This chapter outlines the growth of zooarchaeology , including regions, research themes, and persons contributing to it. In what follows, recall that zooarchaeology was defined in Chap. 1 as the analysis of archaeological faunal remains by persons trained as archaeologists, contrasting with a more liberal definition that may include analysis of faunal remains from archaeological sites by persons trained in other fields (e.g. Lyman 2016a). Vertebrate remains played leading role in prompting questions about earth and human history in eighteenth century Europe and in establishing great human antiquity less than a century later (Daniel 1975; Davis 1987; Grayson 1983). By the early 1860s systematic archaeological research into association of humans with Ice Age fauna, along with wide scholarly acceptance of Darwin’s and Wallace’s theory of organic evolution by natural selection, produced new perspectives on the human past and the concept of “pre-historic” archaeology (Lubbock 1865; D. Wilson 1851, 1862). From this tipping point in European intellectual history onward, excavations explicitly aimed at recovering evidence of prehistoric humans began. Vertebrate remains played a major role in defining the chronology and environmental setting of Pleistocene sites.
Although animal remains were central to archaeological reconstructions of environment and subsistence from the mid-nineteenth century, their full potential for elucidating human lifeways was not realized for another hundred years. In the intervening span, archaeologists referred shells, bones , and other animal remains to zoologists and paleontologists for identification . Understandably, such specialists preferred more complete archaeofaunal specimens that would facilitate taxonomic identification . They produced lists of taxa present, with or without estimates of their relative abundances. While these are definitely useful (Lyman 2016a), archaeofaunas ’ potential for informing on human life were seldom taken up.
2.1 Pioneers Who Built Modern Archaeofaunal Analysis
Zooarchaeology emerged as part of a broadening of archaeology’s traditional emphasis on architecture and artifacts to encompass regional-scale site survey, geological, and biological evidence, as well as more socially focused approaches to interpretation (Trigger 2006). Increasingly affluent post-World War II economies in North America and Europe funded field investigations and founded or enhanced research institutes, academic programs, and conferences (Trigger 2006). By the late 1940s, multidisciplinary fieldwork programs were organized to focus on topics in human history that only archaeology could elucidate: the origins of farming and the emergence of social complexity and urbanism (e.g. Willey 1953; Braidwood and Howe 1960). Theoretical inspirations for these new directions lay in pre-Second World War scholarly writings (e.g. Childe 1942; Steward 1936, 1938) and prompted development of regional survey methods, paleoethnobotany, zooarchaeology , geoarchaeology, and other specializations.
In 1950s and 1960s, certain paleontologists and zoologists in several countries of the industrialized West began exploring the more human-oriented side of archaeofaunal analysis. In 1956, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences sponsored a conference on “The Identification of Non-Artifactual Archaeological Materials.” Participating zoologists Barbara Lawrence , Charles Reed , and Paul Parmalee , all members of a specialist cohort who went on to mentor young archaeologists in vertebrate zooarchaeology – commented on the important potential of faunal remains from archaeological sites (Taylor 1957). Most importantly over the long run, most of these specialists began training archaeology graduate students in their own fields’ taxonomic and anatomical identification procedures, as well as in ecology from a zoological perspective. With their mentors’ encouragement, these students developed archaeological careers focused on archaeofaunal remains.
2.2 Regional Traditions in Archaeology
Despite coincident postwar motivations for archaeological research in Western societies, early zooarchaeological research developed within divergent academic contexts and perspectives in North America , Britain, and continental Europe . Differences in history and context often caused challenges when specialists from these regions began interacting and collaborating, and these still can contribute to misunderstandings, so reviewing them is useful. In the United States, Canada, and, often in Australia, prehistoric archaeology usually resides in departments of anthropology, with ethnology and other anthropological endeavors. In Britain, continental Europe, Asia, and Africa, sometimes in Canada and Australia, prehistoric archaeology is usually not allied with anthropology but rather in its own department or allied with history . In Latin America, archaeology may be linked with ethnology or history , or both.
For archaeologists in former European settler colonies in North America , Australia, and Latin America, the connection between ethnography and archaeology appeared to be a natural one. Aboriginal peoples were present when museums and universities’ academic departments were founded. North American departments of anthropology in the early 1900s often sought to link living aboriginal peoples with archaeological evidence of their ancestors (Boas 1902), and early North American ethnographers emphasized material culture in aboriginal peoples’ lives. Archaeologists trained in such contexts could imagine that social and cultural information was implicit in archaeological artifacts, as articulated by Walter W. Taylor (1948) and the “new archaeologists” (e.g. Binford 1962).
Similar bonds between ethnology and archaeology are evident in Latin American nations. However, in many Mesoamerican and Andean countries, national narratives stressing distinctively mestizo cultural heritage in the modern state influenced archaeological practices. State research funding has long focused the development of indigenous civilizations. While most foreign archaeologists’ investigations have shared this focus, some have researched prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Latin American academics have tended to take a more historical approach, for a long time influenced by nineteenth-century European evolutionism, including, in some countries, Marxism. This resulted in theoretical divergences from Anglophone archaeologies of the capitalist North (Lorenzo 1981).
In Britain and continental Europe , the link between ethnology and prehistoric archaeology was, as stressed by Boas (1902), less “natural.” European academics viewed ethnographies as relevant to peoples of colonized areas, while archaeology focused upon Europe’s past (Trigger 2006). Some nineteenth-century evolutionist writers included ethnographic notes on “savages” to buttress their narrations of Europe’s earliest archaeological record (e.g. Lubbock 1865; Mortillet 1897). However, twentieth-century social anthropology developed apart from archaeology, and most archaeologists saw it as having little relevance to interpreting European archaeological materials. Until late in the twentieth century, French and Continental European prehistoric archaeology was allied more with geology and paleontology than with either history or the social sciences (Audouze and Leroi-Gourhan 1981; Sackett 1981). From this perspective, faunal remains were chronological and environmental indicators, and prehistoric economic and social relations were largely inaccessible to archaeological study.
