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Ancient Crafts and Gross Stuff: Experimental Zooarchaeology - Ep 60
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Join us as we delve into experimental archaeology through the lenses of zooarchaeology. How can replicating objects or activities from the archaeological record help us understand animal exploitation in the past? Tune in to find out more!
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/60
Links and Sources
- The Auerrind Project
- Bradfield, J. (2019). Fishing with gorges: Testing a functional hypothesis. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 24, 593-607.
- Fairnell, Eva H. (2008) 101 ways to skin a fur-bearing animal: the implications for zooarchaeological interpretation. Experiencing Archaeology by Experiment, 47-60.
- Gilson, S.P. et al. (2021) Shark teeth used as tools: An experimental archaeology study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 35, 102733.
- Lev, M. A., et al. (2020). Squamate bone taphonomy: A new experimental framework and its application to the Natufian zooarchaeological record. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 9373.
- Mansrud, A., & Kutschera, M. (2020). Roe Deer as Raw Material for Middle Mesolithic Fishhooks? An Experimental Approach to the Manufacture of Small Bone Fishhooks. EXARC Journal, 3.
- More sources at https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/60
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
Affiliates
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Transcript
Introduction to Experimental Zooarchaeology
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm your host, Alex Fitzpatrick, and with me as always, si bon apalanca. And yeah, I mean, it's basically what the title says. We are going to talk about experimental zoo archaeology. And more importantly, it's another case study heavy episode, folks. So all in all,
00:00:47
Speaker
greater already. Every segment is third segment. Just as God intended, truly.
00:00:58
Speaker
But experimental zoarchaeology, or even experimental archaeology in general, I feel like something we've kind of touched upon every so often in episodes. Most likely, because I mean, a lot of the case studies in particular, sometimes focus on how certain hypotheses have been proven through experimental means.
00:01:20
Speaker
So yeah, we've definitely kind of touched upon it a bit, but just as a bit of a quick kind of debrief on what we are talking about in case you're a new listener and this is your first one, in which case hello and sorry for starting you off like this.
Recreating Tools and Cooking Methods
00:01:36
Speaker
But experimental archaeology in general is basically contemporary experiments that try to replicate or recreate either activities or objects or even events in some cases from the archaeological record to better understand how, for example, with objects, how they were used, or however they ended up the way they do when we find them, when we actually
00:02:02
Speaker
excavate them. So some examples can include, you know, recreating tools and weapons, which is probably the most common form of experimental archaeology, like a flint knapping and things like that. Trying certain methods of cooking or crafting, which we'll obviously get into a bit more later on in this episode, or even recreating structures or replicating rights, which is, I think, particularly popular, at least recreating structures here in the UK.
00:02:30
Speaker
Oh, no, absolutely. I think you can think of a few places that you can visit in Britain where you can see sort of replicas of archaeological structures.
Understanding Animal Exploitation Through Bones
00:02:38
Speaker
It's more specific to zoo archaeology, however, so it's, well, pretty much the same thing, except that, of course, animal bones are involved. So it specifically looks at how to replicate or recreate the exploitation of animals in the past.
00:02:52
Speaker
So that way you gain an understanding of how your zookeological assemblage has come into being. That could be both in the way the animals were kept and exploited, but also what the animals may have looked like in the past.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah. So there's, especially with physical archaeology, where we're dealing with once living creatures, loads of elements in place when it comes to how they were used, how they died, how they decomposed and were impacted by taphonomy. So there's loads of reasons why we should be doing experimental archaeology. And also it's very interesting and cool. And fun.
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's fun, depending on what you do. It's pretty fun, if not a bit gross and smelly because it's archaeology. Anyway.
00:03:44
Speaker
So let's look at animal use to start off with.
Case Studies: Tools and Hunting Techniques
00:03:50
Speaker
And perhaps one pretty easy first kind of example of experimental zookeology is hunting. Obviously, like one of our first relationships perhaps between human and animal species is that of prey predator. Maybe not the first, but one of the earlier ones, I guess.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, look at that fluffy animal. I'm going to eat that. Yeah. So the first case study that we have in this, again, all case study episode is shark teeth used as weapons. So now shark teeth, commonly found in archaeological contexts, well, not so much in Britain, but around the world, are often interpreted as natural remains or used as ornaments. But tools, it's not necessarily the first sort of thing that comes to mind.
00:04:37
Speaker
Now, various shark species remains from Rio de Mayo, Brazil have been analysed. The methods include use-wear analysis where experimental replicas are compared to archaeological artefacts. Now, the tool designs were replicated based on both ethnographic and archaeological data.
00:04:57
Speaker
Thus, they were able to recreate various tools such as knives, pierces and arrowheads, which were then tested, and that's the gross bit, on animals such as pigs, fish and deer. And with the results, a database was created for further use, which could then be implemented to understand how to best identify various uses of shark teeth in the archaeological context.
