ANTH 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Mount Vesuvius, Pumice
7 Oct 2020
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Document Summary
Small bones and thin parts of large bones (cancellous and thin cortical bones) Cannot be assumed that where the artifact was found, is where it was used. Can influence the composition or arrangement of materials before they"re incorporated in a deposit. People sweep up material and discard elsewhere. People pick up materials and reuse them. (trash pills) can be found at many sites. Objects can be moved from original position in soil: earthworms, rodents, freeze-thaw cycles, erosion. Not everything in a deposit is taken from the field. Excavation methods determine what is found: without screening, small items can be lost, before flotation was introduced in the 1960s, small seeds and bones were routinely missed. Everything taken from the field is not saved. Particularly early collections have not survived intact because they were discarded or lost provenience through neglect. Sometimes only part of a collection is deemed worth saving: such as crania at the expense of other bones.
