Many thanks for the various contributions on what ZOOARCH is
about. Since Jaqui Mulville and I have taken the initiative to start it,
a few clarifications from our side may be needed.
ZooArch is intended to be a discussion list on the study of animal
remains from archaeological sites - any animals. Although this
may be obvious, Harry's plea to invertebrate specialists is more
than welcome, as vertebrate studies tend to play a dominant part in
zooarchaeology to the extent that this is sometimes wrongly
equated to animal bone studies. I can therfore only confirm that
any discussion on invertebrates in archaeology will be more than
welcome on ZooArch.
Since Terry made a reference to it, I also have to mention that this
list is not intended for discussion of human bone studies, though
humans are obviously part of the animal world. The reason why we
take this exception is that in general animal and human bone
studies tend to have different methodological problems and to
address slightly different archaeological questions. Overlaps
obviously occur but isn't this the case with any other
archaeological specialisms? I'm afraid we had to draw the line
somewhere. This obviously does not mean that human bone
specialists are not welcome to join the list and offer a contribution
whenever a common question is raised. I'm not an archaeobotanist
but that didn't stop me from joining an archaeobotany list.
One final point. Since Mailbase is based in Britain we do expect to
have a substantial proportion of members from Britain but this is an
international list and people from any country are encouraged to
join and in fact many non-British members have already joined. The
use of languages other than English is also perfectly acceptable,
but it is probably fair to say that English is the language that is
likely to reach the greatest number of readers and members are
therefore encouraged to use it.
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
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