At the risk of re-opening old arguments, I would agree with Umberto, but
only up to a point. Yes, NISP does require each of us to explain what
constitutes a 'specimen', what we mean by 'identified', and how the
'number' was attained. Fundamentally, though, NISP is an attempt to
describe the pile on the bench, whilst MNI, MNE, MAU, and all the other
TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms) are attempts at an interpretation of the
'underlying' composition of that pile. None of those procedures is
entirely objective and absolutely repeatable; none of them is 'better'
in any absolute sense. Each has its uses, though some of us are perhaps
more sceptical about MNI than about the other procedures for reasons
that have been set out at length in various published works.
My own preference is for MAM - Most Appropriate Method. In other words,
decide exactly what the quantification is seeking to represent or to
find out, and choose or adapt the simplest procedure that will achieve
that objective.
Terry O'Connor
Umberto Albarella wrote:
>
> > Except for some rare instances, the one really nice thing about
> > NISP is that people understand how you calculated it and little
> > justification needs to be given for the methods of counting it,
>
> Dear Brian,
>
> Hope you don't mind me taking issue on this statement. NISP is the
> Number of Identified Specimens, and, if we can all quite easily agree
> about what a "number" is, the words "identified" and "specimens" badly
> need to be explained and justified as they can mean different things
> to different people.
>
> For instance, when is something "identified"? As an anatomical
> element, a species, one of two possible species, a genus, a family, a
> class, etc etc? And what is a "specimen"? People who use a "diagnostic
> zone" system, will be able to define it without troubles, according to
> their very personal system, but for the many people who count any
> possibly identifiable (whatever that means) specimen, what a
> "specimen" is will vary according to the experience of the analyst,
> the type of assemblage, the level of fragmentation, the type, of
> bone, the time of the day they are recording their bones, how much
> sleep they had the day before etc etc etc.
>
> This is just to say that NISP, far from reflecting a natural status of
> a bone assemblage, is in fact as an artifical system as all others and
> equally needs to be justified. This question has greater implications.
> There is a widespread belief in the zooarchaeological world (and I'm
> not suggesting for a second that you are supporting this view!) that
> it is possible to analyse bone assemblages in some kind of fully
> objective way and that there are rules that must be followed
> religiously (see for instance the debate on "minimum standards").
>
> In fact I believe that there are no fixed rules - particularly as
> concerns quantifications - and that not only our final intepretations,
> but our analyses too represent an archaeological construction. In our
> work we do not discuss "Nature" as it is, but rather our
> interpretation of it - and there is nothing wrong about this. I hope
> you can all see the link between this consideration and the
> quantification debate.
>
> Cheers,
> Umberto
>
> Umberto Albarella
> Dept of Archaeology
> University of Durham
> Durham DH1 3LE, UK
> tel. +44-191-3741139
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