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NISP, Bone Fragmentation, and the Measurement of Taxonomic Abundance

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Abstract

Zooarchaeologists have long recognized that the number of identified specimens (NISP) is dependent on the degree to which bones are fragmented, but attempts are rarely made to control for the effects of fragmentation on NISP. This paper provides insight into those effects by presenting both a formal model of the relationship between NISP and fragmentation and experimental data on that relationship. The experimental data have practical implications regarding the effectiveness of potential measures of bone fragmentation, suggesting that specimen size—which can be determined easily through digital image analysis—is more useful than other variables that have been or might be used as fragmentation measures.

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Notes

  1. A proof of this, for the simple case where ε = 1 (in which case the math is relatively tractable), is that the first derivative of the NISP function will equal 0 when F = β/2 + 1/2σ and that it will be positive at lower values of F and negative at higher values of F (i.e., the NISP function will be “upside-down U-shaped” with a maximum where F = β/2 + 1/2σ).

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Acknowledgments

I am tremendously grateful to Nicci Barger, who provided tireless assistance with the bone crusher experiment and digital image analysis. I also thank the students in my zooarchaeology course at California State University, Long Beach, who helped with the analysis of the fauna from the Stailey site, and Carl Lipo, who suggested the use of ImageJ. Steve Wolverton and two anonymous reviewers provided very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, I thank Virginia Butler, Chris Darwent, and Michael O’Brien for their invitation to participate in the Fryxell Symposium in honor of Lee Lyman in which a version of this paper was presented, and I thank Lee himself for his innumerable, thought-provoking contributions to the field of zooarchaeology.

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  1. SWCA Environmental Consultants, 257 East 200 South, Suite 200, Salt Lake City, UT, 84111, USA

    Michael D. Cannon

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Correspondence to Michael D. Cannon.

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Cannon, M.D. NISP, Bone Fragmentation, and the Measurement of Taxonomic Abundance. J Archaeol Method Theory 20, 397–419 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-012-9166-z

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