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Fine, Let's Rank Our Favourite Animal Bones - Ep 51
1.5k Plays2 years ago
In this episode of ArchaeoAnimals, Alex and Simona put their party hats on to discuss their favourite animal bones as a (slightly belated) celebration of the first 50 episodes of the podcast!
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/51
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
00:00:00
Speaker
You're
Introduction to Zooarchaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Archaeo Animals, the podcast all about zoo archaeology. And
Meet the Hosts: Simona and Alex
00:00:22
Speaker
now for this particular episode, we were going to celebrate the fact that we've hit 50 episodes, except that that was last month. I mean, we never said we were good at counting, or maths.
00:00:35
Speaker
or are introducing ourselves, by the way, I'm Simona Falanga, and with me. And yes, it would also mean Alex Fitzpatrick, you know, we're keeping it fresh and funky by changing up our intro at episode 51. Keeping you on your toes. Yeah.
50th Episode Celebration
00:00:54
Speaker
We're going to celebrate our 50 episodes with a bit of a lighthearted one, where I guess we'll offer some of our hottest tastes.
00:01:04
Speaker
Which we've never done before, to be fair. No, especially not you. No, I've never given a take in my life, to be honest.
00:01:14
Speaker
It's been zero days since the last take was given. Yeah, probably. But yeah, we will be giving our hot takes, which again, we've never done before. We've never been opinionated on this podcast, but we'll be listing our top 10 animal bones, which obviously sounds a lot easier than it actually was in retrospect. Yeah, we'll also give out some of our least favorite animal bones.
00:01:44
Speaker
which we've never talked about on this show either, so people will be very surprised. Well I guess in this particular episode we'll be slightly more specific than like, I hated this entire order of animals for this particular reason.
00:01:57
Speaker
I mean, you know, speak for yourself, to be honest. But yeah, so I guess we'll start off by talking about. So,
Top Ten Favorite Animal Bones
00:02:07
Speaker
you know, we did our top 10 list the way that I think most people do top 10 lists. So we'll start off from the bottom of our 10 and we'll work our way up to number one. So, you know,
00:02:20
Speaker
or let that anticipation build and whatnot. And then during our next segment, we'll go a bit down the other road and talk about our top. That's not really how 3 is it. It's our worst animal bones. Bottom three? Well done. Bottom, just the worst. They're the worst animal bones. We don't need to number them because they're just sitting in the bottom of the pile anyway.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess that in part three, we'll review our five top animal bolds. Very exciting stuff. Very hard hitting journalism going on here.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm trying to do a drum roll, but you see I'm doing a slight drum roll on Basset and the sound's not quite carrying as it should. She must be, she needs to be thicker or more hollow. I don't know. I don't know how sound works. But she's purring, so she's happy enough.
00:03:19
Speaker
I guess we should get started then. Okay, so for number 10, my personal pick, and this was hard to like, I need to stress, like, it was harder than I thought it would be. But like just our top 10 animal bones, but you actually actually have to sit down and think about to say, but do I like this bone more than that bone? And then you try, Oh, I think I'll go for this bone. Oh, no, Alex already put it down. Oh,
00:03:45
Speaker
But yeah, I guess for my 10, number 10, I would go for Tibias.
00:03:51
Speaker
no particular species, just the tibia. Because partially because a lot of animal bones are usually when they come to us a couple thousand years later, they tend to be a little bit more on the fragmented side. And you tend to sometimes not have only have one of the epiphysis or no epiphysis at all, or even worse, though, is juvenile and is completely unfused. However, with our beloved, reliable tibia and its nice triangular shape, hmm,
00:04:17
Speaker
It stands out huge. It's like an inch long. You're like, oh yeah, not that's a tibia. I mean, what else? I do not know, but that's a tibia. It's solid. It's stable. It's dependable. I mean, what more can you want from the tibia? I mean, to be completely honest, I do agree in that.
00:04:40
Speaker
What? The pun, the terrible pun you missed, to be honest. Oh god. We gotta start the episode over. Dude. That's all I ever wanted. I hate this podcast.
00:05:02
Speaker
hate this so much. We've already started really. Anyway, getting it back to very important stuff, but I do agree because when it comes to IDing bones, obviously, there's some stuff that are very easy to see skulls and whatnot, you know, just like I know what that is. But if it comes when it comes to the long bones, I think the tibia is probably the most
00:05:29
Speaker
characteristic, even in a fragmented form, because like you said, the triangle bit is just, wah, chef's kiss, great design. Love to see it. It's just good. It's just good stuff. And yeah, just to keep it on the super serious side, what is your number 10? Listen,
00:05:50
Speaker
I don't know if we've talked about this on the show. So part of me was like, we need to talk about it because it's a very serious and important conversation that needs to be had and needs to be done delicately with the kind of professionalism and sensitivity that people need for these kind of topics.
00:06:08
Speaker
And on the other hand, I do actually enjoy them in a way that is similar to a lover of art looking at a modern artist. And it's called the baculum, folks. Now, the baculum is a very interesting bone. We, as humans, do not have them. And I'm trying to figure out the best way to phrase this, but it's the penis bone. It's the bone that supports the penis.
