What can animal bones tell archaeologists?

They reveal which animals people hunted, herded, or ate, how animals were butchered and used, and when and where domestication occurred.

What do NISP and MNI mean?

NISP is the number of identified specimens, a simple count of identifiable bones, while MNI is the minimum number of individuals needed to account for those bones; both estimate how common each animal was.

Zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains from archaeological sites, used to reconstruct past diet, hunting and herding, animal domestication, and human-animal relationships.

Definition

The analysis of animal remains recovered from archaeological contexts to reconstruct human use of animals, including subsistence, husbandry, domestication, and environmental conditions.

Scope

This topic covers the identification, quantification, and interpretation of faunal remains, chiefly bones and teeth but also shell and other hard parts. It addresses methods of taxonomic identification, ageing and sexing, quantification measures such as NISP and MNI, the analysis of butchery and bone modification, and inferences about subsistence, economy, and domestication.

Core questions

How are faunal remains identified and quantified?
What do animal bones reveal about diet, hunting, and herding?
How is animal domestication detected in the faunal record?
How are butchery and taphonomic modifications interpreted?

Key theories

Quantification of faunal assemblages: The use of measures such as number of identified specimens (NISP) and minimum number of individuals (MNI) to estimate the relative abundance of taxa while accounting for fragmentation.
Detecting domestication and husbandry: The inference of herding and domestication from changes in species proportions, body size, and age-at-death (kill-off) profiles that reflect human management of animals.

History

Zooarchaeology developed from naturalists' identification of bones into a systematic discipline in the mid-20th century, with growing rigor in quantification and taphonomy from the 1970s. Debates over hunting, scavenging, and domestication, and the integration of isotopic and ancient-DNA evidence, have made faunal analysis central to understanding subsistence and economy.

Debates

Quantification and interpreting abundance: Different quantification measures can yield different pictures of which animals mattered, prompting long-running debate over how to estimate dietary importance and account for taphonomic loss.

Key figures

Elizabeth J. Reitz
Elizabeth S. Wing
Terry O'Connor
R. Lee Lyman

Seminal works

reitzwing2008
obrien2000

Frequently asked questions

What can animal bones tell archaeologists?: They reveal which animals people hunted, herded, or ate, how animals were butchered and used, and when and where domestication occurred.
What do NISP and MNI mean?: NISP is the number of identified specimens, a simple count of identifiable bones, while MNI is the minimum number of individuals needed to account for those bones; both estimate how common each animal was.