00:05:23
Speaker
essentially by comparing the marks that the shark teeth would leave on the remains of these species. I apologize that for my coffee machine turning itself off. No sharks were harmed in the making of that coffee. And it's still going. Yeah, I mean, it's a good example of kind of one of the reasons why you'd want to do experimental archaeology or zoo archaeology, which is, you know,
00:05:46
Speaker
One of the things about archaeology is it's not nice and neat in any sense of the way we use that phrase. So you never really have a perfect or good sample set to kind of compare things with. So one great thing is to kind of try and replicate
00:06:04
Speaker
objects or artifacts or whatever and you know be able to see how it impacts other objects like in this case you know stabbing and different kinds of animal flesh and being able to kind of see how we can use that data to compare it to archaeological samples.
00:06:23
Speaker
Speaking of, we're going to continue with the fishy type of theme, unfortunately, I guess, for me. We're talking about bone gorges. So a bone gorge is a type of hook that
00:06:38
Speaker
It's not really a hook, though. It's like a long cylinder of bone, and then both ends are sharpened. So these are found in sites on the western coast of South Africa, but are not entirely confirmed to be for fishing, despite what you may think. And some other theories are they might have been used to catch birds or even to pry shellfish from rocks.
00:07:03
Speaker
So archaeologists have done experiments where they've recreated bone gorges using impala. Thank you. Metapodios, and strung them with threads of antelope hair, leather, sinew, and other kind of plant materials.
00:07:22
Speaker
So the fishing experiments they did with these showed a success rate of about 37%, although the failures may have been due to kind of animal-based threads, which were not as good as plant fiber and would snap or loosen when they caught a fish.
00:07:39
Speaker
So again, a really good example of why you'd want to kind of test these theories out because ultimately we are kind of dealing with the aftermath of things and it can be really difficult to figure out, you know, what these things are being used for. So you kind of have to try it out in some cases.
Butser Ancient Farm and Livestock Domestication
00:07:56
Speaker
salute me and i mean like it's going to be a lot of trial and error cuz as scientific as you can be about this of course there's lots of caveats that you need to bear in mind. One thing like coming to mind will be the skill of the person that's performing the act say for example you know like the person that's recreating experiment by using say going back to the shark teeth using the shark teeth to sort of.
00:08:19
Speaker
or like remove meat from a carcass may be more or more likely less skilled than someone would have used them, you know, with that being their livelihood. Yeah. And I think a lot of these experiments that we'll talk about do kind of consider that in the way they interpret the data that they end up with. Because yeah, it's ultimately a not entirely perfect experiment, but you know, it's as perfect as we can get in the circumstances.
00:08:46
Speaker
No, but it's also like it's like an incredibly useful discipline. So it's just one of those things like that there might be biases there as there is in everything and everything that pertains archaeology. So long as you recognize that fact. Speaking of happy days, I feel like you should probably take the next example. Well, because I guess, yeah, a happy day it was. Well,
00:09:09
Speaker
We'll wind back a bit. So another thing that for which experimental zoo archaeology is used is sort of to recreate the process of domestication and the livestock that would have been kept by past populations. So one of the case studies we have here is actually a place more than you think, called Butzer Ancient Farm, which I'm sure we've mentioned several times, especially during an earlier episode, which is well, it's just that it's an experimental archaeology farm.
00:09:39
Speaker
just located in Charlton in the south of England and was created in 1972 to test archaeological theories relating to Iron Age Britain at first. It now includes Roman period work, including a Roman villa, which my dog hates, by the way.
00:09:56
Speaker
because they've got the period-accurate statues and the bright colors, and she hates them, which I get it, those statues were super tacky. But they also now have Saxon period stuff as well, including a Saxon haul. Going all the way back to Happy Day, because one of the events that Butzer Ancient Farm organised was the one and only time that Alex and myself met IRL.
00:10:21
Speaker
And there isn't even a photo to prove it. Yeah, we did not take any, any photos. I have photo myself there. No photos of us together. It's to be fair, Smona is incredibly elusive. Yeah. So they have a lot of reconstructions of archaeological buildings. These include sort of the prehistoric, they have some earlier prehistoric structures as well now, I believe. I forget.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, there was one that they had a fundraiser for. Oh, yeah. Of course, Iron Age brownhouses, they also have some grain storages cause the villa construction, the Saxon Hall, and they also like, tried to recreate prehistoric farming and like growing sort of prehistoric variety or ancient varieties of crop.
00:11:09
Speaker
Lots of ancient farm also keeps ancient breeds of livestock, which, while I guess modern in date, are sort of the closest to what breeds in the Iron Age and Roman period would have looked like. In the case of sheep, that includes sowing, which I believe they don't keep anymore because they're too good an escape artist and they just keep
00:11:31
Speaker
running away everywhere. Manx Lawton and Shetland Sheep, they have old English goats and pigs which have been sort of crossbred between Walbore and Tamworth pigs. Again, sort of like trying to reconstruct, so to speak, not necessarily exactly what livestock would have looked like in those time periods, but probably close ass.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also kind of a great example of why experimental archaeology in general is quite a popular thing to do. It's a very important thing to do because it does help us potentially fill in some of the gaps in knowledge. But it's also like a great kind of outreach type of activity. I mean, Butzer Farm is a
00:12:15
Speaker
really good example of that in that it is a tourist kind of stop as well as a great source of research and kind of education as well. But it's just it's a nice way to kind of get people really involved in archaeology and I think it particularly works for people who are not archaeologists themselves because I think there's sometimes a disconnect talking about the past because it is ultimately a very little time ago.
