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	Formation Process Analysis	Taphonomic Analysis
Ämnesområde	Arkeologi	Arkeologi
Familj	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Ursprungsår	1987	1994
Upphovsperson	Michael B. Schiffer (behavioral archaeology)	Ivan Efremov (taphonomy concept); R. Lee Lyman (archaeological synthesis)
Typ	Inferential framework and analysis pipeline for record formation	Diagnostic pipeline for reconstructing the formation history of a bone assemblage
Ursprungskälla	Schiffer, M. B. (1987). Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN: 9780826309631	Lyman, R. L. (1994). Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521458405
Alias	Site Formation Analysis, C-transforms and N-transforms, Behavioral Archaeology Formation Theory, Archaeological Record Formation	Bone Taphonomy, Faunal Taphonomy, Bone Surface Modification Analysis, Assemblage Formation Analysis
Närliggande	2	2
Sammanfattning	Formation process analysis is the framework for identifying the cultural and natural processes that transform materials from their living, systemic context into the archaeological record we excavate. Developed by Michael Schiffer within behavioral archaeology and codified in his 1987 Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record, it insists that the archaeological record is not a fossilized snapshot of past life but the cumulative product of how things were discarded, lost, reused, and disturbed (cultural or C-transforms) and how they then decayed, moved, and mixed in the ground (natural or N-transforms). Because every deposit has been filtered and rearranged by these processes, sound inference about past behavior requires first reconstructing the formation history of the record and correcting for it. Formation process analysis is therefore foundational to interpretation, linking excavation, geoarchaeology, and taphonomy.	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.