Archaeological Refuse Fauna in Finland: Understanding the Role of Bone Combustion

Abstract

The reconstruction of Stone Age subsistence in Finland is almost solely based on the study of burned bone assemblages from settlement sites. Seal bones dominate Stone Age refuse fauna while bird and fish bones are almost absent. The problem of the absence of bird and fish bones has been acknowledged, but so far the dominance of seal bone has been taken as a sign of (specialized) seal hunting as the main subsistence activity. In this article we question the use of archaeological refuse fauna as the single basis for the study of hunter-gatherer subsistence. We conducted a series of experiments to test how interspecies differences in bone characteristics may bias our current understanding of Finnish prehistoric subsistence. Our preliminary results clearly show interspecies differences in bone combustion qualities and in bone preservation. Further structural and densitometric analyses reveal significant differences in the medullary cavity of seal vs. terrestrial mammal bones. Our results also open new perspectives concerning the use of bone as an additional fuel source in prehistoric hearths.

Using a 3-stage burning categorization to assess post-depositional degradation of archaeofaunal assemblages: Some observations based on multiple prehistoric sites in Australasia

“…Two kinds of contexts that are notoriously bad for long term preservation of even the most mineralized animal tissues are areas with acidic soils and/or moist tropical environments. In these conditions the destruction of buried bones and teeth appears to be so rapid that archaeologists may recover little if any faunal remains in their excavations (Clute and Waselkov, 2002, Fitzhugh, 1978, Logan and Tuck, 1990, Storck and Spiess, 1994, Vaneeckhout et al, 2013. In most other contexts, post-depositional modification and breakdown occurs at a generally slower rate, such that bones and teeth may survive for decades or centuries in more exposed conditions such as slope or floodplain deposits, and for millennia in more protected locations such as rockshelters.…”

Early Evidence for Northern Salmonid Fisheries Discovered using Novel Mineral Proxies

“…1A and Supplementary Information 1A,B). This scarcity is thought to result from the loss of fish bones to animal scavenging, the return of remains to water, ceremonial cremation, disposal by burning, and low resolution archaeological recovery methods 6–12 . Post-depositional dissolution owing to the prevailing acidic nature of regional soils and sediments is another major reason for the paucity of ancient salmonid bone in the north 7,8 .…”

“…At River Kemijoki in south Lapland, for example, several hundred tons of salmonid were harvested seasonally throughout the 17 th and 18 th centuries 15 . Much less is understood about the use of salmonid resources further back in time 8–12 . Only six morphologically classifiable Atlantic salmonid bones have been recovered from the thousands of sites dating to the (Sub-) Neolithic (typically referred to as non-agricultural Neolithic or pottery Mesolithic, ca.…”

“…They are of limited use in situations where highly burned bone fragments dominate faunal assemblages, as these specimens lack the collagen needed for the aforementioned analyses. Such is the case in Finland, where the disposal of bone refuse in domestic fires is thought to have been a wide-spread waste management strategy throughout prehistory 11,12 . Burned fish bone fragments, however, may be preserved in the sediments comprising these combustion features.…”

The Use of Animal Bone as Fuel in the Third Millennium BC Walled Enclosure of Castanheiro do Vento (Northern Portugal)

“…The development of these experimental studies have focused mainly on the meaning of thermally manipulated faunal assemblages dated from Pleistocene archaeological contexts (Théry-Parisot, 2002;Villa et al, 2002;Costamagno et al, 2005;Yravedra et al, 2005;Glazewski, 2006;Costamagno et al, 2009;Dibble et al, 2009;Marquer et al, 2009;Nabais, 2011;Uzquiano et al, 2012;Vaneeckhout et al, 2013;Yravedra & Uzquiano, 2013), but it is not common to apply these models on faunal assemblages dating to recent prehistory, in spite of the knowledge of the combustibility of bones attested in historical times and still used in some traditional societies Crass et al, 2011).…”