Interpretation

Interpretations are based on the premise that an ecological relationship exists between humans and their environment, especially between humans and other animal populations, and that cultural, biological, and physical aspects of this relationship are reflected in animal remains. To study these relationships, however, one must appreciate that animals, including humans, are never random scavengers. Instead, animal remains in archaeological samples reflect a complex, systemic, selective relationship which balanced many interrelated components. These include the structure and function of the natural environment, resource management preferences, technology, material culture, site functions, settlement patterns, human biology, social institutions, value systems, and cultural history. It is due to this complexity that interdisciplinary collaboration, archives, ethnographic observations, and experimental archaeology are important to zooarchaeologists. Many interpretations rely upon similar observations in modern animal populations, which are likely different from those in the past for both domestic and wild animals.

Site-Formation Processes

Much of what originally occurred at a site left no evidence and what is recovered is altered from what was originally deposited as animals are transformed from a living creature into a human resource, garbage, an archaeological deposit, and, finally, an archaeological specimen. Ironically, some of what is recovered may not represent human behavior at the time the site was occupied and some of the material may not represent human behavior at all. These concerns are broadly lumped under the heading ‘site-formation processes’, the processes by which an archaeological sample is formed. The primary outcomes of these processes are inaccurate representation of materials in relationship to their original availability and use compounded by changes in the relationships of the materials relative to each other and noncomparable samples. Such processes are not simply biases, they also provide information on former environments and on variations in the development, organization, and function of the site, and other aspects of human behavior. Many primary data are studied for information about this aspect of human behavior; chief among these are the identity and relative frequencies of specific animals, their age and sex, frequencies of skeletal portions, nutritional potential, and modifications.

People make many decisions about where to collect, hunt, trap, or fish and how to manage the resources these actions acquire. After an animal is acquired, the carcass steadily disintegrates into smaller and smaller units due to food processing, manufacturing, and trade until the surviving specimens are discarded, and long afterward. The first decision regards what parts of the resource are worth the effort to transport from where they are acquired to where they will be used. This decision balances the cost in time and effort to transport all or part of the animal against its potential nutritional, economic, and social value. The outcome of these decisions is that some parts of the animal never reach the archaeological site.

Food preparation and redistribution practices eliminate animal remains from the archaeological record. Most of this destruction occurs as carcasses are processed by removing invertebrate exoskeletons or fracturing bones to render fat or to make them fit into the available cooking vessel. Processing and cooking creates increasingly smaller, less diagnostic fragments. If small animals such as mice or insects were eaten, their remains may enter the archaeological record only in coprolites, or not at all. Some pieces of large or even small animals probably were distributed throughout the community, a pattern that may not be observed if the excavation focuses on only one activity area. Additional scattering occurs if skeletal parts were used for tools, rituals, or other purposes. None of these practices was uniform for all animals, between sites, or through time.

After use, humans play a role in determining which animal remains survive the ravages of time. People enhance preservation by burying refuse, thereby decreasing the amount of exposure to forces such as weathering, scavenging, and trampling. By discarding vertebrate bones with mollusk valves, the length of time vertebrate remains survive in acidic soils increases. Unfortunately, burial does not ensure that animal remains will be preserved where they were deposited or that they will survive at all.

Other activities introduce animal remains into the archaeological record which were not used by people at all. Although some of these nonfood animals are discarded in contexts that indicate their nonfood uses, frequently the remains of nonfood animals are mixed with those of food animals. Scavenging and commensal animals are special types of nonfood animals to which the human-built environment offers ideal habitat. Samples from cave sites, rock shelters, and structures may contain remains of animals simply seeking food and shelter. Such animals are not just inadvertent inclusions in the archaeological record, but may be site-formation agents and important indicators of prevailing environmental conditions from the time the site was active until it was excavated.

Subsistence Strategies and Human Health

Subsistence strategies are the products of dynamic interactions between people and their environments. They are the ways by which people obtain nutrients and other resources while ensuring that the costs required to find, catch, transport, process, distribute, and use them do not exceed their biological and social benefits. Subsistence strategies also encompass the manner of food preparation, the style of cooking, the social rules governing when, how, by whom they are prepared and eaten, and the circumstances under which they are eaten.

