On Villages, Quantification, and Appropriate Context: A Comment on “Social Zooarchaeology of a Northwest Coast House” by Paul A. Ewonus

Grier, Colin; Lukowski, Susan

doi:10.1080/15564894.2012.683513

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Comparison of taxonomic abundance within and between sites is accomplished using NISP proportions. Live weight at maturity (Grier and Lukowski, 2012: 432) or other meat weight figures are less appropriate in these assessments. In relation to fish species, for example, issues of intraspecific life history and geographic size variation, determination of average live weight for ancient populations, and reduced sample sizes required to ensure comparability indicate that NISP is more robust in evaluating relative abundance (see Ewonus, 2012: 439–441).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing internal household relationships and site use

Ewonus

2017

North American Archaeologist

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Zooarchaeological analysis is employed to determine the nature of social relationships within a Pacific Northwest Coast post-and-beam house dated to c. AD 200–650. Evaluation of faunal distribution patterns indicates that House 2 at the Dionisio Point site was occupied by a social group characterized by relative equality, rather than marked status differences. This provides an alternative, with a shift in emphasis, to initial interpretations. The implications include a House 2 household consisted of comparatively egalitarian, likely multi-lineage families that were members of an aggregate village. In the context of regional village settlement, these findings support the interpretation of site inhabitation focused on early spring to summer. The Dionisio Point data reflect the variation in Northwest Coast household composition. For studies of social organization within large households in other periods and places, the indication is that variability may exist but remain hidden from view until several sources of material evidence become available.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I have interpreted Dionisio Point as a spring to summer aggregate village (Ewonus, 2011a, 2012; Ewonus et al., 2011), while Grier et al. (2013) and Grier and Lukowski (2012) have suggested that the site was a winter-focused village. Multiple lineages would be represented within an aggregate village.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing internal household relationships and site use

Ewonus

2017

North American Archaeologist

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“…The category 'non-salmonid' was used to tally unidentifiable vertebra fragments that were definitively not from salmonids in an effort to counter the potential over-documentation of salmon specimens, which can be easily identified to genus from very small vertebra fragments (e.g. Casteel, 1976;Ewonus, 2011;Grier and Lukowski, 2012). The primary counting units used for fish faunal analysis were NISP and number of specimens (NSP), which includes all remains assigned to fish, including unidentified fish and non-salmonid.…”

Section: Original Analysis Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing reproducibility in faunal analysis using blind tests: A case study from northwestern North America

Nims

Butler

2017

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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Zooarchaeologists have long recognized that assigning taxonomic identifications to animal remains is a subjective process, and recent studies have highlighted the need for data quality assurance standards in archaeofaunal research. Our study contributes to this growing interest in quality assurance by presenting simple quantitative methods for assessing reliability in analytic results through blind reanalysis of animal remains that we developed during analysis of fishbone from Tse-whit-zen, a large Native American village on the coast of Washington State, U.S.A. Given the large scale of the Tse-whitzen project-over 112,000 fish remains were documented by five different analysts over three yearsthere was a real possibility that inconsistencies in laboratory practices affected analytic results (e.g., number of identified specimens, taxa present and relative abundance, elements identified, burning frequencies). To evaluate the overall reliability of the Tse-whit-zen fishbone data, and the possibility of "protocol drift"-changes in how specimens and bone modifications were identified over the course of analysis-we reanalyzed samples of fish remains that were previously documented during three discrete stages (beginning, middle, and end) of the Tse-whit-zen project. The original data and the reanalysis results show close agreement in each stage, with only minor differences in the numbers of recorded specimens, taxonomic representation at family-and finer taxonomic levels, and body part representation assessed for a single taxonomic order. Identifying burning on bone was not very reliable. Reliability studies such as this are useful for highlighting ambiguous identification criteria (e.g., in taxonomic assignment, bone modification), and could stimulate dialog among researchers about ways to address such issues in future studies. Increasing the implementation of these, and other, widely applicable quality control methods should improve zooarchaeological data quality and stimulate further research on quality assurance in archaeology overall.

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