egg-shells being found on Neolithic sites through to their present day use but I've not seen a single reference to an ostrich bone from an archaeological site. Maybe Arabia is unrepresentative with very few zooarch reports to date. But I get the impression that the picture is the same from elsewhere in the Levant and Maesoptamia. Do you know if the picture is different from Africa/Egypt ? And perhaps more important, is it possible that ostrich bones are being wrongly identified ? As a non bone specialist I would have thought that at an ostriches bones would be quite distinctive. Anyway, if you could give this a moments thought I would be very grateful. Greetings to yourself and Marina for Christmas and all that ... Yours, Carl.