Wait, I Don’t Get To Dig Up Dinosaurs?


Archeology is a discipline often shrouded in myth from popular culture. Characters such as Indiana Jones and Movies like The Mummy tend to lead people to associate archeology with the discovery and analysis of human remains. While human remains are undoubtedly interesting, there is a huge amount of information to be gleaned from animal bones discovered at archeological sites.

In fact, there is an entire discipline devoted to the study of these bones:  Zooarchaeology. This include the study of bones, scales, shells, and even hair. Basically anything that at one point belonged to an animal. Bones and shells are the most studied, generally because they preserve the best in the archeological record. It is important to understand the differences between zooarchaeology and paleontology. Often thanks to popular culture the two different disciplines are easily confused. Both study animals of the past, however the difference lies in the fact that archeologists study animal remains as a function of their relationships to a human past. Paleontologists study bones as a function of their relationship to the history of life on earth as a whole, not just human.

Even without dinosaur bones, there is plenty of variety to be uncovered at archeological sites. The bones of animals are often recovered in large quantities.  I saw this first hand during an archeology lab exercise this week, where my task was to assist in the reorganization of a variety of artifacts and ecofacts from a site in Annapolis, Maryland. Some of these items happened to be large bags consisting of a jumble of bone and fragments, that looked something like the below image.

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Animal bones found at archeological sites could belong to domesticated herds, they could belong to pets, or wild animals hunted for food, or they could belong to pests such as rats and mice. So why does it matter. Why should we bother to separate out what type of animal each tiny piece of bone belonged to?

Studying animal bones provides knowledge about how people might have interacted with animals in the past. We have learned through bones such as these about what animal previous humans farmed, which they kept as pets and even which they chose to worship and/or sacrifice for religious purposes. Also from studying these bones archeologists can find indicators about the tools used in the past. Cut marks on the bone, can provide hints to the tools used to kill and butcher animals that did not die a natural death. The bones of small mammals such as rodents and birds, can even provide clues to the environment surrounding the exploratory site.

While there is no denying that the discovery of human skeletons tends to excite public interest, in many ways the tiniest rodent bone can provide just as much if not more information about the way those studied lived. Our relationship to animals and our manipulation of the environment has remained an important force throughout human history.

Works Cited:

Ashore, W.J., and Sharer, R.J., Discovering Our Past: A brief introduction to Archeology. 6th Edition.

Sometimes You Have To Dive Right In.

When one hears the world archeology, (one unknowledgeable or untrained in the discipline anyway), images of Egyptian pyramids and cities filled with treasure buried in the jungle come to mind. But the real “treasure” of archeology of course, is what the artifacts that remain after a civilization is long gone, tell us about the culture and history of the people who left them behind, in ways that the written record simply cannot.

You may be surprised to learn that some archeologists never even put shovel to earth.   Joseph Zarzynski is just such an archeologist.  A soft-spoken, balding man with an infectious grin, he maps and explores the sea bottom.  Yet, the fascinating artifacts he uncovers rival anything found in a subterranean vault.Zarzynski

Zarzynski spoke with our class about his team’s investigation of sunken ships in Lake George, left behind during the French and Indian Wars of the 18th century. One must understand that Zarzynski and his team did not just arbitrarily decide to explore Lake George.   First they undertook a comprehensive examination of the history of that period.   Apparently, during that time period waterways such as Lake George were a source of transport and trade as well as home to a variety of military encampments.  Often vessels were purposely sunk in the shallows ahead of the coming winter to prevent opposing troops from utilizing or burning them. Then, using the scientific method, they formulated a research question, decided the best way to explore their question, acquired and processed data, and then analyzed and interpreted the data.  Their chosen site still was not easy to explore due to the many administrative headaches they encountered in acquiring permits for their dives.

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What they ultimately found in Lake George was an intact radeux, (French for raft), which had been intentionally sunk. However the depth of the lake that area was too deep to make raising the raft feasible in the 1700s.  Thus, this  52 foot long,  82 foot wide floating gun battery known as the “Land Tortoise” was still there to be found in 1990; the earliest known warship of its kind.  The “raft” contained no gold doubloons or six headed statues, and in fact, the ship was never even raised, but it contained provided priceless information about the time period when it was created.

blog photo 4 The discovery of the Land Tortoise lead to the creation of the 1987 Abandoned Shipwreck Act, and the New York State Submerged Heritage Preserves. In fact, in 1998, the Land Tortoise was declared a National Historic Landmark.   Better than any book about the period, the maps and photographs captured by Zarzynski and his team, bring alive that time in history when Lake George was a site of war instead of a picturesque tourist destination. That is what real archeology does.