Scandinavian archaeological research consistently diverged from the general Continental pattern from early in the nineteenth century, taking a more practical approach to archaeological artifacts and sites. These were studied to learn about ancient environments and human behavior, rather than simply as relics of a stage of progressive development (Gråslund 1981; Trigger 2006). Long before English-speaking archaeologists developed such interests, Scandinavian researchers emphasized experimental replication of archaeological materials and functional understanding of ancient sites and artifacts (Trigger 2006).
2.3 Archaeofaunal Analysis in North America
Americanist zooarchaeology emerged over the 1950s through 1970s from multiple sources. As in Europe , a number of individuals trained in zoology or paleontology built major regional reference collections, wrote relevant reference literature, and trained the first cohort of young zooarchaeologists. Many participated with their archaeological protégés on the multidisciplinary investigations into major turning points in human history , which nearly always used animal remains as one central line of evidence.
Among the earliest such researchers was Raymond M. Gilmore , a mammalogist who analyzed faunas recovered by Walter W. Taylor and wrote two methodological articles on archaeofaunas (1946, 1949). The first was directed to archaeologists, while the second, on the value of archaeofaunal samples, was primarily for zoologists. Theodore E. White , trained in zoology and paleontology, while working for various government agencies published articles in American Antiquity (1952, 1953a, b, 1954, 1955) on differential body segment transport decisions as inferred from element frequencies in faunas derived from the River Basin Survey project, suggesting the untapped potential of faunal analysis for inferring human activities. Lyman ’s (2016b) biography of White suggests that, despite his relatively high and intellectually pioneering publication rate, White’s lack of placement in an academic or major museum post led to a lessened appreciation of his work, given that he lacked the intellectual “progeny” common among peers in those situations.
Barbara Lawrence , Curator of Mammals at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, engaged in zooarchaeology during the 1950s, through her own analyses of archaeological materials from North America and the Near East and her encouragement of archaeology students to study bones (Rutzmoser 1999). She published one of the first guides to post-cranial artiodactyl skeletons, which proved to be of great value to archaeologists (Lawrence 1951). Encouraged by Lawrence, Stanley Olsen , a paleontologist by training, carried on this tradition in the 1960s and 1970s, producing now-classic guides to the identification of vertebrates from archaeological sites (Olsen 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972a, b). Olsen (1971) was among the first to use the term “zooarchaeology ” in print. Senior zooarchaeologists trained at Harvard include Richard Meadow (1974, 1980, 1984), for many years Director of the Peabody’s Zooarchaeology Laboratory, and Melinda Zeder (1991, 1998, 1999, 2001). Zeder had trained as an undergraduate at Michigan, site of another long research tradition in zooarchaeology . Olsen did archaeofaunal research after moving to the Arizona State Museum, publishing on horse domestication and the origins of domestic dogs (Olsen 1984, 1985), encouraging close zooarchaeological analyses of prehistoric Southwestern faunas, and training some of the first Chinese zooarchaeologists in the 1980s.
Paul Parmalee (1965, 1985; Parmalee et al. 1972; Purdue et al. 1991 ), a zoologist with a strong interest in the aboriginal inhabitants of the Midwest, built a major zooarchaeology emphasis into the Illinois State Museum in his role as Head Curator of Zoology and later Assistant Museum Director from 1953 to 1973. Parmalee encouraged more complete recovery of animal remains from archaeological sites and stressed the need for accurate taxonomic identifications and the reference collections that enabled them. He trained and inspired many Americanist archaeologists at the Illinois State Museum and later at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (McMillan 1991). With John Guilday and others (1962), he authored an influential study of animal bones from the Eschelman Site, a historic Indian site in Pennsylvania, that demonstrated species-specific patterning in cutmarks.
Elizabeth Wing developed the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory at the Florida State Museum. Trained in biology, Wing had in her late teens worked summers with Barbara Lawrence at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. During her long tenure at the Florida State Museum she developed comparative collections for the southeastern U.S., Caribbean, Central America, and South America , emphasizing animal, plant, human skeletal, and soils analysis. She stressed archaeofaunas ’ dual potential to testify to human adaptations and to the historical ecology of otherwise undocumented wild species. Wing contributed many analyses of archaeological materials with a historical and anthropological emphasis, also documenting ecological histories of Caribbean species from a more zoological perspective (Wing 1978, 1989; Wing and Scudder 1980; Wing and Wheeler 1988). Wing trained many students who either went on to become practicing zooarchaeologists, such as Elizabeth Reitz (1995; Reitz and Cumbaa 1983; Reitz and Scarry 1985), or who as professionals emphasized collection of biological data in their projects, such as Kathleen Deagan (1973). Reitz and Wing (2008) and Reitz (1993) provide further details of Wing ’s research emphases.
Paleontologist J. Arnold Shotwell (1955, 1958, 1963) was among the first paleontologists to attempt to reconstruct community paleoecology, authoring several widely read pieces on inferring community ecology from element representation in fossil deposits, work that influenced early zooarchaeological researchers (Thomas 1971). Shotwell was an early mentor of Donald Grayson . Although Grayson (1984) has shown that some of Shotwell ‘s uses of quantitative data are inappropriate, his research has expanded and refined themes found in Shotwell ’s, such as quantitative assessment of faunas and biogeography (Grayson 1977a, b, 1998).
Zoologist Hildegarde Howard worked with avifauna from archaeological sites, the most famous being the Emeryville Shellmound originally excavated by Nels Nelson (Howard 1929; Broughton 1996). Her illustrations of avian osteology continue to be valued by archaeologists, and she deeply influenced Grayson ’s interest in archaeological bird remains (D. Grayson, personal communication 2002). At the University of Washington, Grayson in turn was graduate mentor to R. Lee Lyman (1984, 1985). Grayson’s many students have contributed to bone density and nutritional value research (Kreutzer 1992) as well as applying behavioral ecology to aboriginal faunas in various regions (e.g. Broughton 1994, 1997, 2002; Nagaoka 2005, 2002; Butler 2000, 2001). Later in his career, Grayson turned to evolutionary questions in comparing Neanderthal and modern human foraging in southwestern France (Grayson and Delpech 1994, 1998).