00:06:39
Speaker
Don't think there's many other ways you can put it. Yeah, I guess not. Like I said, humans do not have one, but many mammals do. I have seen my fair share of them, and they're removing the uses of the bone itself, what it's intended to do, and the kind of
00:07:00
Speaker
jokes that a more juvenile person may make about them. They're very, they're actually kind of interesting looking. So obviously they are very different depending on what animal you're dealing with. And as someone who has seen bacula from boxes to seals. Boy, does that diversity really get reflected in bone.
00:07:27
Speaker
my gosh. What sort of brings them all together is that much like a tibia friend, you can't miss them. You can't. No, pretty easy. Also super, super rare. So
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, so it's kind of exciting to come across them. So yeah, sometimes a bit more difficult in that case to identify them to species because they're, you know, they can be kind of rare. And I feel like a lot of reference materials collections don't always have them. But some people like me who are, you know, very thorough and are collecting do have, say, a couple of different dog breed ones that someone sent them.
00:08:08
Speaker
So if anyone ever needs a reference, just let me know. Moving on. Well, context annex for all your vacuum reference needs. I have no idea what they put, but boy, did they get to my house.
00:08:33
Speaker
Well, no one else would probably know what it is. I mean, you know, I've talked about baculum to people in archaeology who aren't zoarchaeologists and they've just never known. And it's kind of fun to talk about it like that. Because in the back of my head, I'm just like, I'm talking about a penis bone. I have a PhD. It's fine.
00:08:56
Speaker
Right, for number nine, for myself, I have gone for boar tusks for no particular reason other than they look pretty. They are very pretty. And they've got very distinctive like rectangular base that I kind of appreciate if that's very strange to say, but
00:09:19
Speaker
I guess it was also like, correct me if I'm wrong, the male tusks that doesn't tend to be a root because they continuously grow throughout their lifetime. Yeah, which is very cool. But they're very pretty. And obviously, they're used often in decorative and ornamental type of artifacts, and sometimes in ritual type things. So, you know, mark that down on your bingo for this podcast. But they're very cool. I didn't even think about those. And
The Fascinating Amphibian Ilium
00:09:46
Speaker
now I kind of wish I put a moment on my list.
00:09:49
Speaker
But yeah, I guess I will go with my number nine, which is just a simple rabbit femur. There's a bit of a theme in my list and obviously for listeners at home, we encourage you to maybe pull up Google images and look these up. I don't know. Maybe we'll figure out a way to kind of just collect a lot of these images and put them in
00:10:11
Speaker
on Twitter, maybe. And, but yeah, the rabbit femur is just very nice and kind of like curvy looking type of bone. It always reminds me of like a claw in some way. But you'll notice this in my list. I the kind of bones I like are very interesting looking and curvy and has nothing to do with like actual use. It's more of a aesthetic judgment. It's like we've both gone for aesthetic in this number nine.
00:10:44
Speaker
eight. Again, I guess much like the tibia is not a bone that I particularly like, per se, but it's just one that tends to aid identification, so to speak. And my random choice is an amphibian ilium.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, I actually never have seen what amphibian ileum really looks like, so I don't really work with amphibians. So I'm glad you put that. Well, it just looks quick. Of course, it has sort of the articulation, they'll go into the femur, and then it's almost like a almost like a rib-like thing that sticks out of it. That's my professional description of it. Again, because amphibians are notoriously annoying to ID to species, unless, of course,
00:11:31
Speaker
You're very experienced or like you're specialising amphibians. A lot of stuff tend to go down as like either frog or toad because with some bones you just can't tell. The Iliom though, if you have a complete enough, is one of the ones that tends to be a little bit easier to ascertain whether it's frog or toad. So it just gives you a bit of a win with amphibians. It's a win.
00:11:52
Speaker
Ah, so, so the theme of our lists are either aesthetically pleasing or it makes our lives way easier. That's fair, I think. You get a nice complete alien, you're like, oh yeah, I know this one. That's a frog. I'm so smart.
00:12:12
Speaker
That's all we want. We just want that validation, really. Speaking of validation, I guess, this is more to validate my PhD work. But my number eight is the great auk humorous, which I mean, bird humeruses are actually as much as I like to complain about bird bones for being small and fragile and annoying. The humorous I find very psychically pleasing. They're very
00:12:37
Speaker
bulbous and kind of round and just very interesting looking and the great hawk in particular, the great hawk bones are very distinctive in that they're very curvy and I think a lot of the kind of like puffin type of that family of bird have very similar bones and they're up to the point where I think they curve almost like an S shape.
00:12:59
Speaker
which is extremely fascinating to look at. But obviously, I've got a great affection for the great auk since working with a lot of their bones during my PhD. I even have, for those of you who don't follow me on social media, I have a great auk tattoo because they're very cute, if not extremely depressing to think about. And which is like me, I am also very cute, but extremely depressing to think about. So, you know, a lot of kindred spirits, basically. So I felt like I had to put them on this list for sure.
