Whatever else it may accomplish, the central and immediate goal of burial is the proper “laying to rest” or disposal of the body of a former member of the society. But there have been widely varying ideas on what exactly constitutes “proper” treatment, actual practice being influenced by beliefs concerning death, and any of the ways a person had been of significance to others. Another obvious yet important observation is that of variation within the practice of one society. Differential treatment among contemporaries means not all mortuary traits can be fully explained apart from significant differences among people.

It has often been observed in both ethnographies and synthetic works that treatment in death is closely related to social position in life (Keswani 1989); mortuary practice is heavily influenced by social organization. It is also influenced by ideology, particularly the meaning and significance of death both for the one who died and for those who are left. It is not clear to what extent each of these factors influences burial custom, but probably very little of actual practice is affected by one and not the other. Further, many aspects of burial practice will be overtly symbolic, over and above the sense in which all products of human activity embody meaning. Using this to learn about the society, for example to understand religious beliefs, or the place of status within a world view, may require unlocking the meaning of mortuary symbolism, a difficult if potentially rewarding study.

From archaeology's beginnings, indeed from well before the study of antiquities attained the rigor implied by the term, artifacts have been central to our understanding of the prehistoric past. Using mobile products of human activity to infer status is also a time-honored practice. One basic approach attempts to infer inequality from the presence (and quantity when possible), of certain items in the assemblage, a line of reasoning that depends on our ability to recognize status, elite, or wealth items apart from a distributional context. Another basic approach makes use of the unequal distribution of artifacts in such contexts as burials, hoards, residences, and regions. This chapter covers two additional topics because they relate more to artifacts than burials or architecture: iconography and the inference of stratification. Further approaches to distinguishing stratified from non-stratified ranking are elaborated in the next chapter.

Status markers: elite goods and sumptuary items

Is it possible to show that something was a status item apart from distributional context, and so infer ranking from its presence alone? Hodder is certainly correct in saying that “to look at objects by themselves is really not archaeology at all,” that material objects alone are mute and it is context that provides clues to their meaning (1991b:4). But while Hodder has in mind the traditional view of an artifact's context – the spatial associations of careful excavation – I suggest that knowledge of how items are used among other people constitutes an alternative context appropriate for drawing inferences from artifacts.

The intent of social archaeology is to understand a former way of life in the same terms we use to study modern society. I do not believe this is at odds with efforts to understand the past “on its own terms,” but certainly it is different. Whether or not any current approach really tells us what the participants would have said about themselves, social archaeology does not even try. Yet this does not exclude us from saying something real and significant about life in the past, for in describing former societies in terms roughly comparable to a social anthropologist's understanding of living societies, it provides a basis for answering questions about the nature and history of social life. Its method is the application of social theory to the findings of excavation, which is a dangerous business, for if we are not careful we can easily “read into” the data what is not there. Hopefully, we know better than to expect “pure objectivity,” but neither have I seen any compelling argument for the contrary assertion, that the use (imposition) of Western social theory (our models of society) inevitably negates the past, subsuming it as a self-serving extension of the present.

A model is a representation to help us visualize something we either cannot observe directly, or wish to see from a different angle. Many central concepts of anthropology – society, culture, status – are models in this sense.

Introduction

The manner in which animal carcasses and skeletal elements come apart or are taken apart is an important taphonomic variable. Humans butcher animals and that behavior often, but not always, variously modifies bones. In fact, it might be argued that butchering animal carcasses is the single greatest taphonomic (and biostratinomic) factor in the formation of humanly created fossil assemblages. Humans exploit animals for a variety of reasons, but basically to extract resources, whether energy (food) or materials for tools or clothing. During that exploitation, skeletons are disarticulated and bones are broken and variously modified. But as we have seen in previous chapters (especially Chapter 6), non-human taphonomic processes can result in the disarticulation of skeletons and fragmentation of bones. In this chapter, I review these processes, focusing on the modification of skeletal elements for which hominids in particular are responsible.

Butchering

The term butchering tends to hold different connotations for different analysts. Perhaps that is because it has seldom been explicitly defined.