From the 1970s through 1980s, the University of California, Berkeley produced its own cohort of zooarchaeologists within a distinctive intellectual tradition. With three Cambridge educated scholars running the “Old World Prehistory” program, theoretical approaches partook more of that tradition than U.S. processualism (see Sect. 2.4), while UCB’s Americanist faculty long resisted processual approaches in their program (see Gifford-Gonzalez 2010). Africanist archaeologists J. Desmond Clark and Glynn Isaac, with paleoanthropologist F. Clark Howell, developed an interdisciplinary training program with campus geologists, paleontologists, and zoologists. Prospective faunal analysts studied with paleontologists Joseph T. Gregory, William A. Clemens, and Donald Savage. Some UCB zooarchaeology students, including Robert Blumenschine , Henry Bunn , and Curtis Marean , focused on zooarchaeology of early hominins in Africa, while others, including Diana Crader, Fiona Marshall, John Olsen, and myself, concentrated on the zooarchaeology of Holocene peoples in various parts of the world.
2.4 Beginnings of Archaeofaunal Analysis in Europe
In the 1930s, researchers at Cambridge University embarked on practices that would by the 1960s and 1970s have impacts on global archaeobiology . Prompted by pioneering Scandinavian studies in palynology, geographer Harry Godwin used pollen recovered from the peat bogs, or fens, of eastern England to reconstruct British vegetation from the last Ice Age to historic times. In 1932, Godwin and his wife Margaret founded the Fenland Research Group, an informal association of specialists, including archaeologists, interested in the evolution of the British landscape (Fagan 2001). The group emphasized human responses to dynamic postglacial landscape changes as well as later land modification during agricultural colonization. In the 1930s, archaeologists set their goal as investigating “man-land relationships” (Burkitt 1933), prefiguring environmental archaeology. Young Cambridge archaeologist Grahame Clark (1936, 1938) for the first time juxtaposed evidence of late Pleistocene to early Holocene reindeer hunters of the Northern European Plain into the detailed environmental context given by archaeobotanical evidence from that area. This integration of archaeological and environmental data in Britain was interrupted by the Second World War.
In 1952, Clark succeeded to Cambridge’s Disney Chair in Archaeology, then among the most influential professorships of archaeology in the British Isles. In writings and public presentations, Clark presented an agenda for an environmentally oriented archaeology to address forager ecology and the origins of animal and plant domestication . He argued for its centrality not only for environmental reconstruction but also to understanding human resource use, or, “palaeoeconomy” (Clark 1952). He swiftly laid the practical foundations for analysis of archaeobiological evidence. Clark hired reentry student Eric Higgs, a former farmer, to organize a faunal analysis laboratory and offer lectures (Fagan 2001). Cambridge graduate students under Higgs pioneered actualistic studies of farming and herding communities (MacEachern 1996). Cambridge graduates friendly to archaeobiology , including Geoff Bailey, Clive Gamble, Paul Halstead, Anthony Legge, and Peter Rowley-Conwy , the latter two focusing on zooarchaeology , moved to major teaching posts in U.K. (Fagan 2001). Clark’s approach might have remained strictly a regional tradition, had he not persuaded other young Cambridge archaeologists to take up fieldwork and employment opportunities in Africa, Australia, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and North America , where they also encouraged this approach. Later, Cambridge graduates and others criticized Clark’s approach as offering an overly reductionist, environmental determinist perspective on forager and farmer economies (Clarke 1976; Hodder 1985).
The University of London’s Institute of Archaeology, established soon after the Second World War, was another British center for training archaeologists in archaeofaunal analysis. From its inception under V. Gordon Childe, the Institute sponsored investigations into the origins of agriculture, with laboratories and staff dedicated to analysis of plant and animal remains as well as of ceramics and other artifacts. Institute staff published some of the first and most widely read books on archaeofaunal; I. W. Cornwall’s (1956) Bones for the Archaeologist aimed to educate archaeologists in basics of animal bone sorting and to encourage more young archaeologists to develop skills in faunal identification . Widely published Institute students of zooarchaeology include Simon Davis (1987) and Terry O’Connor (2000). Universities to which students of these core institutions migrated also became major centers for zooarchaeology today.
Zoologically trained researchers in British museums published on archaeofaunas from the mid-twentieth century onward. Juliet Clutton-Brock , then head of the Mammals section in the Natural History Museum (Britain), continued an active interest in animal domestication in Eurasia and Africa, producing many publications (1993; Clutton-Brock and Griggs 1983; Clutton-Brock and Noe-Nygaard 1990). Caroline Grigson , based in the Odontological Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, maintained an active career pursuing archaeozoological research on Eurasian and African faunas (1969, 1996). They co-hosted the fourth, 1982 International Council of Archaeozoology (ICAZ ) conference in London.
Directly paralleling the United States trajectory, an even earlier in some cases, as continental European institutions recovered from the ravages of the Second World War, a cohort of zoological, paleontological, and veterinary science researchers pioneered archaeological faunal analysis and training students. This cohort included Joachim Boessneck (1969), Elisabeth Schmid (1972), Anneke Clason (1968, 1972), Achille Gautier (1980, 1984, 1986), Hans-Peter Uerpmann (1973, 1978; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 1997), Pierre Ducos (1968), Angela von den Driesch (1972), and Sándor Bökönyi (1970, 1983). European archaeozoologists established programs for training the next generation of analysts in various countries, including then-West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. In the process, they developed reference collections for analyzing archaeological samples, established standards for the recovery of faunal materials, and introduced standardized methods for measuring and comparing them (von den Driesch 1976). These researchers often collaborated with one another and communicated with eastern European, British, and U.S. researchers working on parallel problems, initially on later periods of prehistory and early history in Southwest Asia and the greater Mediterranean.
Though meticulous in their work, most European archaeozoologists did not venture far into the roles animals played in the social and cultural worlds of the humans who interacted with them (Gifford-Gonzalez 1986). In an early exception, Uerpmann (1973) argued that economic and cultural information could be recovered from bone assemblages and advised colleagues to shift to what he saw as more interesting historical and anthropological questions.
In 1971–1973, this European group founded the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ), which now meets in a conference every four years and, now with a truly global membership, is the central international organization for faunal analysts (see Sect. 2.6 below).
