Since I started this I must admit that I did walk out
on more than one faunal presentation as the big
historical archaeology research question was yet again
presented as the main focus...What is the ratio of
wild to domestic species consumption at this site?
As a taphonomy addict I groan at these simplistic
models of consumption that fail to take depositional
processes into account...hence my apathy for these
presentations.
However, to the non-specialist, these presentations
are so common that they would not even be paying
attention if someone did start presenting a taphonomic
analysis as they are not quite sure how to use
taphonomy to interpret their sites.
What I would like to see is a session...without
zooarch or faunal in the title...which focuses on how
faunal analysis can help archaeologists better
understand the ever popular ceramic or lithic
assemblages or general types of sites (as opposed to a
specific site) such as taverns or households.
To go even one step further...I think educating the
non-zooarch professional archaeologists about the
potential of faunal analysis to go beyond subsistence
strategies should be a goal of ICAZ.
-April
--- tpoc1 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> April's experience is probably not unusual. Think
> about it: you go to a
> conference at which most of the papers are about
> animal bones, and there
> is a session on ceramics. Do you go? But what if
> there is a paper in
> one of the 'bone' sessions that shows how important
> pottery
> fragmentation and abrasion are in helping us to
> understand bone
> taphonomy? Then we sit up and listen.
>
> Keep the papers that are of interest only to other
> zooarchaeologists for
> the specialist zooarchaeology conferences, but
> contribute to archaeology
> (and zoology, palaeontology, veterinary science)
> conferences in ways
> that make our research relevant to those conference
> themes. Then,
> maybe, other archaeologists will no longer be able
> to assume that we
> have nothing useful to tell them. Some
> archaeologists take the opposite
> view - that there is a lot of information that we
> could be telling them,
> but we don't. Maybe that's a different problem,
> though dialogue on
> equal terms is still the only way forward.
>
> So keep going to the 'general' archaeology
> conferences, but present
> zooarchaeology results in ways that make it relevant
> to main conference
> themes, not to a specialist sesion that fewer and
> fewer people will
> attend. I think Trotsky called it 'entryism'!
>
> Terry
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail!
http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/
|