00:13:28
Speaker
Okay, I mean, for... I can't comment to that. I was more focusing on trying to remember how to count. Yeah, I was struggling. I was struggling with that too, don't worry. My number seven is also a bird bone, I guess would be like avian in general. It's a bone that I particularly like, but again, doesn't particularly necessarily
00:13:56
Speaker
aid you with identification. It does just birds. Anywho, it's the bird tarsal metatarsus, which sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but I guess you'll be the equivalent of our. Metapodials. And the reason I like it is that, well, I particularly like the distal end of it. I find it aesthetically pleasing for some reason. It just looks like it's got tons of little prongs.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, I get what you mean. It is. There's a lot of bird bones that are really aesthetically pleasing, even if they are very annoying. I mean, like, I guess like, though, if you get a complete task with the tarsus, like, you can identify it to species. But I think with birds, we have such a wide variety of species, many of which are wild. Is it unless you've got access to a museum that has an extensive reference collection? You're just, nay.
00:14:50
Speaker
Other than that, not really like it. And of course, depending on the bird species, you can get a spur to the side of it. So you get that in roosters. Yeah. You get a little spur on the side of it. And that's sometimes it's like really chunky. It's very exciting too, to be honest, when you get a spur. But yeah, I will go to my number, what are we, seven? And a dog, Calcanus.
00:15:18
Speaker
Which is just, it makes me laugh because it looks like a little shoe. And like, I guess that's helpful in terms of kind of figuring out spatially where the calcanus is. Like not necessarily, it's not the foot bone per se, but it's in that area. I think the general region. Yeah. And they look like little shoes and I think that's fun. Yeah, I guess it'd be like the canid one in general, because the wolf is fair or to be fair, I wouldn't be able to tell the two apart.
00:15:47
Speaker
yeah that one's really big but then certain dogs are really big so yeah that's always a pain okay but we have somehow made it to number six
00:15:58
Speaker
shall keep this brief. Again, any species, yeah, no particular taxon, scapulas. Well, from an ID point of view, they tend to be a pain. So if you get like a small fragment of it, because also because of course, the scapula itself, it is quite thin. So it does fragment a fair bit. And then you get like a scapula that's smashed into like, 56 bits.
00:16:22
Speaker
and you just like question why you're doing this. But what I do like scapulas for is any modification that might have taken place on the bone. Sometimes you find perforations of it so where people would have hung them up to say like smoke them or salt them or sort of burning as you find in a lot of sort of pyromancy practices. So that's what does the scapula for me.
00:16:47
Speaker
No, they are very cool. But yeah, if they're fragmented, I'm just going to start putting down unidentifiable. Anyway, my final one for this bit, at least number six, are deer frontlets, which is kind of cheating, I think, because it's not really a bone per se, it's a part of the skull, kind of the frontal area of the skull.
Deer Frontlets: Aesthetic & Ritual Uses
00:17:09
Speaker
cranium plus the bit that where the antlers usually come from. And again, it's more of an aesthetic thing. We talked about it in a previous episode. We talked about Starcar and their fabulous Dear Frontlands that they have from that site. I've had Dear Frontlands from my site, from my PhD. They're just extremely cool. And there's so much interesting things that could have been used for with regards to ritual or costuming and things like that. They're just they're cool. It's a cool, cool look.
00:17:39
Speaker
No wonder why they're still very popular as hunting trophies to this day. But yeah, yeah, we sped through that pretty good. And I think we can take a break and then we can get into the real juicy stuff, which is the worst bones on the planet. So yeah, see you later. And we're back with part two of this episode of Arceo Animals, where we rank our favorite animal bones.
00:18:06
Speaker
Except not this time, because we will be ranking down our least favorite animal bones. I really don't know what the proper terminology or phraseology is for this, but these are just the worst, right? Yeah, the rock bottom, the bone bottom. I cannot even bones. Yeah, I mean...
00:18:32
Speaker
Unsurprisingly, I feel like we may have talked a bit about these kind of bones in the past. Maybe once or twice. Don't
The Frustrations of Identifying Horse Teeth
00:18:43
Speaker
be too hard on yourself.
00:18:49
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, you know, we're both professionals. So this is obviously a professional opinions and should be taken not with a grain of salt, but with the, you know, kind of, uh, reverence and respect that you would, you know, any other kind of work of art. Yeah. Just the respect of the art gravitas commands. Yeah. Well, I guess I'll make a start again. Number three, least favorite animal bone, a horse teeth.
00:19:19
Speaker
So now while in general, I do really like teeth, because of course, you know, they're very easy to identify to species or to what tooth you have, even if it's partial, you can normally work it out. And horse teeth, per se, you know, that they are aesthetically pleasing enough, and they're quite, you can't miss them. You know, some very cuboid in shape and just very long so you can't miss a horse tooth. However, say you've got a whole mandible, and you want to age it.
00:19:53
Speaker
The way you age a horse mandible doesn't quite work the same way like some of the Montebulo West ages you have for say sheep and cattle is just it's just so much faffing I just cannot even. That's fair.
00:20:07
Speaker
And also, of course, if you do get loose teeth, I mean, of course, again, I'm speaking from someone who's quite early careers. Of course, people, many people probably disagree with me, but just they mostly all look the same. No, you're right. Like, okay, you have your mandibular, you have your maxillary. Okay. At that far, that's fine. But is it a fourth premolar or a first molar? I don't know.
