A photographic atlas for European freshwater and migratory fish remains and key considerations for their analysis

Abstract

Identification of archeological fish remains requires the use of comparative reference materials, generally in the form of disarticulated fish skeletons. Photographic or illustrative atlases provide an additional resource for the analysis of fish remains. Photographic resources exist for many marine species and for specific geographic regions, whereas freshwater European species have not been covered in great detail. Here, we present a photographic atlas for the bones of freshwater and migratory fish commonly recovered from archeological sites in Central Europe, alongside a discussion of the difficulties and considerations for the analysis of freshwater fish remains. The atlas also highlights the morphological similarity of many species and the interpretive limits of freshwater fish assemblages. The atlas aims to act as an accessible and user‐friendly resource, which can be used for basic identification purposes when access to physical collections is not possible, to supplement pre‐existing collections, or for training purposes. This paper acts as a platform from which the full atlas can be downloaded.

Osteoarchaeological identification guides: A new category of manuscript

“…They also demonstrate the reliability of identified morphological criteria (e.g., Lister, 1996) and can also extend the taxonomic range from what is represented in some individual reference collections (Davis et al, 2024;Yeomans & Beech, 2021). As such, high-quality illustrated guides can broaden the utility of some comparative collections, which due to resource limitations do not have sufficient intra-species variation (Driver, 1992).…”

“…This format is intended to be flexible and author-friendly, for example whether the study aims to provide comparative criteria for separating between two skeletally similar species (e.g., Lister, 1996), the same element across multiple taxa (e.g., Bochenski et al, 2023), or a more comprehensive photographic atlas approach (e.g., Davis et al, 2024). Authors may wish to include other dimensions, such as testing the criteria on archaeological material, the list(s) of specimens consulted to produce the illustrations (Lyman, 2019), or commentary on identification tools and practice (Yeomans & Beech, 2021), as appropriate, to support the delivery of impactful research that is useful to the zooarchaeological community.…”