This thread reminds me of the time a student brought in part of the skull of a lion to our lab at Birkbeck College London. He said that "a friend found it on Dartmoor".
We did not get to keep the skull and we never did find out the truth about where it came from.
Dale
Dale Serjeantson
Archaeology
School of Humanities
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/profiles/serjeantson.html
http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521758581
________________________________
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Moore, Elizabeth (VMNH) [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 05 April 2011 21:02
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] help with a skull and another strange specimen's id
And if people hadn't been transporting animals to new places and discarding them for various reasons our jobs would be a lot less interesting.
Can you imagine what a zooarchaeologist would do with a taxidermist's trash heap? What a challenge that would be - fauna from all over the world in one place and some of it altered in interesting ways.
Elizabeth A. Moore, PhD
Curator of Archaeology
Virginia Museum of Natural History
21 Starling Avenue
Martinsville, VA 24112
[log in to unmask]
276 634-4176
The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
-Mark Twain
________________________________
From: Analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan Crockford
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 3:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] help with a skull and another strange specimen's id
Christopher,
Excuse me, but how is disposing of material in a designated trash dump evidence of "how irresponsibly modern trophy hunters impact our environments"? If a specimen is damaged, where else would you expect a person to dispose of the remains? Surely a trash dump is a logical choice...
People have been doing this (transporting animal remains into areas where they do not naturally occur and eventually discarding them, for one reason or another) probably as long as people have moved around the world, but certainly for many hundreds if not thousands of years.
"irresponsible impacts on our environment" seems a totally unfair accusation under the circumstances, whatever you might feel about trophy hunting as an activity...
Susan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher M. Götz" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 11:51 am
Subject: [ZOOARCH] help with a skull and another strange specimen's id
To: [log in to unmask]
> Dear all,
> thank you very much for the quick and accurate comments on those
> two specimens. I am quite convinced of their id now (juvenile
> hippo skull and rhino horn base), as some also sent photos -
> thank you!
> Who would have expected to find such things on a trash-dump in
> the Maya area!
>
> About the context, yes, the most likely scenario of the
> specimens is that they were dumped by a taxidermist, perhaps
> after long use. They are thus a nice example of actuotaphonomy,
> no doubt, but also showed me very drastically how irresponsibly
> modern trophy hunters impact our environments (if the specimens
> were not from a zoo, of course).
>
> Best,
> Chris
> --
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Susan J. Crockford, Ph.D. (Zoology/Evolutionary Biology/Archaeozoology)
Adjunct Professor (Anthropology/Graduate Studies) email: [log in to unmask]
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
AND
Pacific Identifications Inc. (www.pacificid.com)
6011 Oldfield Rd., RR 3
Victoria BC V9E 2J4
phone (250) 721-7296 fax (250) 721-6215
email: [log in to unmask]
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