2.5 Influence of Major Research Projects on Zooarchaeology 1950–1975
Grant-funded projects investigating hominin origins, peopling of the Americas, the transition to farming, and origins of urbanism never set out to create new disciplinary specializations nor to develop analytical methodologies in those specialist fields. However, these projects ultimately did just that. Faunal analysts found they needed to consider how to interpret element representation, animal mortality profiles , bone modifications, and the effects of taphonomic processes to answer central questions posed by their projects. The recognition of common interests and goals among faunal analysts working on various projects prompted conferences, working groups, and new organizations. The need to share comparable data with peers led to emergence of more formalized zooarchaeological method and theory.
2.5.1 Agricultural Origins
Because faunal evidence was seen as integral to answering research questions concerning agricultural origins, field projects on this topic created a “market” for analysts with archaeological training and faunal identification skills. During the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. researchers fielded several multidisciplinary projects on the origins of agriculture and social complexity in Southwest Asia and the Americas. These built on multidisciplinary research pioneered by Alfred Kidder (1945) in Mayan regions during the 1930s and by Gordon Willey (1953) in the Virú Valley, Peru, in the late 1940s. Several incorporated Julian Steward’s (1938, 1955) notions of cultural ecology and underlying mechanisms of subsistence change into their research designs.
Dexter Perkins and Patrica Daly , who in the 1960s divided their time between the University of Pennsylvania Museum and New York University, worked with Braidwood in Turkey and Ralph Solecki at Shanidar Cave, Iraq, encouraging archaeology students from both institutions to concentrate in zooarchaeology . These included Peter Bogucki, Pamela Crabtree , and Douglas Campana. The University of Pennsylvania maintained an active zooarchaeology presence in the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology into the twenty-first century.
Barbara Lawrence and zoologist Charles Reed worked as faunal analysts on Robert Braidwood’s project in Iraq’s Zagros Mountains foothills (Braidwood and Howe 1960; Braidwood et al. 1961). Archaeology students who participated in Braidwood’s multiple projects were among the first zooarchaeological specialists in the U.S. Harvard students Richard Meadow and Melinda Zeder , trained at the Peabody Museum, also worked on research projects in South and Southwest Asia. Independent scholar Richard MacNeish’s research in the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico, on which Kent Flannery (1968a, b) served as a faunal analyst (Byers 1967), began a long history of zooarchaeological analysis as an integral part of research on agrarian origins in Mesoamerica.
The University of Michigan, through its connection with these projects and those developed at the University of Chicago, supplied archaeologically trained zooarchaeologists, including Brian Hesse (1982a, b, 1990; Hesse and Wapnish 1985), Richard Redding (1978, 1981, 1991), and Jane Wheeler (1976, 1982, 1984), all of whom focused on the role of animals in emerging food-producing economies or in complex, urbanized societies. Michigan students benefited from training with Museum of Paleontology vertebrate paleontologist Carl Hibbard.
Zooarchaeology was further encouraged by the emergence of processual archaeology in the U.S., with Binford ’s (1962, 1964, 1965) adaptation of Leslie White’s (1959) neoevolutionist perspective and Kent Flannery’s (1965, 1968a) emphasis on ecosystems. Reitz and Wing (2008) offer interesting insights into the role of Walter W. Taylor (1948, 1957) in bringing botanical, zoological, and other experts into project research design.
In the mid-1960s, the British government funded The Early History of Agriculture Project, collaboration among several departments of archaeology in Great Britain , with its faunal component based at Cambridge. Higgs and his students (Higgs 1972; Higgs and Jarman 1975; Jarman et al. 1982; Legge 1972) explored techniques for diagnosing hunting selectivity and herd management from faunal assemblages in archaeological and contemporary cases. Researchers at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, also participated in agricultural origins research during the directorship of V. Gordon Childe, 1946–1956, and even more intensively with development of zooarchaeology and paleobotanical laboratory programs.
2.5.2 Peopling of the Americas
The question of the earliest human settlement of the Americas and the Paleoindian period also prompted zooarchaeological research. In the 1960s, some Canadian archaeologists argued that broken and abraded bones in Pleistocene river gravels of the Yukon were pre-Clovis artifacts (Jopling et al. 1981). Since the bones were not associated with lithics, archaeologists on both sides of that emerging debate focused on distinguishing distinctively human bone modifications from those caused by other agents. Canadian research on this topic included experimental replication of bone modification (Bonnichsen and Will 1980; Bonnichsen 1979, 1983; Morlan 1983). While most workers ultimately concluded that the Pleistocene Yukon materials were non-artifactual, their research paralleled discussions of broken and abraded bones in early hominin bone deposits in southern Africa.
Distinctive Paleoindian projectile points and sites were recognized in the U.S. from the 1920s, and after the Second World War, they were increasingly documented in North, Central, and South America . The first such sites discovered comprised projectile points associated with the remains of extinct elephants, camels, bison or other megafauna. It was logical that the bones became a focus of attention. Joe Ben Wheat (1972) produced an influential study of the Olsen -Chubbuck site, a Paleoindian bison kill-butchery locale. His reconstruction of seasonality, hunting tactics, and butchery practices from pollen, sedimentology, bone distributions and mortality profiles stimulated behavioral reconstructions at other sites. George Frison (1971, 1974, 1978) and his students (Frison and Todd 1987; Wilson and Davis 1978) developed a tradition of detailed spatial and faunal analysis and behavioral inference, investigating mass bison kills ranging of paleoindian to protohistoric age. Frison ‘s background as a cattle rancher and a hunter gave him an unequaled practical perspective on animal behavior, hunting , and carcass processing (Frison 1991). He also experimentally assessed the efficiency of Paleoindian point replicas during elephant culling in Zimbabwe (Frison 1986). Frison ’s long tenure at the University of Wyoming and collaborations even after his retirement produced many students who elaborated on analysis of element frequencies , bison age determination and mortality profiles , taphonomy , and carcass “refitting” with spatial analysis (Chap. 25) as a an aid to butchery studies e.g. (Todd 1983; Reher 1974).