Introduction

In preceding chapters I review various analytic techniques for assessing the taphonomic history of vertebrate faunal remains. That discussion focuses on mammalian remains because that taxonomic group has received the most attention in the literature. But mammals are not the only vertebrates with which zooarchaeologists deal. Birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some fish are also vertebrates. Many of the analytic techniques developed for mammalian remains are also applicable to these other vertebrate taxa. To illustrate this, in this chapter I review, with less attention to detail and fewer examples than in previous chapters, much of the literature on non-mammalian vertebrate taphonomy. The reader who has ingested and digested (keeping this somewhat taphonomic) the content of previous chapters will see many parallels among variables studied by taphonomists whatever the taxonomic subject. These include skeletal completeness, natural disarticulation sequences, inherent properties of skeletal elements such as size, shape, and structural density, and various kinds of modifications to bones.

This chapter is not meant to imply that non-mammalian vertebrates are less important taphonomically than mammalian remains. For example, it may prove very interesting to compare the taphonomic histories for each vertebrate category in assemblages rich in fish, birds, and mammals. I am unaware of any such comparative study, but this form of comparative analysis may prove enlightening beyond the details of, say, small mammal versus large mammal taphonomy.

Introduction

Taphonomy is the science of the laws of embedding or burial. More completely, it is the study of the transition, in all details, of organics from the biosphere into the lithosphere or geological record. These definitions were given by the Russian paleontologist I. A. Efremov (1940) who coined the term from the Greek words taphos (burial) and nomos (laws). Taphonomy is, however, important not only to paleontologists, but to archaeologists, especially zooarchaeologists and paleoethnobotanists, who study the organic remains making up part of the archaeological record. That importance has come to be widely recognized in the past 20 or 30 years. Taphonomy is now seen as important because it is often taken to connote that the zooarchaeological and ethnobotanical records are biased if some non-human-related processes have affected the condition or frequencies of biological remains. While that perception is often correct, I will show that this perception is frequently incorrect.

The reason archaeologists should be concerned with taphonomy is that it involves the formation of what is often a major part of the archaeological record.

Introduction

Sedimentary petrologists define diagenesis as the “alteration of sediments after deposition” (Retallack 1990:129). It is, however, sometimes taken to mean only “alteration after burial” (Retallack 1990:129). Throughout this volume I take diagenesis to have the latter meaning for vertebrate faunal remains. The importance of this distinction resides in the many post-depositional and preburial taphonomic processes that can modify vertebrate remains, along with modifications resulting from the burial process itself.

Once animal remains have been buried, a number of taphonomic processes can act on them. Some of the more familiar ones are mineralization and deformation. In this chapter, these and other diagenetic processes are discussed. Diagenesis of skeletal tissues is affected by intrinsic factors of the tissue specimen, such as its size, porosity, chemical and molecular structure, and by extrinsic factors such as sediment pH, water and temperature regimes, and bacterial action (Von Endt and Ortner 1984). Intrinsic factors such as hydrolysis of collagen by bone water may exacerbate or buffer extrinsic factors. The post-burial history of animal remains involves their preservation as fossils (e.g., Schopf 1975), and their chemical and mechanical alteration or destruction.

Introduction

I presume the reader possesses some basic knowledge of archaeological, paleontological, biological, ecological, and anatomical principles and concepts, but it is important to review some basics of vertebrate skeletal anatomy. In this chapter I present a general discussion of what appear to be taphonomically significant properties of bones, teeth, and related materials. Both microscopic and macroscopic features are reviewed, as well as the principles of ontogeny and allometry. While only superficially covered here, these topics all warrant careful consideration in many taphonomic analyses, and the serious student will find the references cited a good place to start learning more about them.

I also consider some basic issues regarding the quantification of vertebrate remains. In this chapter I review the quantitative units commonly used in vertebrate taphonomy; additional details are provided in other chapters. As with the structure of vertebrate skeletons and skeletal tissues, an extensive literature concerning the quantification of vertebrate remains exists, and the interested reader is encouraged to inspect that literature.

Ontogeny and allometry

Ontogeny and allometry are two interrelated phenomena that often play an influential role in controlling the kind of skeletal tissue upon which taphonomic processes might operate and upon the possible effects of those processes. Ontogeny involves the growth and development of an organism from its conception to its death (Figure 4.1).