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Data Quality in Zooarchaeological Faunal Identification

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Abstract

There is no standard for reporting faunal identifications in zooarchaeology. Zooarchaeologists are open to accusations that reported conclusions are invalid. Other sciences counter such problems through use of quality assurance, consisting of quality control (QC), and assessment (QA). QC is a standard for procedures adopted during laboratory practice. A rarely cited standard was published by Driver in 1992. QA focuses on criteria for faunal identification and is becoming more common in zooarchaeology. QC and QA must be integral parts of zooarchaeology if identifications are to be accepted. The stakes are high because paleobiological datasets are now used to study problems in conservation science.

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Notes

  1. Here, “taxa” refers generally to species. However, it could refer to genera, families, or higher-order taxa, as at times it is not possible to distinguish between them when studying fragmentary remains (e.g., post-cranial remains of Antilocapra and Odocoileus, or skeletal remains of multiple genera and families of marine or freshwater fishes). Throughout the paper, the seemingly imprecise use of the terms taxa and taxon are meant to reflect that identification of zooarchaeological remains is often imprecise and should be conservative.

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to Jon Driver and Lee Lyman for offering good ideas and for helping in assembling background literature. Thank you to Chris Darwent for not giving up on the Fryxell Award regarding Lee Lyman; I appreciate Chris’s, Virginia Butler’s, and Mike O’Brien’s organization of the session and the volume. Barney Venables taught me about QA and QC in the context of analytical environmental chemistry. Four reviewers provided helpful comments; thanks especially to Ken Gobalet and Torrey Rick. Finally, thanks to Lee for all of the help, support, and guidance over the years. Mass spectrum and peptide sequence data for Fig. 1 were generated with funding from NSF Archaeometry Technical Development grants nos. 0822196 and 0905020.

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    Steve Wolverton

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Wolverton, S. Data Quality in Zooarchaeological Faunal Identification. J Archaeol Method Theory 20, 381–396 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-012-9161-4

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