2.5.3 Human Origins Research
By the 1960s, Africa was recognized as the source of the earliest human ancestors. Influential physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn and colleagues argued that present-day political problems and social dilemmas had their roots in our evolutionary history , and that these could be better understood through paleoanthropological field research and comparative primate studies (Washburn 1960; Washburn and Hamburg 1965). European and North American government and private research foundations funded human origins research in Africa and Asia, ultimately contributing to the development of zooarchaeology . Researchers seeking to discern hominin effects in Plio-Pleistocene fossil bones looked to the literature on vertebrate taphonomy , which had been developing in paleontology since the 1930s. Historical reviews of taphonomic literature can be found in Behrensmeyer and Kidwell (1984), Gifford (1981), and Lyman (1994).
From the 1940s, Raymond Dart, anatomy professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and describer of Australopithecus africanus, popularized his controversial views on the evolutionary roots of human nature. Dart asserted bone- and horn-wielding, carnivorous hominins deposited the animal bones in australopithecine-bearing caves of South Africa, and also inflicted murderous damage on their own kind with these tools (Dart 1949). Dart stressed that because element frequencies in these caves did not match those of the vertebrate skeleton, being dominated by limb bones often broken into sharp fragments, this reflected australopithecine selectivity. Permutations of Dart’s arguments appeared in the popular book, African Genesis (Ardrey 1961).
South African C. K. “Bob” Brain of the Transvaal Museum developed research on the taphonomy of South African cave deposits and did actualistic research during the 1960s. The Hunters or the Hunted? An Introduction to South African Cave Taphonomy (Brain 1981) synthesized his many years of experimental observations and analysis of paleontological samples. Many of his findings undermined Dart’s contentions. Brain was especially helpful to younger researchers working in other parts of Africa.
Multidisciplinary human origins projects often brought together students of vertebrate paleontology, paleoanthropology, and zooarchaeology in field camps and museums. Recognizing their common interests, just as workers on agricultural origins, they began collaborating on method. Among this cohort was Harvard-trained paleontologist-sedimentologist Anna K. (Kay) Behrensmeyer , undertook taphonomic fieldwork as part of multidisciplinary projects on hominin and hominoid evolution in Kenya and later in other African and South Asian localities. She used contemporary observations and experiments to better understand the origins and nature of fossil deposits (Behrensmeyer 1978, 1983; Behrensmeyer et al. 1986; Behrensmeyer and Chapman 1993). British paleoanthropologist Andrew Hill, from the University of London, initially studied patterns of bone modification (Hill 1980, 1989), and his collaborative work with Behrensmeyer on carcass disarticulation and dispersal on modern land surfaces arose from initial discussions in the field in East Africa (Hill 1979a, 1979b; Hill and Behrensmeyer 1985).
Others from the U.S.A. working in East Africa in the late 1970s included Harvard University graduate student Richard Potts and New York University physical anthropology student Pat Shipman . While Potts and Shipman were each working with fossil animal bones from Olduvai Gorge , they recognized marks of stone tools on specimens at the same time (Potts and Shipman 1981). Bunn (1981) simultaneously recognized cut marks on fossil specimens from Lake Turkana and Olduvai. Shipman made an epochal contribution to zooarchaeology by applying scanning electron microscope (SEM) protocols to defining distinctive signatures of various bone modifiers (Shipman 1981; Shipman and Rose 1983, 1984).
Several influential contributors to the zooarchaeology of human origins developed faunal analytic skills only after working for some time as archaeologists. After a highly visible career in the 1960s as a champion of U. S. “New Archaeology,” Lewis Binford started working with faunal remains in the 1970s as the result of his reflections on archaeological methodology (Binford 1983). Binford did bone-focused ethnoarchaeology (Binford 1977, 1978, 1981), arguing that animal bodies and bones were uniformitarian materials, the study of which in contemporary settings could elucidate the behavioral meaning of archaeological faunal assemblages. Binford proposed approaches to “economic anatomy” of mammals that have been subjects of much productive debate (Chaps. 20 and 21).
Richard Klein , a University of Chicago student of F. Clark Howell and Sherwood Washburn, initially researched Russian Middle Palaeolithic archaeology (Klein 1973). From the 1970s on, Klein worked with South African Pleistocene and Holocene archaeofaunas , contributing to the paleoenvironmental record of southern Africa, and to humans’ interactions with other species (Klein 1973, 1975, 1980, 1984, 1986). Klein and his students, especially Kathryn Cruz-Uribe (Klein and Cruz-Uribe 1984; Klein et al. 1983), developed approaches for ageing animals (Chap. 7), reconstructing mortality profiles , and inferring predation patterns (Chap. 22). John Speth turned to faunal analysis after an earlier career in lithic analysis at the University of Michigan. His work on seasonal needs for fat in the human diet and its probable influence on predation patterns (Speth 1983, 1991; Speth and Spielmann 1983) strongly influenced interpretations of archaeofaunal assemblages (Chap. 5).
2.6 Convergence and Communication
In 1971, a conference entitled “Domestication Research and History of Domesticated Animals,” was hosted in Budapest by Hungarian archaeozoologist János Matolcsi with the assistance of Sándor Bökönyi , bringing together many European faunal analysts. In 1974, Dutch archaeozoologist Anneke Clason organized a second such meeting in Groningen, Netherlands. These led to the official founding of the International Council on Archaeozoology (ICAZ ) in 1976. Initially, most ICAZ meetings focused on later periods of prehistory or historical time in Europe , but it was not long before the quadrennial ICAZ meetings included sessions on the faunal studies aimed at understanding ancient foragers and hominin adaptations (Clutton-Brock and Griggs 1983). In the early years of ICAZ, the various regional traditions of archaeological faunal analysis sometimes seemed like ships passing in the night. However, focused sessions on common areas of concern and the consistently congenial atmosphere of ICAZ meetings led to clearer communication. Now a thoroughly international organization, its governing board includes members from all regions of the world.
The 1975 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology saw its first symposium in the western hemisphere that brought together European and North American zooarchaeologists working on material from Southwestern Asia and western South Asia (Zeder and Meadow 1978). In 1976, Behrensmeyer and Hill organized a conference on taphonomy and paleoecology sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This brought together senior researchers in paleontology, ecology , and geochemistry, including C. K. Brain , Everitt C. Olson, and P. E. Hare, with younger researchers working in Africa and Asia, including Hill, Behrensmeyer, Klein , Gifford, geochemist Lawrence Tieszen, paleontologist Elizabeth Vrba, and ecologist David Western, resulting in the book Fossils in the Making (Behrensmeyer and Hill 1980).
