Compare methods

	Taphonomic Analysis	Number of Identified Specimens (NISP)	Zooarchaeological Quantification
Field	Archaeology	Archaeology	Archaeology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1994	2008	2008
Originator	Ivan Efremov (taphonomy concept); R. Lee Lyman (archaeological synthesis)	Standard zooarchaeological practice; statistical properties formalized by Donald Grayson and R. Lee Lyman	Elizabeth Reitz & Elizabeth Wing (synthesis); R. Lee Lyman (critical formalization)
Type	Diagnostic pipeline for reconstructing the formation history of a bone assemblage	Primary observational tally of identified bone specimens per taxon	Suite of quantitative measures of taxonomic and skeletal-part abundance in faunal assemblages
Seminal source	Lyman, R. L. (1994). Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521458405	Reitz, E. J., & Wing, E. S. (2008). Zooarchaeology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521673938	Reitz, E. J., & Wing, E. S. (2008). Zooarchaeology (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521673938
Aliases	Bone Taphonomy, Faunal Taphonomy, Bone Surface Modification Analysis, Assemblage Formation Analysis	NISP, Identified Specimen Count, Faunal Fragment Count, Specimen Tally	Faunal Quantification, Measures of Taxonomic Abundance, Faunal Abundance Estimation, Bone Quantification
Related	2	2	3
Summary	Taphonomic analysis is the study of everything that happens to animal remains between the death of an organism and the moment an archaeologist records its bones, and of how those processes shaped the assemblage we recover. Coined by the paleontologist Ivan Efremov as the 'laws of burial,' taphonomy became a rigorous archaeological method through R. Lee Lyman's Vertebrate Taphonomy, which systematized the reading of bone surfaces, weathering, breakage, and skeletal-part survival. The goal is twofold: to identify which agents — humans, carnivores, water, weathering — accumulated and modified the bones, and to measure how much of the original assemblage was destroyed by density-mediated attrition. Because every quantitative faunal measure depends on these formation processes, taphonomic analysis is the indispensable prelude to interpreting subsistence and behavior from animal bone.	The number of identified specimens, universally abbreviated NISP, is the most basic quantitative measure in zooarchaeology: a simple count of every bone or bone fragment that an analyst can identify to a taxon. It is the first number computed for almost any faunal assemblage because it is fast, transparent, additive across deposits, and reproducible. Yet, as Reitz and Wing emphasize and Lyman dissects in detail, NISP is an observation count rather than an animal count, and it is distorted by fragmentation, by recovery technique, and by the fact that fragments of a single bone are not independent of one another. Understanding precisely what NISP does and does not measure is the foundation on which all other faunal abundance estimates rest.	Zooarchaeological quantification is the set of methods used to convert a pile of identified animal bones into estimates of how abundant each taxon and each body part was in a faunal assemblage. No single number does the job: the discipline relies on a family of complementary measures — the number of identified specimens (NISP), the minimum number of individuals (MNI), the minimum number of skeletal elements (MNE), the minimum animal units (MAU), and biomass estimates from allometric regression. Each captures a different facet of abundance and carries its own biases, so analysts compute several and interpret them against one another. The synthesis by Reitz and Wing codifies these measures for working zooarchaeologists, while Lyman's taphonomic treatment exposes how fragmentation, recovery, and density-mediated attrition distort every one of them.