00:12:43
Speaker
But doing things like this and reconstructive work and, you know, reenactment work is really interesting and useful for that kind of stuff.
Rewilding and Ancient Breeds
00:12:53
Speaker
Yes, I think like, especially it's, as you said, like much more tangible evidence, because like, say if you're not don't already have a predisposition towards history and archeology is something you don't necessarily not care about, but that's never really interested you.
00:13:08
Speaker
actually seeing it as sort of having that they do walk in herds moment, you know, sparks some more of an interest. Yeah. And to be honest, as an archaeologist, archaeology can be really boring a lot of the time. So like, it was fun to go when we went because I was like, midway through my PhD, and was at that kind of like, exhaustion point of doing the lit review. And it was like, kind of,
00:13:35
Speaker
rejuvenating to go and see Iron Age British kind of reconstructions and reenactments in some sense as well, because otherwise I'd been bogged down in like, you know, hundreds of papers. And it was just really
00:13:51
Speaker
Sorry, it was really boring. And also watching a massive wicker man being set off. Oh, that was great. Oh, cool. I mean, that should be that's my kind of zoo archaeology and archaeology. It was burned stuff. Cool. It's great. And the archaeology of setting things on fire. I mean, I feel like I missed my calling. I could do that really well. I don't need PhD for that. I can do that.
00:14:17
Speaker
I do that all the time without doing archaeology. It's fine. There you go. This is the episode where Alex found her calling. Gonna set stuff on fire. But scientifically. So our last case study for this segment is a bit different and potentially not really an example of experiment. I mean, it's experimental.
00:14:43
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, so it's the Aorind project. Apologies, I didn't look up the pronunciation that's on me. My German is not as good as I'd like it to be.
00:14:54
Speaker
But yes, so this is a rewilding project in southwest Germany using backreading to attempt to create a modern day equivalent of an OROC based on both genetics and phenotype. So like, not only will it be genetically similar based on DNA markers, but it will also look like an OROC.
00:15:17
Speaker
It started in 2013, and it combines modern day breeding methods with archaeological data, comparing modern DNA of the current herd that's being part of the project to a DNA or ancient DNA from Auroch remains from the Upper Rhine Valley. So they're actually at their third generation of cattle.
00:15:40
Speaker
And it's mixed from several species, the saia goisa, which helps kind of give them the proper coloring that they're looking for. The watusi, the Hungarian steppe cattle, the marin mana, and the chianina.
00:15:59
Speaker
I don't know. I was going to say, I do vaguely remember that too, the word Italian. So thank you for that. But the cianina helps with the horn size. So it's a bit mixing and matching to see what works best.
00:16:19
Speaker
Another secondary project they're doing is to examine the impact of cattle on the biodiversity of the grazing environment that they're working with, which I believe they've currently suggest, the current results suggest that it actually is improving with this new, because it's not really an old species they're creating, it's more of a new species, it's like an old species. It's very complicated, I feel like. But I think it's an interesting adjacent
00:16:49
Speaker
to experimental archaeology. I don't
Reconstructing Ancient Recipes
00:16:52
Speaker
know what you call that. I mean, it's rewilding, but like, it's very interesting. But I'm not sure either. If any of your listeners know, please send us an email. Yeah, because you're using the past to create something for the brain hurts now. Oh, gosh. Anyway, like, yeah, I'm gonna take a break and I'm
00:17:16
Speaker
It's like future archaeology? I don't know. No. Actually, I've got something for you. So I think this is the most powerful part of archaeology is that we investigate the past through the present for the future.
00:17:32
Speaker
And it's really it is. And in some ways, what we are creating in the present becomes the past for the future. So I like to think of it like we're sending stuff into the future, you know, like we're pushing it out there. Like we are literally manifesting the archaeological record of the future. And I think that's night. Whoa.
00:18:03
Speaker
Does that apply to me putting my leftovers in the bin? So I'm creating the future archaeological record? Yes, a middens a midden. A middens a midden. About a t shirt, a middens a midden. On that note, we are talking about experimental zoo archaeology, which is basically, you know,
00:18:27
Speaker
doing fun things to see if we can understand the past a bit better. And this is probably the part of experimental zerk algae I'm most excited about because, well, I like food. I'm a chubby little bunny and I like food. There's nothing you can do about that. It's cooking, baby.
00:18:50
Speaker
Don't think we've asked in a while. I do eat now. I've not. Yes, I've fallen and changed as a person. I turned 30 and I'm an adult now. And I eat dinner before I record my podcasts. So what a character arc.
00:19:09
Speaker
five years we've been doing this, you started to see like how to develop. I mean, you know, you're still the youngest here. Yeah, this is true. I am. I'm the baby. It's dinosaurs, dinosaurs show, but the youth out there who don't.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I got it. I got it. It's really funny how this just seems to be like, this is the theme. Like, archeologists do not do dinosaurs, but I feel like we're all kind of like, we've got our fingers in some dinosaur pies. You know what I mean? I wonder if a dinosaur pie would be good. Anyway. Oh. Yeah, sorry. Let's not go down that road. I mean, I had crocodile once in a burger, and I wonder if that's like similar.