In 1984, Robson Bonnichsen and Marcella Sorg organized the International Bone Modification Conference in Carson City, Nevada, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Early Man, University of Maine at Orono. This brought together North American researchers on bone modification with Africanist archaeologists and paleontologists, resulting in another definitive volume, Bone Modification (Bonnichsen and Sorg 1989).
By the 1980s, zooarchaeology was a regular part of sessions at national and international archaeological societies, and zooarchaeologically based articles were frequently published in leading journals. In the late 1980s through the 1990s, a series of overviews of zooarchaeology and related fields were published, marking a new level of methodological systematization, if not uniformity, in approaches (Lyman 1994; O’Connor 2000; Reitz and Wing 2008; Chaix 2005; Hesse and Wapnish 1985).
2.7 The Emergence of Zooarchaeology in Other Regions
This chapter has concentrated on faunal studies in Europe and North America , as these regions saw the first emergence of modern zooarchaeology . However, other traditions should be acknowledged, both for their long, if often interrupted, histories of faunal analysis and for their current participation in the global research and data sharing that characterizes zooarchaeology today.
2.7.1 Spain
In Spain, a strong tradition of vertebrate paleontology existed for most of the twentieth century. From 1907 to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) funded young Spanish scholars’ study travel to foreign museums in Europe and Argentina, integrating Spanish paleontology with mainstream contemporary practices (Pelayo 2007). Through various close relationships with French paleontologists and institutions, Spanish researchers became involved in describing important fossils from southern France. Programs in archaeology, often allied with history , were established in major universities and younger scholars were also funded by the JAE to study abroad (Diaz-Andreu 1995). Archaeological studies focused largely on late prehistoric and historic Mediterranean sites. Except in the case of palaeolithic sites, archaeological and animal bone-based research did not overlap.
The Spanish republic suffered a coup d’etat in 1936 and three years of Civil War ensued. With the inception of the Falangist regime (1939–1975), the JAE was shut down, and many Spanish academics, especially those from regions and institutions loyal to the republic, fled into exile in Europe , Latin America and the U.S.A. Those remaining in Spain were relatively poorly funded and isolated from the foreign contacts, even after the end of the Second World War. Economic conditions in Spain improved in 1960s and early 1970s, but the Franco government’s generally low investment in education and policies of intellectual isolation did little to stimulate growth in archaeology, much less zooarchaeology . A few researchers, Spanish and foreign, published zooarchaeological analyses during the 1960s, setting methodological standards (Altuna 1963; von den Driesch 1972; von den Driesch and Boessneck 1975); for more details, see Morales Muñiz (2002).
Starting in the late 1970s, the post-Franco government of Spain’s parliamentary monarchy invested in improvements to education and scientific research. Especially after Spain joined the European Community (predecessor of the European Union) in 1986, government stipends for doctoral or postdoctoral study abroad were restored and international scholarly travel was facilitated. Spanish departments of archaeology developed quickly in this period, and paleoanthropological specialists, often in departments of paleontology, increased. In the 1980s and 1990s, government fellowships renewed the tradition of sending Spanish faunal analysts, both paleontologists and zooarchaeologists, for postdoctoral training overseas. Fuller exploration of Middle Pleistocene deposits at Atapuerca commenced, and the spectacular discovery of many nearly million-year-old hominin remains at Atapuerca’s Sima de los Huesos highlighted Spanish paleoanthropology, palaeolithic archaeology, and zooarchaeology (Fernández-Jalvo et al. 1999), as have overseas research in paleoanthropological and zooarchaeological research by Spanish teams (e.g. Domínguez-Rodrigo 1997; Domínguez-Rodrigo et al. 2001, 2007). The Laboratory of Archaeozoology in the Department of Zoology, Autonomous University of Madrid, was among the first such labs to be founded in Spain, by Arturo Morales Muñiz , who in 1972 obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from UCLA, later studying in Denmark, and obtaining his doctorate from Complutense University, Madrid in 1976 (e.g. Morales Muñiz 1988, 1993, 2002; Morales-Muñiz and Roselló-Izquierdo 2008). Spanish researchers have been active in ICAZ , and Morales Muñiz convened the first ICAZ Bird Working Group.
2.7.2 Israel
Israeli paleontologists and zooarchaeologists have contributed sophisticated studies on economic anatomy (Bar-Oz and Munro 2007), taphonomy (Bar-Oz et al. 2005; Horwitz and Smith 1988; Rabinovitch 1990; Stiner et al. 1995), pre-modern hominin subsistence, early sedentism (Bar-Oz and Munro 2007), and the origins of domestic animals, often working with both European and North American investigators, as will be noted in later chapters (Shahack-Gross et al. 1997; Belmaker 2005; Bar-Oz et al. 2005). A number of senior archaeologists who trained in Israel and did postdoctoral studies Europe , such as Ofer Bar Yosef, encouraged younger Israeli scholars and researchers from overseas to engage in zooarchaeological and taphonomic research. Israeli zooarchaeologists have been active participants in ICAZ meetings and often work in collaboration with foreign researchers working. For a history of zooarchaeology in Israel and Palestinian research in the West Bank up to the early 2000s, see (Horwitz 2002).
2.7.3 Mexico
In Latin America, two centers of zooarchaeological training and practice, Mexico and Argentina, are notable. Interest in archaeofaunal remains emerged with the discovery from 1882 onwards of Pleistocene mammal remains in the Valley of Mexico, and the much later discovery of human remains associated with obsidian tools and mammoth remains at Tepexpán, on the shores of the former Lake Texcoco (Corona 2008). Archaeofaunal studies developed through several impulses, originally through the efforts of Manual Gamio in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the first trained Mexican archaeologists, Gamio had been a student of Franz Boas at Columbia University, New York , introducing stratigraphic excavation and advocating a holistic view of humans in their environmental setting (Corona 2008). The next decades saw a number of exiled Spanish scientists working with archaeofaunas from Pleistocene and later sites in Mexico. In 1952, the Department of Prehistory was founded within the Instituto Nacional de Historia. Corona (2008) attributes to the efforts of a biologist turned archaeologist, José Luís Lorenzo, who had been influenced by Gordon Childe and cultural geographer Frederick Zeuner. The first laboratory for conducting zooarchaeological research in Latin America was formally established in 1963, and comparative collections built up under the direction of its founding director, a mammalogist.