People combine knowledge about the life histories of animals to develop strategies that are energetically efficient, provide a good return for effort, and balance return against risk. Food preferences, site functions, settlement patterns, human nutritional needs, the number of people available to participate in the effort, the means of capture, other benefits the resource might provide, and social obligations are also considered in subsistence strategies. Although some strategies are specialized and focus on one or a few resources, others are generalized or diffuse, using many different resources. Most strategies are characterized by flexibility within a range of resources defined as such by cultural standards. People develop strategies on the basis of daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual schedules and may alter the settlement size, location, and density in response to opportunities to acquire or manage resources at a given time and place using a particular technology. These resource choices may be interpreted from the identity of the animals used, the body size of animals with indeterminate growth, age classes and sex ratios, relative frequencies of animals, dietary contributions, and incremental growth structures. Of particular importance is supporting evidence from oxygen isotopes, which may provide information about the prevailing temperature when the animal died and support inferences about season of death. Season of death may, in turn, lead to information about the role of seasons in settlement patterns, exchange systems, and other activities.

Methods of disarticulating animals often correlate with distance of the acquisition point from the consumption point, domestication, storage options, exchange systems, social or ethnic affiliation, ritual uses, and site function. Exchange might be through reciprocity, redistribution, or markets, but it influences how much of an animal and what portions were available to and used by a given household. Exchanges over greater distances, especially trade in food stuffs, raw materials, and finished products, may be difficult to determine at the site of origin but obvious at the endpoint in the exchange system. Both trade and storage require processing the meat source for long-term survival and this also may be evident. Such interpretations are derived from the identity and relative frequencies of the animals used, skeletal portions, dietary contribution, and modifications. Site function (e. g., ritual center, military outpost, trading post, hunt camp, farmstead, urban center) and evidence for colonization and migrations can also be interpreted from such evidence.

Capture technology may be interpreted from the identity and body size of prey animals combined with knowledge of their preferred habits and habitats. The presence of animals which are active at night, live in deep waters, prefer solitary lives, have different strategies as young animals than they do as adults, raid gardens, or avoid traps all provide information about the techniques, schedules, and locations used by people to acquire them.

Although part of the diet can be observed in the zooarchaeological record, ethnographic studies show that plant rather than animal foods are generally more frequently consumed. It is plant foods that provide the water-soluble vitamins that need to be replenished daily. Therefore, a complete dietary study should include human, plant, and nonhuman animal remains. Human health is more typically studied by human biologists, but the information about human nutritional status, population size, age and sex ratios, trace elements, stable isotopes, and activity patterns is often critical to zooarchaeological interpretations. In turn, the identity and frequencies of the animals used (particularly if they might be ‘famine’ foods), unusual aspects of their size, age, and sex composition, skeletal portions used, dietary contributions, and some aspects of modifications augment interpretations of human health.

Animal Domestication and Animal Health

The impact of taming, management, and domestication on animals, human society, and the environment was and continues to be great (see Animal Domestication). The study of animal domestication focuses on defining the multiple origins of domestic animals, identifying their wild progenitors, the processes and stages of domestication, the spread of animal husbandry, and the cultural conditions that promoted these economic changes. In some cases, close affiliation has resulted in an exchange of diseases between domestic animals and people.

The characteristics of domestic animals which distinguish them from wild ones are reflected in their size, conformation, variability, social behavior, and the contexts within which they occur. Many of these features do not survive in the archaeological record, especially those associated with attributes of coat and behavior, although exceptions do occur. Instead, domestic animals are usually identified by virtue of being outside the known range of their wild progenitors, from their size and conformation, age and sex profiles, the relative frequencies of animals, the frequencies of skeletal portions, especially in the degree of skeletal completeness, and evidence of congenital abnormalities or diseases associated with domestication. Such evidence is augmented by DNA and molecular studies which provide important insights into their ancestry and affiliations (see DNA: Ancient; Modern, and Archaeology). Indirect evidence of animal domestication, such as corrals, harnesses, and artistic renderings, are also used. Tracing the routes over which early domestic animals spread from centers of domestication to other parts of the world also documents exchange routes, the spread of cultural influences, migration routes, and colonization.

