Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Destruction Of Skeletal Elements By Carnivores: The Growth Of A General Model For Skeletal Element Destruction And Survival In Zooarchaeological Assemblages, Naomi Cleghorn, Curtis W. Marean

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications

In the 1960s, Brain published on a series of taphonomic studies in which he observed the destruction of goat bones by pastoralists and domestic dogs. Those studies were notable and novel for a variety of reasons: 1) the attempt to control for complex parameters through the use of what we now recognize as experimental and naturalistic actualism, 2) documentation of the destructive impact on skeletal element abundance by secondary carnivore consumers, and 3) the attempt to understand the mechanical aspects of this process, and thus establish the foundation for justifiable uniformitarianism. This work set the stage for a proliferation of …