Modern zooarchaeological practices were largely developed and conveyed through the efforts of Óscar Polaco Ramos , who taught at the National School of Biological Sciences at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. Although without formal advanced degrees, Polaco introduced several generations of the students to broad-ranging zooarchaeological and zoological investigations, using contemporary methods (López-González 2008). With his students, Polaco wrote many papers on Mexican archaeofaunas from Pleistocene times onwards (Polaco and Arrojo-Cabrales 2001; Polaco et al. 1998), sponsored actualistic taphonomic research (Polaco and Heredia 1989; Polaco et al. 1988), and was instrumental in developing the analyses and displays featuring fauna from the offering deposits of the Aztec Templo Mayor in the heart of Mexico City (Guzmán and Polaco 1999; Polaco et al. 1989). Polaco’s former students and colleagues in INAH have carried on strong zooarchaeological traditions (Guzmán 2008; Valadez Azúa and Pérez Roldán 2011) since his untimely death in 2009 at the age of 57 (López-González 2008).
2.7.4 Argentina
Argentina has some of the oldest archaeological sites in South America , and Argentine naturalist Florentino Ameghino was probably the first to use bone modification evidence to argue for human butchery of Pleistocene fauna (Mengoni Goñalons 2007; Ameghino 1880). Ameghino’s credible claims were obscured for many years, largely as a result of the influence of the Smithsonian Institution’s powerful physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlicka, who rejected an early indigenous occupation of the Americas (Mengoni Goñalons 2007). After a long span of culture-historic archaeology, in the 1970s young archaeologists aspired to work with animal bones . As in other areas, these pioneer zooarchaeologists worked with paleontologists, especially Eduardo Tonni and Alberto Cione of the Museo de La Plata, on hunter-gatherer and indigenous agropastoralism in northwestern Chile (Mengoni Goñalons and Yacobaccio 2006). Argentine zooarchaeologists looked to Europe and North America for models and began to publish methodological articles and substantive findings. From the 1976 military coup through the restoration of civil government in 1983, Argentine departments of anthropology were decimated by arrests, disappearances, and emigration as faculty and advanced students fled for their lives. With the return of civilian government, Argentina saw a “boom” in zooarchaeology and taphonomy as academic programs were rebuilt. This swift recovery was largely due to the influence of a few younger researchers, among them Luís Borrero and Guillermo Mengoni Goñalons, who had taught themselves zooarchaeology by reading foreign journals and corresponding with overseas researchers during the period of repression and later had a hand in curricular reconstruction. In the 1980s and 1990s, Argentine researchers obtained Fulbright or Argentine government fellowships to study with zooarchaeologists in the U.S. and Europe, and foreign researchers made short teaching visits in Argentina, establishing traditions that continue to the present. Increasing numbers of Argentine researchers attended meetings of ICAZ and the Society for American Archaeology, holding posts in both organizations, and the 2014 ICAZ meeting was held in San Rafael, Argentina.
Despite weathering severe and ongoing economic dislocations, Argentina remains a center of excellence for training in zooarchaeology and taphonomy , with strong publication profiles in zooarchaeology and taphonomy . Argentine researchers have done actualistic research on economic anatomy (Mengoni Goñalons 1996; De Nigris and Mengoni Goñalons 2005), bone modification (Elkin and Mondini 1996; Mengoni Goñalons 1982). taphonomy (Borrero 1990; González et al. 2012; Borrero et al. 2007; Mondini and Muñoz 2008) and site formation (Muñoz 1997), as well as investigating long-term forager ecology (Gutiérrez and Martínez 2008), often using models drawn from behavioral ecology (Borrero 1989a, b), Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions (Borrero 2008). Argentine researchers have applied stable isotope analysis to explore forager mobility and historical ecology (Yacobaccio et al. 1997; Barberena et al. 2009). Mengoni Goñalons (2007) and (Mengoni Goñalons 2010); Gutiérrez et al. (2007) present reviews of the history of Argentine zooarchaeology and taphonomy .
2.7.5 Japan
Japan ’s archaeological tradition has followed its own distinctive path for many years (Ikawa-Smith 1980; Matsui 2008). Japanese researchers have used faunal remains to infer seasonality and subsistence since the 1980s, developing analytical traditions for local species (Koike and Ohtaishi 1985; Yoneda et al. 2002; Koike and Ohtaishi 1987). Hiroko Koike, now a senior researcher at the Kyushu University Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, has moved with co-researchers into using archaeofaunal evidence to assess the historical ecology of currently endangered species. In the process, they have expanded their collaborations to US, Canadian and Russian research partners (Eda et al. 2012; Nishida et al. 2012). Japanese zooarchaeologists publish in international journals have been frequent participants in ICAZ meetings for many years, and a Japanese team won the 2006 ICAZ poster prize in Mexico City.
2.7.6 China
Like some other countries noted here, Chinese archaeology in general began on a par with others and then suffered the impacts of war, social dislocation, and isolation before rejoining global archaeological practice. Modern archaeology actually began in China in the 1920s (Olsen 1987). Some Chinese archaeologists of that era obtained doctoral training abroad: Li Ji (1896–1979), who excavated the Shang Dynasty capital of Yin, near Anyang, received his PhD from Harvard in 1923. Xia Nai (1910–1985), who effectively managed the archaeological research program of the post-revolutionary Institute of Archaeology from its founding in 1950 and who assumed the institute’s directorship 1982–1982, took his degree in Egyptology at the University of London (Chang 1986b; von Falkenhausen 2001). Pei Wenzhong (1904–1982), who found the first Peking Man (Homo erectus) cranial specimen at the Locality 1 excavations at Zhoukoudian (Pei 1934), took a two-year crash course in paleolithic archaeology at the Institute de Paléontologie Humaine, Paris, receiving his doctorate 1937 (Chang 1984).