00:20:35
Speaker
No, you're right and you should say it. It's that thing where like, again, I have similarly very early career still. I know this is something you learn with age, but there's sometimes where I see people who are like so specific about their identifications where I'm like, no, you can't do that. That's not, that's not a real thing you just did. No, I can't do that. Maybe I'm just not good at zorchology.
00:21:03
Speaker
No, I'm sorry, I cannot tell you. Oh, this is a horse, fourth pre-molar, it erupted on a full moon on a Wednesday. Oh, what's a Wednesday? Spoiler.
00:21:17
Speaker
It's, yeah, I mean, I know you could do that. I could do that probably with time and like little time. I mean, if I had one tooth and was able to spend like a month looking at it and like doing the research, I could do it. But there's just like, I know some people who will like pick up a bone and just be like, ah, yes, this is the whatever very specific tooth or whatever. And I'm just like, no, you can't teach me.
00:21:43
Speaker
You can't do that. No one can do that. I refuse to believe that. Early on, I think it was one of our earliest episodes. I remember you mentioning something about wanting to develop a C14 vision. Oh, yeah. Gosh, I would love that.
00:22:00
Speaker
I still want it. How have we not progressed that far in our archaeological science and technology? They give Alex funding to develop C14 Vision. That's my new postdoc, yeah. But when I mean C14 Vision, I want to implant something into my eyeballs so that I can scan it. Or I want to look like Cyclops from the X-Men. It's a look. It's a look. So what's your third least favourite?
00:22:27
Speaker
Well, it's actually very similar because I chose pig teeth in general, all of them, but specifically the molars, because again, I think I've definitely talked about this on the podcast before. Pig teeth are just horrible to look at. They're just so bad to look at. I don't like looking at them, not
00:22:45
Speaker
boar tusks or anything, those are cool. But like the molars and the premolars, it's the phrase that I always like to use is it's like you took a human tooth and put it in a microwave and let it pop like popcorn. That's what I picked. That's without that, taking that imagery aside, what I was going to say is that I thought they'd look like popcorn. Yes.
00:23:11
Speaker
It's horrible. I don't mind them. I mean, like the M1, M2, like a bit iffy, but then you get that, you know, sometimes in sheep as well, if you don't have a full mandible. I mean, third molar. Easy peasy.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and I think it also just gives a lot of problems for non-suo archaeologists. And I don't blame them because they do kind of look like human teeth. And I won't name the institution that I was doing some work at. But this unnamed institution in their archives had a box of allegedly human bone. And when I went to look through it, it was a lot of pig teeth.
00:23:56
Speaker
And again, I don't blame them that they do look like they could look human, but I was just like, wow, this is the worst tooth, tricking everyone.
Challenges with Ribs and Vertebrae
00:24:06
Speaker
I don't mind them. They're okay. Pig apologists over here. They're okay. Then if you like want to take measurements off it to determine if it's wild boar, then look at that. That's a discussion for another day. And for someone better prepared. Anyway, we'll see your next one.
00:24:26
Speaker
rodent bones. Yeah, that's fair. Of which you tend to get a lot of. Yep. Mostly very fragmented. Mm hmm. And I think, you know, you could go by size, okay, it's rat size, it's mouse size, but you know, there's at least like three species of mouse I can think of off the top of my head. All of which reside in Britain and have done so for millennia.
00:24:55
Speaker
And there are people who allegedly can tell, based on the bone, what type of rodent it is. Like, not rodent, but like rat. I mean, like, if it's complete, you can, but again, it's just one of those things that you do need reference material. Of course, unless you're very experienced and you go like, oh, yes, out, wood mouse.
00:25:20
Speaker
No, they're lying. I've decided. And the same with vole, be like, okay, this looks vole-like, but is it a field vole? Is it a bank vole? Anyone who can do that by eye is too powerful to exist.
00:25:37
Speaker
Not only in this field, but on this planet. That's my new hot cake. I can tell you the one road and bone, I guess there's one notable exception I'll make for it is the love, the delightful pygmy shrew. Because it's sure alike and it's in the name. It's very small. So there's really only one thing it can be. Pygmy shrews are okay. I'll allow it.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, fair enough. There you go. What about you? Yeah, okay. Well, I'm not really going to go that specific with this because my next worst bone is all ribs and vertebra of all species and any species. And I include human into that as well. I mean, I was going to put that down myself, but you beat me to it. It just, ribs are just there to cause a nuisance.
00:26:30
Speaker
Listen, I can, I will give myself credit in that there are some species that I can at least be like, oh, I know what that rib is. Like pig ribs, I feel like are very characteristic. Seal ribs, I also find very easy to find. Everyone else, I'm like, I have no idea what that is. I can't tell you where it is either. I mean, specifically for humans, that's like a whole other
00:26:54
Speaker
can of worms. I think again, I've probably told this on the podcast before, but when I was doing my masters, and I took a module and human remains a lot, you know, you get expected to, like lay out a whole skeleton. And I just
00:27:11
Speaker
would literally fall to pieces like the skeleton itself when it came to trying to put the ribs and the vertebra in order. It's just, no. And vertebra, I will admit, slightly easier than ribs, particularly with identifying the species. Again, a lot of species, particularly like avian species and fish, they all look very different, very particular.