00:19:53
Speaker
Isn't that supposed to taste like fishy chicken? Everything tastes like chicken. That's what I think frog tastes like. So, yeah, probably.
00:20:01
Speaker
No, maybe. Sorry, with all this talk. Yeah, well, we can actually look at cooking in two different ways when we come to kind of experimentals or archaeology. We have, again, the stuff that I'm excited about, which is eating food, but also, you know, reconstructing the recipes themselves. There is a plethora of ancient and otherwise old recipes that we have that is available for us to kind of reconstruct through
00:20:31
Speaker
remaining literary sources and also kind of just the general modes of processing and preparation and preservation. You must be very keen to do the first case study. Whilst I was going to lead into it saying that that might be one recipe that you would not be keen on tasting, because it just sounds gross, but is a Roman garum.
00:20:55
Speaker
But the uninitiated, it's a Roman fish sauce made from fermenting fish with salt, herbs and spices. I am sorry, that sounds disgusting. I mean, you know, I'm partially Norwegian and fermented fish is like kind of our bag. And I have to eat a fermented fish every year for New Year's. So it's not that bad to say.
00:21:21
Speaker
Oh, no, we do that as well. We have a type of fermented cod, which just by the smell alone, I've always refused to try. But yeah, we have a type with Spockfish. So yeah, it's a type of fermented cod. Just smell alone. Yeah. A hard pass for me. I prefer my sort of
00:21:41
Speaker
Modern, more Roman, is an Italian fish sauce of just your olive oil, lemon juice, some garlic and oregano parsley. Lovely. Goes down a treat. But Garum, in spite of the Romans having a habit of writing everything down, even stuff that really, please, why?
00:21:59
Speaker
The exact preparation details of garum were not actually well known. Some texts provide a general idea of the recipe however, so that was used by researchers at the Universities of Khadith and Syria who extracted the chemical composition of archaeological garum remains including fatty acids and mineral profiles.
00:22:21
Speaker
From that information, the litter we had from the written record, they worked backwards to attempt to reconstruct awful fishy sauce. And they were able to actually work out the percentages. So you'd have an 80% fish base, anchovies in this case, 15% of salt to 5% of spices, and they would all get layered and macerated before being filtered using linen. I don't know, I think that sounds good, to be honest.
00:22:51
Speaker
We'll have to do a bonus episode where Alex reacts live eating garum. Simona takes Alex to the hospital live.
00:23:01
Speaker
Anyway, to kind of continue the fish theme that I really didn't think I was going to do in this episode, but apparently it's just all fish all the time, sadly for me again.
Understanding Butchery and Preservation
00:23:12
Speaker
Talking about cooking fish on Holocene herbs. So burnt fish assemblages have been found on Richardson Island, an early Holocene site in Haida Gwaii in Canada.
00:23:24
Speaker
which was derived from several herfs that were recovered. It was a really interesting assemblage. There's a very diverse fish species composition with most of the bone coming from a rockfish. Sebastian species.
00:23:40
Speaker
But they were smaller than would be expected. So the archaeologists did some experiments in burning rockfish bone to examine high temperature effect on reducing bone size and short term use of single
00:23:56
Speaker
slash multiple-use hearths to examine the impact on fishbone quantification. So results indicated that burning was actually not enough to account for the size difference as observed in these archaeological remains. And short-term use of these hearths results in more fragmented and differential preservation across fish species and bone elements. So it would ultimately make identification
00:24:22
Speaker
application process is difficult, especially for kind of figuring out the number of individual species and the minimum number of individuals. And to be honest, fishbone's annoying to work with anyway. I didn't have to do an experiment to tell you that. So because burnt fishbone, that just sounds like a headache. And burnt fishbone is a headache enough as it is. Yes, as my master's research showed me, taphonomy and fishbones are the worst.
00:24:52
Speaker
Just, just, no. Bad times all around.
00:24:57
Speaker
But moving to something a bit bigger than fish, not fishy, quite a lot bigger, a bit more beefy, but gamey, red deer, we'll be looking at recreating processes for red deer butchery. So this was an experimental butchery project undertaken by French researchers as part of De Tracidism, which is a collective project that has
00:25:24
Speaker
for which the butchering of 18 half carcasses of red deer was undertaken using middle Paleolithic stone tools, which to fair sounds like both fun and a bad time. Of course they had a strict protocol in place to ensure that the butcher activities were recorded
00:25:44
Speaker
carefully, so in a scientific way for identification purposes. And then they use the results to update Binford's original coding system for butchery activities, and provided further information on less understood activities such as tendon extraction and skinning. Because believe it or not, there are multiple ways you can skin a deer.
00:26:05
Speaker
And boy, do I wish I found this paper before I submitted my PhD. Would've saved me a lot of trouble trying to update Binford's coding system myself. Yeah, anyway. Sif is will.
00:26:23
Speaker
move beyond that, and we'll head to 17th century meat preservation. So a little bit different than a lot of what we've just been talking about, not really the processes themselves, but kind of, you know, how do we keep the remains good for a while? So Bay salts, aka solar salt, now known as gray sea salt, that is a lot to talk about.
