Abstract
As stipulated in Chapter 3, contemporary observations are a rich source of knowledge about functional properties of the animal remains that zooarchaeologists study. This chapter reviews intrinsic properties of bone as a living tissue, which exist because of the evolutionary histories and specific life circumstances of individual vertebrates. Zooarchaeologists can use such inherent features to infer the age, sex, season of death of an animal, and to understand peri- and postmortem modifications to skeletal elements. This chapter outlines the origins and histology of bone tissue, bone tissue micro-architecture, macroscopic structural variants, and shape-based bone classifications, as well as pathways of bone growth and development. It briefly describes the histology of teeth and their growth and morphology in mammals. A knowledge of these traits of living organisms permits a more systematic understanding of those qualities of animal bodies that attract humans and strongly determine the condition of archaeofaunal specimens.
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Gifford-Gonzalez, D. (2018). Bone and Vertebrate Bodies as Uniformitarian Materials. In: An Introduction to Zooarchaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65682-3_4
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