Talk:Archaeozoology

Here is some useful content from the English Zooarchaeology page, though the page is generally not so good: Uses

Zooarchaeology is primarily used to answer several questions.[3] These are:

   What was the diet like, and in what ways were the animals used for food?[3]
   Which were the animals that were eaten, in what amounts, and with what other foods?[3]
   Who were the ones to obtain the food, and did the availability of that food depend on age or gender?[3]
   How was culture, such as technologies and behavior, influenced by and associated with diet?[3]
   What purposes, other than food, were animals used for?[3]

Zooarchaeology can also tell us what the environment might have been like in order for the different animals to have survived.[3]

In addition to helping us understand the past, zooarchaeology can also help us to improve the present and the future.[4] Studying how people dealt with animals, and its effects can help us avoid many potential ecological problems.[4] This specifically includes problems involving wildlife management.[4] For example, one of the questions that wildlife preservationists ask is whether they should keep animals facing extinction in several smaller areas, or in one larger area.[4] Based on zooarchaeological evidence, they found that animals that are split up into several smaller areas are more likely to go extinct.[4] Techniques

One of the techniques that zooarchaeologists use is close attention to taphonomy.[2] This includes studying how items are buried and deposited at the site in question, what the conditions are that aid in the preservation of these items, and how these items get destroyed.[2] Then they interpret that information.[2]

Another technique that zooarchaeologists use is lab analysis.[2] This analysis can include comparing the skeletons found on site with already identified animal skeletons.[2] This not only helps to identify what the animal is, but also whether the animal was domesticated or not.[2]

Yet another technique that zooarchaeologists use is quantification.[2] They make interpretations based on the number and size of the bones.[2] These interpretations include how important different animals might have been to the diet.[2]

The German Archaeozoologie article is better than the Wik/en Z-A, but also seriously flawed. Kdammers (talk) 06:19, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Paleontology[change source]

Paleontology is often confused with archaeology. Should we mention paleontology in this article on this animal-related subfield of archaeology to forestall such confusion?Kdammers (talk) 20:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]