Dear Fiona,
some very approximate details of how we have our bird collection arranged in
Sheffield can be found here:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/zooarchaeology/ref-coll.html
It is a system that Simon Davis, Sebastian Payne and I originally devised at
English Heritage in London and that I have then reproduced in Birmingham and
then Sheffield and Simon and Marta Moreno Garcia in Lisbon.
Basically we have four cabinets in which we have divided the birds into four
size groups. Each cabinet has nine drawers each occupied by one of the nine
most common anatomical element. Within each drawer the specimens are arranged
in taxonomic order with each order labelled with a different colour code. The
layout is identical for each anatomical element within the same size group, and
space is left for species we do not have. This is important not only because
the layout is not going to be upset when we acquire a missing species, but even
more importantly because during identification we are acutely aware of the
missing species. Ours is a European collection, but of course the system can
work equally well for any other continent. I'll try to dig out some photographs
to be published on bonecommons. Please, feel free to ask for more details.
cheers,
Umberto
--
Umberto Albarella
Department of Archaeology
University of Sheffield
Northgate House
West Street
Sheffield S1 4ET
United Kingdom
Telephone: (+) 44 (0) 114 22 22 943
Fax: (+) 44 (0) 114 27 22 563
http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/albarella.html
For Archaeologists for Global Justice (AGJ) see:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/global-justice.html
"only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught we will realise we cannot eat money"
|