Zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeology (also termed archaeozoology in European scholarship) is the scientific subdiscipline of archaeology that identifies, quantifies, and analyzes faunal remains—bones, teeth, horn cores, antlers, mollusk shells, fish otoliths, and eggshells—recovered from archaeological excavations in order to reconstruct past human–animal interactions, subsistence economies, paleoecological environments, and cultural practices. Originating in the 19th-century comparative osteology of Japetus Steenstrup (who analyzed Danish Mesolithic shell middens, køkkenmøddinger) and Ludwig Rütimeyer (who distinguished wild from domesticated cattle and pig bones in Swiss Neolithic lake dwellings in 1861), modern zooarchaeology integrates comparative vertebrate osteology, taphonomy (bone modification and survival mechanics), quantitative assemblage metrics (NISP, MNI, MNE, MAU), demographic kill-off curves, stable isotopes, and paleoproteomics (ZooMS).

Because archaeological bones rarely survive as complete articulated skeletons—having been dismembered, roasted, smashed with hammerstones for marrow, gnawed by dogs or hyenas, and compacted by sediment—zooarchaeologists use complementary quantitative units (formalized by Theodore White, Lewis Binford, Richard Klein, and R. Lee Lyman) to measure taxonomic and anatomical abundance:

1. NISP (Number of Identified Specimens): The total count of individual bone or tooth fragments assigned to a specific taxonomic genus or species. While NISP is additive across excavation strata and easy to compute, it is heavily biased by differential fragmentation (e.g., a single mammoth femur shattered into 80 splinters for marrow yields NISP = 80, whereas 10 whole rabbit femora yield NISP = 10) and by differences in the number of bones per species (pigs possess four metapodials per foot; horses possess only one).
2. MNI (Minimum Number of Individuals): Introduced to archaeology by Theodore White (1953), MNI determines the smallest number of individual animals necessary to account for all identified skeletal elements of a taxon by separating bones into left vs. right sides (and juvenile vs. adult epiphyseal fusion stages) and taking the count of the single most abundant sided element (e.g., 18 left astragali and 11 right astragali require at least MNI = 18 individuals).
3. MAU (Minimum Animal Units) and Utility Indices: Developed by Lewis Binford (Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology, 1978), MAU divides the Minimum Number of Elements (MNE) of a given body part by the number of times that bone occurs in one living animal (e.g., 2 femora, 12 thoracic vertebrae, 8 phalanges). Plotting %MAU against Binford's Modified General Utility Index (MGUI) (which ranks each body part by its weight of meat, marrow, and bone grease) tests whether hunters practiced the "Schlepp Effect" (Perkins & Daly, 1968): leaving heavy, low-utility axial bones (skulls, vertebrae, pelves) at distant kill sites while hauling high-utility meaty upper limbs (femora, humeri) back to the base camp.
4. Density-Mediated Attrition Control: notably, R. Lee Lyman and Curtis Marean demonstrated via photon absorptiometry that porous, low-density spongy (cancellous) bones—such as vertebral bodies and proximal humeri—are selectively destroyed by carnivore gnawing and soil leaching, whereas dense cortical mid-shaft diaphyses and teeth survive. Modern zooarchaeologists must therefore tally mid-shaft fragments (preserving nutrient foramina and muscle attachment landmarks) rather than relying solely on spongy articular ends.

In Lower and Middle Paleolithic archaeology (such as Olduvai Gorge FLK Zinj, ~1.84 Ma), a central question is whether early hominins (Homo habilis and Homo erectus) actively hunted and butchered prime-age ungulates or merely scavenged dry marrow bones left behind by saber-toothed cats (Megantereon, Dinofelis) and hyenas (Crocuta).

