Dear Aharon,
there are many site reports of non-hunter-gatherer sedentary communities
that incorporate taphonomic studies as a component of the analysis. I think
you may have to be more specific about what you mean by "taphonomic". A
taphonomic study looks at the processes that bring bones to a site, deposit
them, and then move/damage/destroy them.
On a non-h/g site, humans are significant taphonomic agents. They influence
the choice of animals brought to the site (e.g. townspeople select from the
animals raised by farmers outside the site). They distribute animals and
parts of animals according to the economic system (e.g. butchers, markets
etc), status and ethnicity. They often have specific disposal methods that
structure assemblages. Relevant authors include Melinda Zeder ("Feeding
Cities"), J.D. Hill on structure of refuse on British Iron Age sites,
Briane Hesse and Paula Wapnish re near eastern sites, William Walker
(fairly recent paper in American Anthropologist on site structure), David
Landon on historic Boston, the recent ICAZ volume on ritual and religion,
Legge and Rowley-Conwy in the Abu Herehyra (spelling?) report, the paper by
Robert Muir and me in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2002), lots
of material from British urban sites (start with Terry O'Connor's text
book, check out recent ICAZ volumes, look at the BAR series)
On the other hand, you may be interested in distinguishing natural from
cultural accumulations of bone, and natural and cultural post-depositional
agencies. Again, there has been a lot of discussion about how to recognize
human vs animal collection of small vertebrates (J. of Arch. Sci. or Intl.
J. of Osteoarchaeology for many references. Peter Stahl, Brian Hockett,
Brian Shaffer are names that come to mind, but many other people have done
excellent studies on this topic). I've tried to look at this (although
quite simplistically) for sites in the American Southwest (see my faunal
reports for Crow Canyon Archaeological Center at
http://www.crowcanyon.org/Research/publications.html (try Castle Rock,
Woods Canyon and Yellowjacket Pueblos as examples where we have a lot of
rodent and lagomorph bones, and are trying to figure out natural versus
cultural)
Hope some of this helps. I'd recommend a search through the library for
zooarchaeology edited volumes of the last decade, plus a thorough journal
search.
Jon
At 01:22 PM 08/06/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>
>
>Dear friends
>
>I would very much appreciate references on taphonomic studies on faunal
>remains that were carried out in tell sites (i.e., mound) or historic
>sites (to distinguish from hunter-gather prehistoric sites) or sites of
>sedentary population or all the above. Sites from the Southern Levant are
>preferable. However, since I am concentrating on methods of analysis,
>sites from other regions are valued too.
>
>Many thanks in advance,
>
>
>
>Aharon Sasson
>Department of Anthropology
>University of California, San Diego
>9500 Gilman Drive
>La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, USA
------------------------
Jonathan C. Driver
Dean of Graduate Studies
Professor of Archaeology
Simon Fraser University
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Burnaby, British Columbia
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