zooarchaeology is a self-reproducing
field taught in many university departments of anthropology or archaeology. As
archaeologists have literally taken faunal analysis into their own hands, they have
debated how best to use animal remains to study everything from early hominin
hunting or scavenging to animal production in ancient market economies.
Animal remains from archaeological sites have been used to infer three kinds of
information: the age of deposits (chronology); paleoenvironment and paleoecological relations among humans and other species; human choices and actions related to
use of animals as food and raw materials. Methods for reconstructing human diet
and behavior have undergone the greatest growth over the last four decades, and
most of this book addresses the second and third areas.
This book deals with what I know best: vertebrate zooarchaeology, and within
that, analysis of mammalian bones and teeth.