00:26:51
Speaker
which was basically salts that was evaporated from unfiltered salt water via the sun, hence the name solar salt, but it's bay salt, but it's crazy. Anyway, so it was identified in various pre-industrial recipes, specifically for beep preservation. There's also been other salt types that have been identified, but bay salt seemed to be the most used. So experimental zoology was done, I guess, experimental cooking, maybe.
00:27:20
Speaker
was done using salted beef and pork and basically they recreated historic recipes and they used different salt types. So bay salt they used obviously but also rock salt and sea salt and then they tested each of these slabs of meat for microbiological and mineral data. So the results actually showed that the bacteria in bay salt produced nitrite in meats which resulted in the
00:27:50
Speaker
better ability for meat to be cured and also produced the ideal coloration for preserved meats. So like a really red coloring, which has actually been observed since the late Roman period. So there were more than one salt. I didn't. I'm smart. Yeah. One thing that I would love, like if it mentioned is how many people tried the preserved meat and ended up in hospital.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, there was India like fatalities counter.
00:28:22
Speaker
Because it's just one of those things we're preserving. It is absolutely possible, and we still do it extensively. But especially with pork, if you get your nitrate and nitrite ratios slightly off and it's slightly damp, you're having a bad time. Yeah, so there's a bit of risk, I guess, with some of these experiments of archaeological projects in cooking, which is why maybe we'll head to
00:28:48
Speaker
another kind of use of animals, particularly animal remains, and talk a bit about crafting and how we look at it zoarchologically through experiments.
00:28:59
Speaker
So our first gross case study is, I guess, the type and placements of cut marks to obtain fur. Of course, there have been several experiments that have been carried out over the years to differentiate sort of between cut marks, say for butchery or for like portioning your carcass or
00:29:20
Speaker
filleting, getting the meat out and skinning. One such experiment was carried out by Eva Fehrner using experiences in taxidermy, which is comparable to skinning practices because it's essentially that. Two main methods of skinning was using. So you have the open, which is practicing a cup along the belly and then opening the pelt out. You can see that a lot on your various sort of cow hides and sheep skins that you can get in shops.
00:29:48
Speaker
and the case method, just basically cutting from one back leg to the other and then just basically peel the pelt off like a tube, which is just, yeah, so gross. The process was observed also by other sort of zoarchaeologists, and both modern tools and flint tools were used, in this particular example, on stoat, muste la erminia, and her, le posero peos.
00:30:14
Speaker
Once sort of the skinning was done, the bones will be deposited in the compost heap to stimulate an active midden. Now at the time of recording, only the first soap bones have been examined, but they showed very little in the way of cut marks, mainly on the mandible. In a way that serves to illustrate that skilled skinning may leave very little cut marks on the bone actually, so there may be a lot more sort of skinning and butchery
00:30:40
Speaker
taking place in the archaeological record that we won't necessarily like immediately see or be able to notice because the marks are simply not there. Of course, there's a lot of considerations there because tools will make a big difference as well. And you tend to see that sort of across time periods, that the more
00:30:58
Speaker
recent, I guess, the assemblage you're looking at is the more refined the skinning marks will be. So especially like in some of the medieval assemblages, you can see skinning marks, like for example, like on cat jewels, which were extensively used for fur production in Britain. Sometimes they just like the tools that were used to us so fine, that if they produce any cut marks at all, you'd only really be able to see them with some hand lenses. So
00:31:26
Speaker
Yes, not all cuts on the bones leave marks. And it's also, yeah, it's also that skill issue. And this is a really interesting case of having someone who is pretty skilled in this type of process as someone who had a taxidermy experience, which not every zookeology has. So again, it's one of those good reasons why you do this kind of experiment. But it's not always this gross.
00:31:56
Speaker
Sometimes we're just looking at bones, as we often are. And in this next case study, we're basically just talking bones.
Stone Age Innovations and Material Use
00:32:04
Speaker
It's roe deer as fish hooks. So bonefish hooks have been found across the middle Mesolithic, particularly in coastal sites in Norway and Sweden. And the assumption was always they were made from kind of cervid bone, but
00:32:19
Speaker
It wasn't entirely sure what species, because most of them were not well-preserved, many of them were burnt, a lot of them were weathered, and they couldn't really be IDed using zooms, aka zergalogy by mass spectrometry.
00:32:35
Speaker
So the only way they can really kind of figure this out is to kind of do experimental replication. So they use metapodials from various deer species to better understand the actual creation process. And more recent experiments have shown that roe deer.
00:32:52
Speaker
Thank you. May have actually been used, but they were very fragile, which on one hand may explain why we have so little preserved fish hook bones, but also may indicate that they just weren't the first choice or best choice and they were used because they were easier to get potentially. Moving on to, I guess, a more ethereal case study.