Technical and Social Uses of Animals

Animals also provide materials which may be used for clothing, shelter, containers, tools, ornaments, and

Many other purposes. The feathers, wool, hair, fur, hide, horn, and shell used for these purposes usually do not survive archaeologically, but when they do they greatly expand our understanding of the technical and social uses of animals. Some animals, usually domestic ones, also provided dung used for plaster, fertilizer, and fuel. The presence of some animals, even scavengers and commensals, may provide indirect evidence for animal husbandry if they are associated with habitat alteration, grazing lands, or animal fodder.

Gender, social identity, social hierarchies, and ideology were undoubtedly major influences in the use of animals. High status in a ranked society may be signified by the use of rare or exotic animals, large animals, a diverse range of animals, or portions of the carcass that were more highly valued than were others. Animals serve as symbols of political authority, special skills, and sacred precincts or events. They also are totems of an age class, ritual society, or kin group. Many animals with symbolic meaning have a higher caloric cost or risk potential to capture, maintain, or process. Social distinctions may be reflected by the identity of the animals involved, their size, age, and sex, relative frequencies of animals, frequencies of skeletal portions, dietary contributions, and modifications associated with unusual butchering or food preparation techniques. Such interpretations are greatly assisted by indirect evidence such as figurines, murals, ancient texts, ethno-historic accounts, and ceramic motifs.

Similar evidence supports interpretations of cultural attitudes toward animals and food. Cultural attitudes include definitions of animals as preferred foods, nonfoods, famine foods, funeral foods, feasting foods, and sacrificial foods. Pets are a form of ritual relationship with animals, but many other sacred uses of animals are known. Sometimes animal remains are associated with communal eating or feasting or ritual sacrifices and offerings. Sacred uses of animals are indicated by the presence of animals not found in other contexts, relative frequencies of animals, skeletal completeness, modifications, and archaeological context. Such interpretations are strengthened by burial offerings, association with ceremonial or communal structures, and by textual or graphic evidence. Food taboos are worldwide and may serve functional purposes in the communities where they are found, but they are difficult to verify because food taboos may result in the absence of the taboo animal from the archaeological site. In fact, all symbolic or ideological interpretations are difficult to confirm because they are the product of cultures and belief systems which are different from our own.

Palaeoenvironments and Environmental Change

The study of palaeoenvironments and environmental change is an important aspect of zooarchaeological research (see Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, Methods). Humans are, in part, responsible for some environmental changes because their activities destroy, modify, and create habitats. People also overuse preferred resources and may force some animals to be extirpated from their range or to go extinct. In other cases, humans were not responsible for the changes but their responses to alterations in available resources are part of the environmental history of the site and the region. Evidence of palaeoenvironments and environmental change is primarily derived from the presence of indicator animals, relative frequencies of key animals, their size, growth habits, and age classes, incremental growth structures, and body part frequencies, all of which are also markers of changes in seasonal periodicity, site function, settlement patterns, capture technologies, and other cultural behaviors. Because these are archaeological materials, the product of human behavior, alternate cultural interpretations must be eliminated as an explanation before concluding that changes in animal remains are evidence for environmental change. Separating the evidence for cultural changes, especially those related to seasonal periodicity, from evidence for environmental change is particularly challenging.

As with all other interpretations, the accumulation of evidence pointing to the same conclusions strengthens characterizations of former conditions, whether the changes occurred during or as a consequence of occupation, and whether changes were brought about by environmental conditions beyond human control or by people as agents of change. It is particularly important that interpretations of environmental change be substantiated by evidence from palaeoethnobotany, geomorphology, and soil science. Geochemistry, particularly oxygen isotopes, add the possibility of palaeothermometer proxies to the tool kit.

As evidence for the impact of human behavior on the environment grows, zooarchaeologists are made aware that archaeological sites contain a record of Holocene environmental history that often is not available from any other source. Zooarchaeological data are used in wildlife conservation, heritage management, and policy decisions. These applications require that zooarchaeologists pay particular attention to methodological and interpretive flaws in order to avoid unintended political and economic consequences when their data are used by conservation advocates, resource managers, and other groups to support or refute policy decisions and political agenda. Such users are unfamiliar with the nuances of the field and easily may use zooarchaeological data inappropriately.