Quantitative Paleozoology / Edition 1

by R. Lee Lyman

Overview

Quantitative Paleozoology describes and illustrates how the remains of long-dead animals recovered from archaeological and paleontological excavations can be studied and analyzed. The methods range from determining how many animals of each species are represented to determining whether one collection consists of more broken and more burned bones than another. All methods are described and illustrated with data from real collections, while numerous graphs illustrate various quantitative properties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521715362
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2008
Series:	Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	7.01(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

R. Lee Lyman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. A scholar of late Quaternary paleomammology and human prehistory of the Pacific Northwest United States, he is the author of Vertebrate Taphonomy and most recently coedited Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology.

Table of Contents

1. Tallying and counting: fundamentals; 2. Estimating taxonomic abundances: NISP and MNI; 3. Estimating taxonomic abundances: other methods; 4. Sampling, recovery, and sample size; 5. Measuring the taxonomic structure and composition ('diversity') of faunas; 6. Skeletal completeness, frequencies of skeletal parts, and fragmentation; 7. Tallying for taphonomy: weathering, burning, corrosion, butchering; 8. Final thoughts.

Editorial Reviews

"Quantitative Paleozoology is practical and useful, and does exactly what it is meant to do-provide a clearly-organized and well-cited reference manual that both students and professionals in zooarchaeology and paleontology (collectively referred to as 'paleozoology') can pick up, understand, and implement." --PaleoAnthropology

From the Publisher