00:33:20
Speaker
case study is about making Stone Age glue. Now I say a bit more ethereal because of course we don't have any actual archaeological evidence of this type of glue because well first of all how likely are you are are you to excavate a Stone Age site? Not massively. What's the likelihood are you finding preserved glue even less likely? So that's why experiments have been carried out to better understand how glue may have been made
00:33:48
Speaker
during the European Stone Age. Several attempts have been made, including using birch tar or pitch, pine wood tar and pitch, pine resin, charcoal and hide. And what these experiments have concluded is that hide glue made using rawhide from cows and pigs showed that making glue out of a pig hide is a bit difficult.
00:34:13
Speaker
there's a bit just a bit too much fat content but the cowhide when boiled actually created a fairly flexible and strong glue so this would have come in very handy for tool and weapon creation only slight teensy little flaw in this type of glue is that it loses effect once wet. I mean
00:34:33
Speaker
Again, you know why we need to do experimental archaeology? Because we don't have the actual evidence. So it's kind of just like, well, why not, right? What about glue? Well, they would have used a resin or a fat or some sort, so sort of like bind together, so tools and weapons. So yeah, so glue.
00:34:55
Speaker
I just literally not, I included this in this episode because it's just something I did not think about. And boy, was my brain galaxy brained and made huge and big thinking about this. You see that used a lot to say, still staying within sort of the realms of experimental archaeology. You see there are a lot in reconstructions of flint knives.
00:35:22
Speaker
dagger so you have your so your flint blade onto like a wooden or bone handle and then sort of attached with strings and some sort of pitch or tar that keeps it in place. And it's glue. Glue. It's glue. It's not made out of pig. Maybe they tried pig for a little one that just decided that although Stone Age glue, they wouldn't have been pig pig wild boar. Yeah, true. That's true. There's a little bit less fat content in wild boar so it might have worked a little better.
00:35:52
Speaker
Well, I guess as we think about glue, we'll take a break and we'll come back for our final segment. And we're back with Arceo Animals, episode 60. We're talking about experimental zoarcheology and we're coming to potentially the grossest part of what experimental zoarcheology can be. And it's, well, taphonomy is very important.
The Process of Taphonomy
00:36:20
Speaker
Right? And just as a refresher, we have talked about Saphonomy before in episodes, but it's basically the processes that occur to remains after death, or to get even kind of more complicated with it. It's basically everything that ever happens that causes remains to kind of, well, remain and be in part of a archaeological assemblage.
00:36:45
Speaker
Okay, what gets them from A to B like where A is the animal is still alive happily grazing in the field and B you've just dug it up the ground 2000 years later.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it includes everything from why the environment has invited these species into this region to thrive as far as your sampling procedure as an archaeologist. So it's very expansive, but clearly very important because it's, you know, it's how we get to archaeology.
00:37:18
Speaker
And it's also, obviously, because it's so expensive, it kind of covers a lot of the things we already talked about in the previous session. So, you know, between hunting and killing an animal to the way we process the animal for either crafting or cooking, all that stuff is included. So this kind of section will be more about the naturally occurring and potentially messier parts of taphonomy. So like the non-human processes, at least.
00:37:47
Speaker
Cuz it's important.
00:37:49
Speaker
Well, because they're all part of how your assemblages form, whether it's from scavenging by other animals or simply the bones left outside or at the surface of a feature to sort of weather over time. Yeah, it's all the stuff that we need a bit more help in understanding because they are not human influenced. As people who have, for the most part, eaten animal products, we kind of know,
00:38:17
Speaker
If an animal was eaten, we might expect a certain type of look, right? But we don't potentially know, say, how a reptile may deal with an animal or vice versa, which is how other animals would deal with reptiles.
00:38:37
Speaker
And that'll be our first case study, which is reptile taphonomy in the Natufian period. So, snake and lizard remains are frequently found in Pleistocene Natufian sites in the Levant, but we're not exactly sure of their role in Natufian
00:38:54
Speaker
diet. So, experiments have been done to kind of exceed the impact of both pre-depositional and post-depositional processes on snake and lizards, including the European glass lizard and the common viper.
00:39:17
Speaker
So these archaeologists took vertebrae from both species to kind of create a bone modification typology to compare with archaeological bones. So again, it's kind of doing something controlled to see how things influence other things and then being able to kind of just match that to what we see in the archaeological record, because obviously we don't actually see how things come to be in the archaeological record. So
00:39:43
Speaker
This experiment basically took bones, which were digested from the eagle owl. Booboo, booboo. Yeah, I knew you'd like that. The booboo, booboo. And these bones were used to examine pre-depositional processes of consumption and digestion, as well as post-depositional experiments were done, including weathering, burning, sediment erosion, and trampling.
00:40:11
Speaker
So all these experiments were done and the zoo archaeologists would look at the bones as they appeared afterwards and kind of make notes on how the bone surface was modified, the various patterns that were created, and they would make them into categories and eventually make this into a typology, which is great because it makes everyone else's lives a lot easier because you can just look up the typology and compare it to the bones you have.
Impacts of Predation and Environment on Remains
00:40:38
Speaker
So thank you for doing that work, especially with such relatively small bones, like reptile bones.
00:40:47
Speaker
And well, the results of this project, when compared with archaeological bones, showed that the latter had less observable evidence of digestion and more evidence of trampling and erosion and breakage. So this actually was actively used in this project and helped to identify patterns of consumption in domestic and non-domestic contexts.
