As a non-biologist it seems to me that in 20 years time it may not be
apparent which standard keys and references you were using, and that as a
bone chemistry expert I am a consumer of bone reports who doesn't know
now. Therefore either every report should state the texts used, or there
should be somewhere a published statement of which methods are used as
standard by you/your lab and a citation of that. The latter is how many
radiocarbon dates are published - the archaeologist can cite a datelist
giving many sample details and the datelist cites a paper giving the
details of standard sample preparation methods for different materials.
Andrew Millard
On Fri, 17 Nov 2000, [iso-8859-1] Adrienne Powell wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to canvass opinion on something I have
> been having a sporadic debate about for sometime now:
> the necessity or otherwise for including within a bone
> report the references to criteria used to
> identify/differentiate species. My
> biologist-by-training partner argues that the
> published standard keys and references for any
> particular case (eg. chicken vs pheasant, red deer vs
> fallow deer or Apodemus sp. vs Mus sp.) should be
> known to any professional and their use taken as read,
> that explicitly stating their use is superfluous and
> merely bibliography padding.
>
> What is the opinion of fellow zooarchaeologists, or
> indeed of any biologist colleagues lurking on this
> list?
>
> Adrienne
>
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Dr. Andrew Millard [log in to unmask]
Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, Tel: +44 191 374 4757
South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom. Fax: +44 191 374 3619
http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/
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