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Success In Identification Of Experimentally Fragmented Limb Bone Shafts: Implications For Estimates Of Skeletal Element Abundance In Archaeofaunas, Travis Rayne Pickering, Charles P. Egeland, Amy G. Schnell, Daniel L. Osborne, Jake Enk

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

A strong pattern of high hindlimb representation (especially tibiae) was recognized in our survey of zooarchaeological analyses that included limb bone shafts in estimates of element abundance in assemblages from the Old and New Worlds, from widely spread time periods and with various hominid species that acted as bone accumulators. Inter-element differences in bone mineral density and carcass transport behavior by hominids do not explain the pattern satisfactorily. We hypothesized that shaft fragments of hindlimb elements (especially tibiae) might be more “intrinsically identifiable” than are fragments from other limb bones, and constructed an experiment to test this idea. Whole limb …