00:27:33
Speaker
And I could also tell you, you know, is it a lumbar? Is it cervical? Is it a thorax vertebra? But after that, I could not tell you the number. I can make it up probably. It's a vertebra. It's a rib. And it ends there. Yeah, because like the worst of them all being the caudal vertebra. Oh, no. Just no. It's the worst. No. I just got flashbacks.
00:28:01
Speaker
So many, so many Excel spreadsheets or it just says CDV and then no species.
00:28:09
Speaker
Because I was just like, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. It's, it's a, it's a coddle. Oh boy. It was bad. I could have put like a cheeky medium mammal in there. But even still there's, you know, once he gets to the end, then it's just like, it could be a very big animal with a very long tail. Very teeny, but hashtag the littlest tail. But yeah, so they're on my watch list. So watch out all rips in vertebra.
00:28:37
Speaker
No, but I agree. Like vertebrae, definitely a lot easier than ribs. I mean, you can locate them easily enough, sort of on the vertebral column, sort of where they are. Maybe, okay, going into like C3 or C4. Okay. That will depend, but usually you can locate them all right. You can ID like
00:28:58
Speaker
A good chunk of it to species but generally a bit belligerent. Ribs just no. No, bad. Can't even side them. Although like one redeeming feature of ribs is that you do where you do tend to see a lot of butchery marks. On the other hand that makes it worse because then I'm like oh there's butchery I could not tell you what species this is.
00:29:20
Speaker
Oh, but then you can't, okay, like it's a medium mammal rib, you know, it's got a chop mark, they're like, oh, I like it now, so they've portioned this little joint of meat and that, you know, like it's... I like finding buttery. Yeah, I guess. Especially the ones where you get some of the chop marks, where they were trying to chop something and they missed so many times. Yeah, to be fair, that is quite fun. Because it's just like, oh, wow, I existed back in the day.
00:29:47
Speaker
my inability to do anything right when it comes to cooking. It's just me, my like reincarnation back then and just completely missing the mark constantly. Shout out. So, there you go. That's a reading feature of ribs. And for my top least favorite of all bones are cranial fragments.
Dealing with Fragmented Cranial Bones
00:30:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:14
Speaker
complete skulls, which again, very rare to come by under archaeological conditions, you may have most of a skull in one piece at a push. That's all nice and good. They're lovely. They're aesthetically pleasing, they're easy to identify, you know,
00:30:31
Speaker
That's fine. A lot of what you get are small little cranial fragments, where literally all you can tell is that those are bits of a cranium of a critter of some description. And it's usually not isolated. You don't get one or two cranial fragments. No, you get 250.
00:30:53
Speaker
Oh, it went back. Yeah, it's all sharp, not like, I mean, because the problem because it's so fragmented.
00:31:06
Speaker
Like, okay, it's likely it's all from the same cranium, but really, you can't say that. It could be four craniums in there for all you know. Do you know what I mean? The only thing worse than fragmented cranial bone is fragmented, partially cremated cranial bones. And then that's when I just start crying and just go, maybe this field isn't for me. Maybe I should become a lawyer or something because it bad.
00:31:35
Speaker
And again, there's people, I know there's people out there who are able to be like, oh, but this is the, the, the, the periodle bone thing, whatever. And I'm just like, no, it's just look like flat bone. I thought you were going to say the people out there that what I would do is do archeology and then had like cranial bone fragments and went, no, I'm not doing this. I'm becoming a lawyer.
00:31:57
Speaker
I mean, they probably exist too because it's just, I completely fall apart with cranial bone fragments. And to be fair, I think, I think for the most part, people are understandably forgiving. If you're just like, I can't ID this a species, I can tell you it's cranial.
00:32:14
Speaker
But other than that, it's just whatever. But, you know, it gets annoying when there's so much of it. And you know that, like, it's probably especially like there's definitely been times where I've had perennial fragments and then like a couple different species, it represented like mandible fragments. And I'm just like,
00:32:36
Speaker
Could be one of these could be all of these and obviously for like work that I've done it can it's important to kind of be specific because of, you know, theory deposits and things like that and everything having some kind of meaning as to, you know, are they removing this part of the cranium putting it somewhere else and whatever. So it can also be none of the above.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, it also can just be nothing. A sheep mandible, a dog mandible and the cranial fragments are actually from a cow. Cursed. Cursed bone. Hate it. Then what have you got for us?
00:33:09
Speaker
Well, I decided to kind of, you know, change it up and do something different, something that no one's ever heard me talking about before or something that people wouldn't really, you know, expect me to say.
Why Fish Bones Are the Worst
00:33:20
Speaker
So my worst animal bone is fish, all bones, all species, all the time.
