I certainly do not disagree with much of what Terry and
Jaco have just said. I think it is very important that
basic counts are published and that where MNIs are used,
fragments counts should also be published.
MNI methods are often misused and therefore NISPs etc. are
important, as they allow other zooarchaeologists to
re-interpret. My argument was simply that we should not
shy away from the thoughtful use of the more complex
interpretative quantification methods (although we need to
justify why and how we use them). I was getting something
of an anti-minimum numbers vibe which I thought unfair. I
am certainly not anti-NISP.
Terry made an interesting point about archaeobotanical
quantification. I think the nature of the data is very
different. Bones are normally incorporated into
archaeology as rubbish, but seeds are not rubbish (they are
actually the food stuff) and only tend to get into the
record as the result of accidents. This creates very
different quantification problems, in terms of what the
presence of a seed represents. I am not sure that
archaeobotanists are casual about quantification issues. I
think they are are even more worried about what their data
means (in terms of relative species importance etc.) than
we are and often opt not to push the evidence too hard (eg.
simple categories of representation, or even just
presence/absence in given contexts).
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Alan K. Outram
University of Exeter
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