An introduction to the field of Zooarchaeology

 Zooarchaeology is both a field of study on its own, and a subcategory of the vast field that Archaeology is. Zooarchaeology plays an important role in todays excavations and interpretations of the past, but what is Zooarchaeology? And why is it an important tool in Archaeology? 

Reitz and Wing (2008, p. 1) has defined Zooarchaeology as “The study of animal remains excavated from archaeological sites to understand the relationship between humans and their environment(s), especially between humans and other animal populations”.

The presence of certain species at a site
can tell us about climate, dietary habits, 
and potentially also cultural and societal 
conditions. 

Archaeology is often defined as the study of material remains from human activities to understand the past and past cultures. Zooarchaeology focuses primarily on the animal remains from human activities and other related activities to understand the past.

Why are animals also an important piece of the archaeological field? The importance of animals in archaeology lies in the fact that they provide several important key parts of societies. They give us companionship, food, raw materials for goods for personal use and trade, they can be symbols of power, play a part in the religious practices, transportations and more. The animals even helped us become more resilient to certain diseases when we domesticated them (Reitz and Wing, 2008).

The animals are an important part of the past. In order for us to fully understand the material remains from past civilizations, we need to know more about the material. That is why we use Zooarchaeology in the field of Archaeology. Zooarchaeology looks closer at the animals remains that might other ways have been put aside and overlooked. 

Some examples of the direction the approaches one can use in Zooarchaeology can have, are: focus on the diversity of the faunal assemblage and why it is so, a more osteology oriented point of view, how the human’s usage of the animals have changed over time and how the species might have changed as a result of this. 

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Further reading

Reitz, E.J. & Wing, E.S. (2008) Zooarchaeology. Second Edition. New York, Cambridge University Press.