00:33:27
Speaker
This is brand new information. Now, of course, if you want to hear my detailed thoughts about fish bones, you could, I don't know, listen to the last 50 episodes of this podcast. I believe I've probably talked about it in every single episode, but just a refresher. They're fragile. They're annoying. They're small sometimes. Do we have a whole episode of fish? Yeah, I think we do. And we're both very annoyed the whole time because we don't want to talk about it.
00:33:56
Speaker
No, no, and even more annoyed when we found out it was the episode of our one year anniversary of the podcast. Oh no, I forgot. That's so cursed. We're so bad with knowing our anniversary. Just to keep that self low then go. Oh gosh, that's awful. That's horrible.
00:34:16
Speaker
But yeah, I don't think there's really much more I need to say about how much I hate fish. They're just bad folks. They're real bad. Sorry. They're annoying. And yeah, if you're no fish and you're good at fish, teach me. Yeah. You're just, you're like a mutant. You're like a superhero with very cursed skills.
00:34:39
Speaker
I'm sorry. It's weird. It's just weird. Again, another one of those things where you need extensive sort of reference to work off and even then.
00:34:54
Speaker
It's a skill, it's like a sub-discipline in its own right within zoo archaeology. Yeah, anyway, shout out to the University of Nottingham for having that amazing fishbone reference. Oh yes, thank you. If it wasn't for that, I would not have finished my master's dissertation. But I think we can get off this kind of negativity, take a break and come back with our top five animal bones.
00:35:20
Speaker
And we are back with Arceo Animals. We're talking about our favorite and least favorite animal bones to celebrate 50 episodes of this podcast, which is still completely wild to me. But hey, normally this would be case study time. But because that time of the episode is always so special and amazing and wonderful, we're instead going to talk about our top five animal bones.
00:35:47
Speaker
And I guess in a way, like this whole episode has been a case study of us. Just being bad at Zuarkality. Just not being the people who should be hosting this podcast. I am sure most people in our field have their least favourite animal bones. And actually, if there's anyone out there listening, please tell us what your favourite and least favourite animal bones are. Give us your hot takes. Yes, definitely.
00:36:19
Speaker
Okay, there was a few hot takes right there. I think her bastard would just say that her least favorite bones are, no, she said that she was gonna say dog bones, but actually it's good because if they're bones, they can't bother her. That's fair. Sorry, she's just grumpy at her dog sister. She tends to be.
00:36:47
Speaker
for our favourite animal bones. So we're now on to number six. Five. Five. I can count. Sorry, I got lost in the intricacy of the made up personas I've made for my domestic animals. So my number five favourite animal bone are Metapodials. Again, any species, mammalian,
00:37:17
Speaker
But any species is fine. And they tend to be, you know, like very easily recognizable, especially when it comes to undulates. So like sort of cattle and horse in particular, sort of like, again, you can't miss it. I like how dense they are. So they preserve quite well. The distal end is my particular favorite with my professional description of it as the rolly bits. Yes.
00:37:47
Speaker
they are. So I just really like metapodials. And again, usually like you can tell if it's a metacarpal or a metatarsal easily enough. Again, tends to be easier with cattle, sheep, deer and horse. But if you've got enough of it, it's a fairly, both easy, anesthetically pleasing bone to work with. Yeah.
00:38:10
Speaker
I agree, and I do like the roly bits, and that's exactly how I think about them too. Well, because I guess it's all about sort of the articulation they're meant to slot in, so yeah, they run. Listen, and those podcasts were all about precision when it comes to hard terminology.
00:38:29
Speaker
I will admit, I did not really put any chunky toes in this. And I realized that right before we started recording and for that I apologize. I'm sorry to let all my fans down. The distinct lack of chunky bits.
00:38:46
Speaker
So in a way, my selection for my number five is actually a bit opposite of chunky toes because it's just it's a skull and it's a you know, you might want to cover a bastard's ears. It's a cat skull because I know. But they're just they are so cute. They're so tiny. And I don't know. It's just what it's one of those skulls that I feel like really captures how small
00:39:15
Speaker
the animal is which is a very silly thing to say is obviously you look at the skull and you kind of get an idea of how big the animal is there's just something about the cat skulls that are just so like characteristic of what cats are like in in flesh what so like dainty but they're deadly yeah because you see like how dainty like the the top part of their skull is and everything but then you see their little teeths and you're like oh they can get me and you know
00:39:43
Speaker
It's just very cute. I like them a lot. I'd like you to know that bastard has turned her back on the podcast. Yeah. I mean, meanwhile, my cat, Violet hates other cats, so she loves cat skulls, I think. But she's still purring, so, you know, in too much trouble. Okay, good. But then again, she spends her life purring. So thanks. And for number four, I have a skull of my own.
00:40:12
Speaker
Well,
The Distinctive Badger Skull
00:40:12
Speaker
not my own personal. It's the Badger skill specifically. So the European Badger, Melis, Melis.
00:40:24
Speaker
I get that, yeah. And now aside from it being, well, I guess not quite like the cat, because it is quite a bit chunkier and the teeth are a fair bit chunkier and you think like, oh yeah, that would hurt. But my favorite part of the badger skull specifically is the sagittal crest in male badgers.