00:41:14
Speaker
And you would be kind of surprised to see the impact of digestion on bone as something I've seen firsthand. Fun fact, it gets very compressed and eroded because of all the fun acidy bits in your body. Yay. Yeah, it creates sort of like weird concretions. It's so weird.
00:41:35
Speaker
And like the compression as well is really interesting. So yeah, I don't know, don't eat bone, like don't swallow bone, not take. Yeah. But for our next case study is what happens when a jaguar swallows bones?
00:41:51
Speaker
There is jaguar taphonomy in the Pleistocene. We have a very Pleistocene heavy episode today. There's so far little work had been done on understanding taphonomic characteristics created in assemblages by jaguars.
00:42:06
Speaker
Modern captive jagas, Panthera onca, were provided horse bones with characteristics being identified and documented. And then once the bones were removed from said jagga, they were used as comparison for
00:42:22
Speaker
taphonomic marks or like tooth marks on bones that were allegedly inflicted by the extinct Pleistocene European jaguar. Panthera gombosugensis. That's just unnecessary. Yeah. Panthera gombosugensis.
00:42:42
Speaker
the results of this comparison showed that jaggers were able to collapse 24% of bone epiphyses through intense furrowing. Now, furrowing for those who are not familiar with the term, well, in a way, like it's exactly nice, just creating furrows is when the animal bites on the bone and then drags their teeth down, thus creating the furrows. Tooth marks also included pitting. So like, again, that would be largely
00:43:08
Speaker
caused by the canine. So you'd have to sort of this circular sort of pits across the bone surface, and scoring, which was found on 97% of limb bones. So this study indicated that the jaggers may have been significant agents of bone modification in the past.
00:43:29
Speaker
I mean, of course, another big one in the Pleistocene would have been hyenas that absolutely chomp on bones to oblivion. And probably the cause behind a lot of very severe fragmentation of bone remains from the Pleistocene. But it also kind of makes sense why we have so many Pleistocene examples in this episode, which is it is quite far into the past at that point. So we are getting to the point where, you know, we have less and less
00:43:58
Speaker
evidence per se to kind of work with when we're trying to understand archaeological assemblages. So that is where experimental archaeology and zoo archaeology comes in. So again, kind of fill in those gaps in a way. And with zoo archaeology, obviously, we do have the the kind of ability to find comparable modern day species and, you know, see what happens. Obviously, it's not going to be 100 percent. There always will be slight differences.
00:44:27
Speaker
But it's pretty, I think it's, you know, it's pretty useful. And again, taphonomy in itself is such a complex, huge thing that you do need to kind of figure out exactly. Cause you know, I mean like saying, oh, obviously jaguars probably modified a lot of bone in the past. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but if you don't have the ability to kind of compare jaguar gnawing and the kind of marks they make,
00:44:56
Speaker
with the archaeological material, you know, can't really exactly say that, you know, I mean, it's a lot of kind of maybe because archaeology isn't it's kind of supporting and finding evidence for things that you could maybe safely assume sometimes, especially with your archaeology.
00:45:14
Speaker
But some of these theories, especially in the case of like tooth marks, like, I guess experimental work is the closest way to sort of prove your hypothesis because species like different carnivore species could leave very similar marks on the bone. So if you've got a bone that's been sitting around for 25,000 years, and it's got some pitting,
00:45:35
Speaker
I mean, like, to show that probably people that can work this out, but you would be able to just pull it up, look at the tooth marks. Oh, yeah, that was a jag. Oh, that was a cave lion. You know, comparison is absolutely the best way to learn and identify these things. And there's been so many predators. And yeah, again, carnivore species in the Pleistocene period, you would have had your jag as you have the hyenas, the lions, it's
00:45:59
Speaker
looking at their modern counterparts, especially in the case of hyena, where it's almost essentially the same animal, you could get a much better idea of what bite signature that species leaves on the bones.
00:46:13
Speaker
And if you're interested in a much more light version of that, you can try this yourself with your dog, if you have one, which I absolutely never ever have done this myself for fun. So if you get again, a bone, please don't feel like I should stress it. Not not a cooked bone, a raw bone, please. And, and you give it to your dog.
00:46:35
Speaker
And you let them have fun with it for a bit. And if it's safe to do so, again, not if they have any resource guarding or anything, please, please. Yeah. Take a look at it because you will see, you know, the pitting and the photos and the scoring that I've just mentioned. And you'll be able to see those for yourself. It's interesting because my cat has actually been doing contemporary kind of experimental zoology where she scratches and scratches at my rented carpet.
00:47:05
Speaker
and is trying to see the taphonomy that she leaves behind. And as much as I tried to stop her from doing her academic rigorous kind of research, she continues to do it at four in the morning. It's very fascinating work and she's clearly very committed to it. I'm definitely not going to throw her out the window if she keeps doing it.
00:47:23
Speaker
And then one night you're going to wake up and you're going to see another cat there. But it's fine because he's peer reviewing. Well, it's fine. It's because my cat hates other cats. So she had butts my window all the time when she sees other cats outside the window. She's a very fascinating and very Alex like in some ways, not liking other people, things like that. Mine hates other cats as well. I'd say they would go together really well, but they would just hate each other.
