I.4 - Animals Used for Food in the Past: As Seen by Their Remains Excavated from Archaeological Sites

Summary

Animal remains excavated from archaeological sites are, to a large extent, the remnants of animals that were used for food. These remains include the fragmentary bones and teeth of vertebrates, the shells of mollusks, the tests of echinoderms, and the exoskeletal chitin of crustacea and insects. As with all archaeological remains, they represent discarded fragments of a previous way of life.

Organic remains are particularly subject to losses from the archaeological record, through the destructive nature of food preparation and consumption, the scavenging of refuse by other animals, and the deterioration that results from mechanical and chemical forces over time. Other losses come through excavation with inappropriate sieving strategies in which the remains of smaller individuals or species are lost. Nonetheless, despite all of these opportunities for the loss and destruction of organic material, animal remains constitute a major class of the archaeological remains from most sites and in some sites, such as shell mounds, they are the most obvious of the remains. However, even among those remains that are preserved, care must be taken in evaluating the extent to which they may represent a contribution to the prehistoric diet.

One reason for such caution is that all remains recovered are not necessarily those of animals that were consumed. For example, along the Gulf coast of Mexico, dogs were definitely eaten and probably even raised for food (Wing 1978). Their remains were often burned, disarticulated, and associated with those of other food remains. But in the West Indies, complete or nearly complete skeletons of dogs are found in burials and they are rarely associated with midden refuse, suggesting that dogs were not a regular item in the diet (Wing 1991).