00:40:45
Speaker
Yes, because now, for reference, for those who are not aware, so you tend to see that in carnivals more. So like you tend to have a sagittal crest. So it's, it's, it's in the word, it's a little crest that's at the top of the skull. And that tends to be more pronounced in males as opposed to females. And now that goes to some extreme in European badger skulls, where like, if you get, if you look up a photo of like a male badger skull, like, they look like they have mohawks.
00:41:14
Speaker
they do yeah and i love it that's actually really cute have you ever thought how like many like small fragments of sagittal crests may have been mistaken for scapula no now you ruined it now it's not fun anymore it's not good that's giving me anxiety
00:41:36
Speaker
Well, to counteract that, I'm going to talk about my number four, which is a bone that's probably a bit more difficult to identify than anything else. And it's the seal tibia. Now, we already kind of talked about tibia with your pick, Simona, in the first half of this show. But I do like the seal tibia because, as I said before, seal bones have a very distinctive curviness to them. But also, because they are marine,
00:42:05
Speaker
mammals, the bones themselves have a very like porous type of texture to them, which is also very identifiable right away, but I also find very interesting to look at. And, you know, the, the, the seal tibia is a really interesting contrast between that kind of curviness, as well as that general tibia, like triangular look. It's a, it's a land of contrasts, the seal tibia. Yes.
Admiration for Carnivore Teeth
00:42:34
Speaker
Okay, so I guess we're in the top three now. Oh yeah, wow. Okay, so we have, okay, number three. For me, again, very, very broad apologies for carnivore teeth.
00:42:49
Speaker
Now, in general, I love all teeth. Of course, it's because I find them aesthetically pleasing. They're quite dense. They, you know, they preserve very well. They're fairly easy to identify. Of course you can do, if you get more, like a few teeth than a mandible, because you can age the animal. You can do a lot of fun stuff with it. There can be some cool pathology, but my favorite of all are carnivore teeth for no other reason, other than they're pointy.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, I get that. I like a nice big like dog canine. My favourite ones will have to however be carnassials, which are the teeth I guess depending on whether they're mandibular or maxillary. It's either the fourth premolar or the first molar. I think it's the lower first molar and the upper fourth premolar.
00:43:43
Speaker
And they just, cause they're just so distinctive and they have all these like pointy cusps. And I think I particularly like the cat one. Cause again, it's so distinctive. He's just got the two is like V-shaped.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, yep. Can't miss that one. I mean, bastard can cause she doesn't have any of them left. You didn't hear that. I'm looking at, so again, if you're not following me on social media, I've got loads of animal bone tattoos, but in particular, um, I have two, uh, mandible tattoos, one of a lower mandible of a cat and one of a lower mandible of a dog. And you can see those, uh, carnassials really well.
00:44:24
Speaker
they are very distinctive. And they are, they're like little, I always think of them as waves, little wave shapes. I don't know. Merle And I guess the seal teeth would be quite cool as well because they're carnivore like teeth because they're specifically adapted for a fish diet. So they're like multi cusps and they're all like just like little wavy zigzag
00:44:47
Speaker
I like them. Seals are the dogs of the sea and I've definitely seen a couple times people who have mistaken seal mandibles for potentially like canine, like wolf or dog.
00:45:03
Speaker
Which is very easy to do, so definitely pretty similar. And again, unless you work in a coastal area, your mind isn't gonna go to seal. For sure, yeah. You find something like it, like in the dead center of the country, like, oh yeah, seal.
00:45:21
Speaker
If it is so, very cool. Yeah, and I guess I'm going to kind of go chunky, but not completely chunky toes, unfortunately, again, sorry. But my number three, again, had to think about what number that was, is the cow humerus.
00:45:40
Speaker
Because it is very chunky and distinctively so. And like I said, I love, I kind of love a humorous, again, the curviness of, you know, the distal ends very aesthetically pleasing, but there's something about a cow humorous. It's just so chunky and stubby and fat that I love. And again, very distinctive. Hashtag chunky arms. Chunky arms. Hashtag arms.
00:46:08
Speaker
chunky front leg. And I guess it kind of has a rolly bit of its own because of how it goes to articulate onto the owner and radius. So yeah, they're just, they're cool. They're, they're just big. And I feel like you could really use them as a weapon if need be. The horse wouldn't be quite chunky as well. Cause I think the distal end is even like chunkier all the way across, like the, the rolly bit.
00:46:35
Speaker
true. I haven't really thought about that. I guess maybe I could just come across Cal, QRI a bit more in like domestic context, but. Number two. I guess it counts. It does. I think it does. It does. I'm going for Antler.
00:46:54
Speaker
Again, probably not the, if you get a small fragment, probably not the easiest to identify two species. I mean, you can roughly like judge it by size. And if you forget about the fallow deer that you don't tend to see as much, aside from specific time periods anyway, be like, can I identify it? Um, but again, I personally like it because I think Antler looks really cool. You also tend to see a lot of butchery and a lot of working on Antler.
