Apart from being a faunal manual, Animal bones in Australian archaeology focuses on important issues in zooarchaeology. The first involves the examination of the foraging economies of people living in Australia. Both Aboriginal Australians and European settlers exploited native fauna for food, though in different ways. And both before and after the arrival of Europeans, animals were brought to different parts of the continent by humans; certainly at least the dingo in pre-historic times and a myriad of mammals, birds, and reptiles in historic times. Human predation and the introduction of exotic animals had demonstrable impacts on Australian ecosystems, and there were probably more impacts than have been demonstrated.
But the economic actions of early peoples not only transform environments, they also reveal the resources available to and selected by the people in those environments. Archaeologists are therefore able to study assemblages of animal bones to reconstruct the kinds of hunting or domestication that took place in the past. For decades scientists of many flavours, including archaeologists, have debated the history of hunting in Australia: pondering what contribution human hunting made to the extinction of the last giant marsupials, and hypothesising trends towards focused, almost single-species hunting systems during some periods, as well as trends towards a broad spectrum of hunting in other times and places. At least initially, such investigations demand a knowledge of the diversity of animals represented by the bones found in archaeological assemblages. This knowledge has traditionally been developed and utilised by archaeologists who had the skills to identify the species from which each bone had come and could thus compile a list of all animals represented by any collection of bones.
However, reconstructing ancient economic activities ultimately requires much more information than a list of species. Many powerful reconstructions of hunting activities have been based on the particular combinations of animal name (the taxon) and the body part (the element) found at a site, allowing archaeologists to study phenomena such as which animal species were carried back whole, and which were butchered immediately and portions (elements) carried away selectively. Additional analyses are needed to characterise more complex qualities of hunting strategies, such as the hunter’s selection of prey age and sex or the season of their capture – but even those measurements are often specific to taxa and so must be built upon accurate identification of the animal species.
The capacity to identify animal remains not only offers insights into earlier economies but also reveals the extent to which an archaeological deposit preserves a reliable record of past events. Like all forensic researchers, archaeologists are aware of the effects of contaminants. For example, the identification of the bones of a species introduced in the historical period alerts archaeologists to one of two situations. Either the layer being excavated dates to recent centuries or the bones have intruded into prehistoric levels and reveal disturbance. Certainly the ability to recognise the bones of burrowing introduced animals, such as rabbits, enables archaeologists to identify the formational history of their site and diagnose the appropriate chronological scale for their economic interpretations.
Another issue raised in this book is the necessity for accuracy in archaeological data collection. In faunal analysis the correctness of identification of taxon and element is critical for the sorts of interpretations already mentioned. Of course there are research specialists who are highly trained in recognising bones and who can accurately identify animals from even small, damaged fragments of their skeletons. But such specialists are few and they cannot be with every team in the field or in every laboratory as bones are examined. Animal bones in Australian archaeology will guide non-specialists, including archaeology graduates, other professionals, and even the broader public, in interpreting unexpected bones. In the field, archaeologists, police and even farm and construction workers may have to make important interpretations about bones they encounter: whether it is human or non-human, native or introduced as part of the faunal suite from the historical period, and so on. Having systematic keys to guide the classificatory inference will enhance their ability to unlock information about past events. Specialists may still be employed to assess the interpretations, but by using Animal bones in Australian archaeology field researchers will have a clearer sense of their findings.
Beyond the practical uses of this manual, there is a larger question. How do archaeologists transmit information to the next generation? Specifically, how are future faunal specialists and field archaeologists trained? The answer is that students must learn, apprentice-like, from experts in the discipline: experienced practitioners in universities and in private enterprise. This answer, while true, omits any description of how the teaching can be effective. Traditionally, apprentice archaeologists sit for prolonged periods in laboratories filled with specimens, and academic teachers of archaeology understand that there is no substitute for handling the material objects. In many sub-specialities of archaeology that laboratory training is scaffolded and enhanced by texts that explain how practitioners make their decisions and illustrate what features are most significant for classifying and understanding the objects. Archaeology students learning how to identify different categories of ceramics or glass or stone artefacts have long had a variety of such texts to assist them.
This has not been the case for students learning how to identify Australian animals. While there have been a few published guides to identifying animals from specific sites or regions there has been no broadly applicable manual of the kind represented in this book, and while some academics have prepared handouts for their students they have not been broadly available and easily followed. This book will be used to train students in laboratories across the country, and those students will find it has continuing value when they graduate and practise archaeology. Animal bones in Australian archaeology will guide researchers, consultants, and a generation of university students in their quest to accurately identify the animals whose bones they study.
Peter Hiscock
November 2015