The Science of Discovering the Past: Zooarchaeology
Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/are-humans-animals
Animals have held an important role in the development of hominids for a very long time, from a source of food to a measure of wealth to companionship. Zooarchaeology or archaeozoology is the study of how hominids have interacted with animals and used their byproducts, such as bones, shells, hair, and hides. It combines the fields of anthropology, paleontology, ecology, and archaeology to understand how hominids interacted with animals in the past, their diets, and the process of domestication, as well as rituals and tool usage.
By Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35011213
Zooarchaology studies questions such as the diet of animals used for food, which animals and how much of those animals hominids ate, was there a gendered difference in obtaining or availability of animal products, and what was the environment like for those animals. They study hunter-gatherer societies through settled societies and how humans have impacted animals as they were domesticated through the process.
By Mikelzubi - Mikel Zubimendi, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3851571
Most of the time, the remains that zooarchaologists study are found in midden pits. This places zooarchaology within the general field of garbology. Sometimes there's a combination of wild and domesticated animals within these remains, showing that humans used both hunting and herding as sources of protein. Zooarchaologists must be familiar with taphonomy, which is the study of how organisms decay and fossilize, including the conditions that help preserve remains, and being able to distinguish between human-created damage and damage from non-human animals or environmental weathering. They also need to know how bones are arranged in animals that humans interacted with, erring on the side of being too general to avoid incorrect identification. A knowledge of zoological osteology, how various animals' bones develop over their lifetimes, is also helpful to age the animal bones. Studying how animal teeth have worn down also gives evidence of their diet, as does their enamel, giving some evidence to how they were cared for, or what the environment was like around where they and the hominids who ate them.
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For animal remains that are recent enough to have DNA that can be sequenced are often analyzed, though special procedures are needed to ensure that modern DNA doesn't contaminate the samples retrieved from the bones, such as bleaching the surfaces and the use of personal protective equipment before the bone is drilled into a powder that allows the extraction of DNA from it. The bones can also be sent through mass spectrometry to identify the animal species as there are differences in the collagen structures in various types of animals, a type of 'fingerprint'.