00:47:52
Speaker
in different corners of the same room they would just exist. So we have one final case study and I picked a special one. I picked a really interesting and thought-provoking one. I really want the listeners to kind of take away with the kind of majesty and
00:48:14
Speaker
you know, expansiveness of the, you know, how we're thinking about the human condition, how we're thinking about human relations with the world when we do experimental archaeology and zoo archaeology. And of course, I am talking about poop. Do you know how happy it was when I found this this case study? I was like, by God, this will be this will be the capper on our amazing episode. We're going to talk about poop. Our Opus Magnum.
00:48:43
Speaker
It's poop, it's glue, and then it's poop, baby! The taphonomy of livestock dung, something I never thought about in my entire life, and boy, have I ruined my life now. But it is important. Dung is very important, folks. We need it. So...
00:49:03
Speaker
experiments were used to, you know, better understand the preservation of microfossils in dung, specifically opaline phytolyphs and calcitic dung spherolytes. Again, something I have literally never thought about in my entire life. But boy, we're all learning together about poop, aren't we?
00:49:27
Speaker
So these things, these microfossils actually originate in the digestive tracts of animals and they can be used to indicate herbivore presence in areas as well as support research into ecological strategies in the past because obviously, like I said, as much as it's fun to joke about poop, it's actually quite important and has a lot of uses outside of being poop.
00:49:54
Speaker
So something we actually didn't really talk about that much in this episode but is actually quite useful in experimental archaeology in general is ethnography, which is basically kind of, it's an anthropological approach, although archaeo-ethnography is a very common kind of practice. You basically go out to places and spend time with people and kind of
00:50:20
Speaker
learn from them their experiences with certain things. So in this case, with this experiment, ethnographic fieldwork in Besstanser in southern Kurdistan was combined with modern samples taken from local cattle, sheep, and goat to kind of get an idea of how dung was being used for farming strategies in the area.
00:50:47
Speaker
and basically what the poop looked like and what the microfossils looked like. So ethnographic fieldwork also provided information to understand external factors that could impact dung composition. Because again, taphonomy, very expansive. Never really thought about using taphonomy to understand poop. But hey, my brain is small. And now my worldview is so wide and galaxy brain, now that I've read this paper.
00:51:15
Speaker
So I'm just thinking about how approaching these populations went. You just go there like, hello. I'm trying to do some research. Can I look at your cow's poop? I mean, it's very important, clearly. No, it is. I just want to let the reaction of the people say, I think they want to look at my cow's poop. They're probably like, we should probably know each other first. Pleasantries should be exchanged. It might be a meal first.
00:51:46
Speaker
But yeah, so there's loads of different things that actually impact the dung composition. So your environment in general, the animal ecology, grazing patterns, penning strategies. There's a lot at play here that again, never really thought about. Boy, I cannot believe I've never thought about this. And also, you know,
00:52:06
Speaker
Like I said, there's other ways to use dung as a fertilizer, but in this case, dung was actually burnt to simulate the use for fuel or preparing for use as a building material. And then it was analyzed as part of the experimental zookeology.
00:52:21
Speaker
So results from this work indicate that increased heating and higher temperatures impacts the durability and preservation of microfossils through deformation, which is further impacted by composition of dung based on plants ingested. So for all those lucky archaeologists who get to look at poop and make that their speciality, this research is actually quite useful.
00:52:48
Speaker
something, again, like you, I would have never thought of that myself. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's fun to joke about, but honestly, I think it speaks to why I like archaeology, which is, it's, there's so many ways to go about it. You can go about it by looking at hunting, you can go about it looking at just animal remains in general, and you can go about it looking at poof. Yeah, because like, I knew that sort of, um,
00:53:13
Speaker
like would have been used like, I think it was used like in Britain as well, like both as like, building material and fuel. But yeah, the preservation of microfossils sort of within the yeah, that's no not crossed my mind.
00:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's like that thing where as we get more technologically advanced with the way we can research archaeology, we can actually get into this kind of nitty gritty even more. I mean, even looking at like pollen archaeology and all that stuff, that is just, it's too much for my tiny brain to really understand.
00:53:45
Speaker
I think all in all what is safe to say that experimental archaeology and zoo archaeology in particular is in equal parts gross and fun but I think we've established through all of these great case studies that it is also a vital part of the archaeological scientific process because it has given us the ability to prove a number of hypotheses that we would not have been able to otherwise.
00:54:09
Speaker
And if you want to hear us talk about more of these hypotheses in various archaeological forms, you can listen to the rest of our episodes at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash animals. You can find us on Twitter at archaeoanimals.
00:54:27
Speaker
And you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure you like, subscribe, follow. I don't know what the terminology is anymore. Tell your friends about us. Tell them that you can learn about both poop and glue in the same episode. We are that good. And other than that, we'll see you next time, folks.
00:54:46
Speaker
Bye! Thank you for listening to RQ animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcast from. You can find us on Twitter at RQ animals. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institutions, employers and the RQLG podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:55:19
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.