What is adequate evidence for mass procurement of ungulates in zooarchaeology?

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Anthropology and Museum Studies

Publication Date

5-29-2013

Abstract

For more than 40 years, zooarchaeologists have explored possible criteria for distinguishing ungulate mass procurement (killing of many animals in one event) from bonebed sites. However, beyond age distributions, there has been little debate about what evidence is sufficient to accept the hypothesis of mass procurement. Here I discuss possible lines of evidence under the broad categories of threshold bone count, human-caused mortality, single depositional episode, and single mortality event. I argue that none of these is adequate by itself, but acceptable proof might emerge from multiple, converging lines of evidence.

Comments

This article was originally published in Quaternary International. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Quaternary International

Rights

Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

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