Up to the Japanese invasion of 1937, foreign researchers excavated Neolithic, Palaeolithic, and paleontological sites using up-to-date methods, often providing on-the-job and academic training to young Chinese students who did not go abroad but instead learned contemporary principles of geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, and archaeology in this context. The Peking Man excavations became the research focus of many foreign researchers, including Swedish paleontologist Johann Gunnar Andersson and Canadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black. Peking University doctoral students Yang Zhongjian (1897–1979) and Jia Lanpo (1908–2001), along with Pei , worked on the project and later became major figures in Chinese paleontology and paleoanthropology, attempting to maintain international contacts during the first 30 years of the post-revolutionary period (Jia 1977; Olsen 2004).
With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1948, archaeology of Neolithic and later phases was allied with history (Keightley 1977), while archaeological research on early hominins such as Homo erectus was seen as a scientific endeavor allied with the earth sciences. Maoist era archaeology was relatively well funded, for its value in documenting China’s history as a unique and self-sufficient polity, as well as supporting a Marxist view of history (Olsen 1987). Legal oversight of excavations and research funding were strongly centralized in Beijing during this period, and antiquities laws were strict. Major universities offered training in archaeology, but concerted archaeological research was divided between two institutions: the Institute of Archaeology, focusing on Chinese Neolithic and later complex societies , and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), specializing in palaeolithic archaeology, paleoanthropology, and paleontology (Lin 2016; Olsen 1987). This division effectively excluded the transition from Pleistocene foraging to early food production from the official purview of either. The Institute of Archaeology was headed by Communist Party members, who theorized how archaeological evidence could be interpreted within a Marxist framework.
In terms of theory, whereas postwar Western scholars considered it necessary to explain the transitions to agriculture, urbanism, and social complexity, Marxist-Leninist perspectives on human history rendered this unnecessary, because such sociocultural developments were viewed as inevitable outcomes of universal historical processes. In terms of method, Chinese archaeologists had strong contact with Soviet colleagues over the first decades of the PRC, and researchers of later periods emulated Soviet archaeologists’ extensive lateral excavations, intended to reveal more of social relations (Trigger 2006).
Yuan (2002) notes that most archaeofauna analysts in the early PRC years produced only species lists, but that a few researchers pushed faunal data further. For example, in 1956, Yang wrote “Problems of archaeological human and animal bones ” in Chinese only, on methods to assess the balance between hunting and animal keeping in the Neolithic. Li and Han (1959) attempted to explore early stages of pig domestication from pig mortality profiles from the Ban-po Village Neolithic site. Beginning with Deng Xiaoping’s 1978–1993 economic reforms in the PRC, Chinese archaeologists expanded contacts with other nations and disciplinary traditions. Senior academics toured Western countries and invited visits by foreign researchers in archaeology and paleoanthropology (Olsen 1987). Chinese institutions began sending young professionals and graduate students overseas for advanced training not available in PRC. Chinese antiquities laws were altered to permit foreign collaborators to work under the supervision of Chinese co-researchers, and control of antiquities began to decentralize to the provincial level.
Dr. Qi Guoqin, a member of IVPP, was sent to work with Stanley Olsen at the University of Arizona. On her return, she wrote on zooarchaeological goals and quantitative methods in an overview for Chinese archaeologists (Qi 1983) and demonstrated such approaches in her analysis of the Jiangzhai Neolithic fauna, published in Chinese (Qi 1988). Stanley Olsen continued to host Chinese scholars for study visits and to work on problems in Chinese zooarchaeology (e.g. Olsen 1984, 1985). John Olsen began a long career in East Asian archaeology during this period (Olsen 1987), continuing the University of Arizona’s tradition of hosting study visits by Chinese scholars.
Expatriate archaeologist Kwang-chi Chang (Zhang Guangzhi) also maintained a long tradition of hosting Chinese graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in U.S. institutions. His many influential books on the emergence of Chinese complex societies (Chang 1980, 1981, 1986a) represented his translation and intellectual reworking of primary Chinese sources for Western scholars. In 1984, Chang returned to his native Beijing and continued his work making the archaeological approaches of one regional group intelligible to the other by lecturing on Western approaches to complex societies , including an explanation of the “New Archaeology” (Murowchick et al. 2003).
Collaborations in zooarchaeology became increasingly common. In 1988, zooarchaeologist Zhou Benxiong of the Institute of Archaeology, coauthored on archaeofaunal chickens in Journal of Archaeological Science (West and Zhou 1988). Yuan Jing, of the next cohort of zooarchaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, received his doctoral training at Chiba University, Japan , in 1995. His collaborations with foreign researchers, especially in the area of animal domestication , are regularly published in English-language journals e.g. (Yuan and Flad 2002; Yuan et al. 2008). Paleoanthropologist Jia Lanpo and others from the IVPP traveled to the USA in 1986, resulting in the first Sino-American collaborative field project since World War II, on Plio-Pleistocene deposits of the Nihewan Basin, western Hebei Province. Sponsored by the Henry R. Luce Foundation, the project offered field training to young Chinese scholars now prominent in IVPP (Gao 2002). In 1992, under Luce and IVPP sponsorship and ably translated by Dong Zhuan (1997), then a doctoral student at Indiana University, U.S. palaeolithic archaeologists Kathy Schick, Nick Toth, and I presented two intensive workshops on zooarchaeology and taphonomy (Gifford-Gonzalez) and lithic technology and site formation (Schick and Toth) to Chinese professional archaeologists. Yuan (2002) viewed these workshops as important in the “formative period” of Chinese zooarchaeology .
Over the ensuing decades, Chinese zooarchaeologists have developed strong research programs not only in the Institutes of Archaeology and Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (e.g. Zhang et al. 2010, 2013), but also in provincial museums and antiquities services, as some have increased their funding and oversight of archaeological heritage, and many have collaborated with overseas researchers (Hu et al. 2009; Lam et al. 2010; Liu et al. 2006; Cai et al. 2009; Ma 2005; Pike-Tay and Ma 2011).
To conclude, regional traditions continue to structure research questions in zooarchaeology , in part because of the unique human histories attested by regional archaeological evidence, and in part because of the distinctive histories of archaeologists in those regions. Running through this diversity, however, is a growing convergence in analytic methodology, facilitated by international journals, conferences and workshops, and, increasingly, other kinds of online forums for communication.