ANTH 2303 Lecture 29: 11-16-2016 Subsistence Analysis
7 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Two types of evidence for determining subsistence: direct the food items themselves, indirect tools and modifications to landscape, ecological evidence, most notably pollen. Two categories of subsistence: faunal remains animals, floral remains plants. Matrix of the two types of evidence and the two categories of subsistence: indirect faunal evidence. Knives (if you can identify that they were used for faunal subsistence: direct faunal analytic technique. Mni minimum number of individuals, determined by counting the frequency of common/shared skeletal elements for each species: 18 rib rib fragment, 3 left femur fragments, 1 right ulna fragment. Problem with this method: the assumption is that the whole animal is consumed, which is not how people normally eat, this is not typical of states but for a big man society or a chiefdom it is possible. Skeletal allometry ratio of flesh to bone for each species, used to get around the problem of mni.