00:47:24
Speaker
So it's always very exciting and also implies not necessarily hunting, but at least that people are utilizing wild fauna. That doesn't necessarily mean that they've hunted the animal because for all, you know, they might have just collected shed antler. And in a lot of the case, like that is indeed the case, but it's still pretty cool. Cause it's something that deviates from your usual sort of common domesticates and you go, okay, I got your sheep and your cowra. Oh, and red deer. That's cool.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like for the most part, if you find antler, there's usually something somewhat interesting going on. And obviously antler sheds exists and things like that. But I mean, even, you know, if you're not talking about ritual or anything, plenty of people were able to use antler to work it into tools and things like that. So I feel like in particular, if you're looking at it in a context that has human activity, there's definitely something interesting going on. Although the downside of that, that I find personally is wastage.
00:48:25
Speaker
Some of the antler that gets sawn and discarded, you could have made so many beautiful things with that and you just chucked it in a pit. Unbelievable. I can't wait until time travel exists and the first thing you do is go back in time and start berating people of the past for not utilizing all of the antler. Tell them off for being wasteful.
00:48:50
Speaker
Everyone else doing exciting, incredible things. And where's Simona go? And you're just waggling your finger. Let some people have no idea what you're talking about. Like you're throwing all these things you could have used. We learnt it from you.
00:49:09
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I guess my my number two pick isn't necessarily as interesting. And again, it may be surprising for how I feel about a lot of other bird bone, but I chose the bird tibiotarsis, which I guess is like the opposite of your choice from earlier in that will not really be opposite. It's similar in that it's another kind of bone that's a combination of, you know,
00:49:37
Speaker
bones that would normally be separate in other animals. I guess from the one I've mentioned.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, that is true. Yeah. But I just again, it's the roly bits. It's the bit at the end is like a little like perfect. It looks like the bottom of like a scroll. Oh, it does. Which I just I think that's so delightful. And
Bird Tibiotarsus Appreciation
00:50:00
Speaker
it's again, it's so distinct. And I mean, again, I think I've told this during the podcast, but one of my most proud moments in my PhD was when I was given
00:50:10
Speaker
a bone that was like, oh, this is a human bone we found from sight. And I like looked at it within like 30 seconds. I was like, that's a bird. Because it was a tibiotarsis. And to be fair, it was a very big one. Turned out to be crane. It's like a foot long. And it wasn't even a complete tibiotarsis. So I can understand why, you know, you weren't trained in the archaeology thinking, oh, that's a human bone because it's so big. But it was just like,
00:50:36
Speaker
It's so cool. And it made me very happy to be able to say that. Okay. Shall we get drum rolls in for number one? Yeah. Will that be extremely annoying to have on audio? I'll say I'm trying to drum roll on Basti, but again, it's not carrying. She's just purring. You can, the drum roll can be her purring.
00:51:03
Speaker
There you go.
Astragalus Bones: Aesthetic & Cultural Significance
00:51:06
Speaker
And the number one is for both of us. Yes. Yes, straggle us. All against. That's where the applause starts. Yeah, we should really wait like five minutes for the applause for our listeners to die down. I assume they're giving us standing ovations.
00:51:30
Speaker
We'll give you a couple seconds to sit back down. Thank you so much. We don't have much time. We gotta keep going with the podcast. Sorry, guys. But thank you, thank you, thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you. No, no. Please don't start another round of applause. It's fine. Please, please sit down. Please. We need to finish this episode. OK, I think we're sorted. Oof. Yes.
00:51:56
Speaker
Although, to be fair, I said a stratagilist of any species, but you wrote a, especially a specific species. Yes, especially the bovidae, mostly cattle and sheep, because they look like little toy cars. And it's our favourite, we just talked about all the time, they're little toy cars. It's so adorable. And again, you know, they're pretty, they're very dense, so they preserve very well, usually intact.
00:52:24
Speaker
While you don't necessarily see that sort in the everyday archaeological record, from an ethnographic point of view, there's a lot of very interesting sort of customs and folklore associated with a stragglei. Whether you have some that in some cultures are kept as talismans or some are used for divination purposes. I think like sometimes different species are used to predict
00:52:49
Speaker
the future of something, whether it's people or the chieftain, or they'll use a different set of a straggle from a different species. Archaeologically, from an ID point of view, aesthetic point of view, ethnographic point of view, just very aesthetically pleasing and fascinating.
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think that hits all of the key points that we've made in terms of our favorite. Bones, slightly pleasing, easy ID, so it makes our lives easier and just interesting in a broader sense. And I think that's a great way to wrap up our 50th episode celebration.
00:53:29
Speaker
Thanks to everyone who's been listening this long, who may have just joined us and are really confused about all the weird jokes that we've made this entire episode. Go back and you can listen to more. And you can find all of our episodes either on the archaeology podcast network website. You can find them anywhere you get your podcasts.
00:53:49
Speaker
If you are getting them from a platform, feel free to, you know, follow our podcast, leave a review. We always love that. We are on Twitter at Arceo animals. Like we said, let us know what your favorite and least favorite animal bones are. And, um, I think that's it. Anything else? Yeah. So I thank you for listening and see you, uh, see you next time. Yeah. See you in the next 50 episodes, I guess. Maybe we'll see.
00:54:20
Speaker
Bye. 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 RQ podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:54:53
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.