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 3D confocal profilometry (developed by Pat Shipman, Richard Potts, Henry Bunn, and Robert Blumenschine) distinguish hominin Bone Surface Modifications (BSM) from carnivore modifications based on cross-sectional geometry and anatomical placement:

• Stone-Tool Cut Marks: Exhibit a narrow, steep-sided V-shaped cross-section containing fine, parallel internal micro-striations along the groove floor (created by microscopic irregularities along the knapped flint or basalt edge), often accompanied by shoulder flaking and Hertzian percussion pits/notches where a cobble hammerstone struck the shaft to open the medullary marrow cavity.
• Carnivore Tooth Scores and Punctures: Produced when a felid or hyena drags its blunt conical premolar cusps across cortical bone, leaving a broad, rounded, flat-bottomed U-shaped cross-section lacking parallel internal micro-striations and frequently accompanied by opposing tooth punctures on the opposite face of the bone and acid-etched "crenulated" margins.
• Anatomical Sequence of Carcass Access: When cut marks occur in high frequencies on meat-bearing upper and intermediate limb mid-shafts (femur, humerus, tibia, radius)—regions stripped clean during the very first stage of felid feeding—and when microscopic overlaps show carnivore tooth marks cutting on top of earlier stone-tool cut marks, taphonomy proves that hominins gained primary, early access to fully fleshed carcasses via hunting or confrontational scavenging before secondary hyena ravaging.

During the Neolithic Revolution (~10,000–6,000 BCE), zooarchaeology tracks the transition from hunting wild ungulates (such as wild bezoar goats Capra aegagrus and mouflon Ovis orientalis in the Zagros and Taurus mountains) to managing domesticated herds (Capra hircus and Ovis aries) even before osteological size reduction or horn-core twisting evolves:

• Demographic Mortality (Kill-Off) Profiles: Constructed using two independent skeletal clocks—(1) the sequential age of epiphyseal fusion of long bones, and (2) the eruption and occlusal wear stages of mandibular deciduous premolars (dP₄) and permanent molars (M₁–M₃, standardized by Sebastian Payne, 1973).
• While Palaeolithic hunters targeting wild herds typically produce a prime-dominated mortality profile (targeting large, high-meat-yield adult males and females in their prime reproductive years, 3–6 years old), early Neolithic pastoralists at sites such as Ganj Dareh (Iran, ~8000 BCE; Zeder & Hesse, 2000) produce a diagnostic managed-herd harvest profile: selective culling of young males at 6 to 24 months of age (once they reach near-adult meat weight, since only a few breeding rams/bucks are needed to impregnate an entire flock) coupled with prolonged survival of adult females past 5–8 years of age to sustain herd reproduction.

In 1981, the British archaeologist Andrew Sherratt formulated the Secondary Products Revolution model, demonstrating that while early Neolithic farmers raised cattle, sheep, and goats primarily for primary products obtainable only once upon slaughtering the animal (meat, hide, bone, and sinew), Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age societies (~4500–3000 BCE, with dairy origins extending back into the 7th millennium BCE) reorganized herd demography to harvest renewable secondary products continuously from living animals:

1. Dairying (Milk, Yogurt, Cheese): Reflected in Payne's Milk Mortality Curve, where surplus male calves/lambs are culled very early in infancy (<3–6 months) to reserve the mother's milk yield for human consumption (corroborated by δ¹³C dairy lipid residues in perforated ceramic cheese-strainers and dental calculus β-lactoglobulin milk proteins).
2. Wool Production: Reflected in Payne's Wool Mortality Curve, where both female ewes and castrated males (wethers, which grow heavier, finer fleeces) are kept alive into late adulthood (>4–6 years).
3. Animal Traction (Plowing and Wheeled Carts) & Riding: Diagnosed osteologically on cattle metapodials, phalanges, and pelves by mechanical pathological lipping, exostoses, eburnation (bone-on-bone polishing), and asymmetrical distal condylar broadening caused by pulling ards (plows) and heavy four-wheeled wagons, and on horse lower second premolars (P₂) by bit wear beveling on the anterior enamel occlusal edge.

1. Payne, S. (1973). Kill-off patterns in sheep and goats: The mandibles from Aşvan Kale. Anatolian Studies, 23, 281–303. https://doi.org/10.2307/3642547
2. Binford, L. R. (1981). Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths. New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-21888-5
3. Sherratt, A. (1981). Plough and pastoralism: Aspects of the secondary products revolution. In I. Hodder, G. Isaac, & N. Hammond (Eds.), Pattern of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke (pp. 261–305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474472562-009
4. Zeder, M. A., & Hesse, B. (2000). The initial domestication of goats (Capra hircus) in the Zagros mountains 10,000 years ago. Science, 287(5461), 2254–2257. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5461.2254