There's something fishy going on around here

Gargett, Robert H.; Vale, Deborah

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2004.11.003

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The absence of smaller fish bones is partly due to the larger sieve sizes used in the Singer and Wymer excavations (¼ inch for Howieson's Poort material and ½ inch screens for the rest, as opposed to the 2 and 3mm sieves used in Deacon's excavation) (Singer and Wymer 1982). A large sieve size can result in considerable loss of material as fish and other small faunal remains pass through the sieve (Erlandson 2001;Gargett and Vale 2005;Gobalet 2005;Vale and Gargett 2002). In several instances only samples of finds were retained (Voigt 1982), and vertebrate fauna that were considered taxonomically unidentifiable were discarded during preliminary sorting in the field (Klein 1976).…”

Section: U N I V E R S I T Y O F Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine fish exploitation during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa

Niekerk¹

2011

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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access to the Blombos Cave and Blombosfontein 1 and 6 materials and to Hilary Deacon for access to the Klasies River main site fish remains. Sarah Wurz and Petro Keene were very helpful with regards to access of material curated at the IZIKO South African Museum, for which I am grateful, and it was a pleasure working with both of them.Thanks are due to Paul Cowley from the South African Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB) who very kindly and with considerable effort supplied me with a number of species that were lacking from my comparative collection. Special thanks to Nicholas Henshilwood and Morgan Wilson for their enthusiastic help in augmenting the comparative collection with their fishing expeditions. Drs P. and E. Heemstra, along with the publications department of the SAIAB, kindly gave me permission to use the illustrations of the fish species from their book (2004) Coastal Fishes of Southern Africa.

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Section: U N I V E R S I T Y O F Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine fish exploitation during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa

Niekerk¹

2011

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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“…It is important to investigate whether Australian mammals have skeletal characteristics that make them susceptible to biases from particular recovery methods that differ from those shown by faunas elsewhere. While differential recovery of fish remains has been investigated in Australia (Vale and Gargett 2002;Gargett and Vale 2005), mammals have not been similarly considered. As faunas differ between continents, differences in skeletal mor phology may cause different recovery biases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental investigation of differential recovery of native rodent remains from Australian palaeontological and archaeological deposits

Baynes¹,

Piper²,

Thorn³

2019

Rec West Aust Mus

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Quaternary palaeontologists are often asked to identify and interpret faunal remains from archaeological excavations. It is therefore vital that both palaeontologists and archaeologists understand the limitations imposed by recovery methods, especially sieves. Fossil small mammals, particularly rodents, in Australian archaeological deposits are very significant sources of palaeoenvironmental information. Over the last half century, recovery techniques used by archaeologists in Australia have ranged from dry screening with 10 mm sieves to wet screening with nested sieves graded down to 1 mm. Nested 6 and 3 mm sieves have been a popular combination. Experimental investigations, using owl-accumulated mammal remains from two caves, show that sieves of 2 or even 3 mm (the metric equivalent of 1/8th inch) are fine enough to recover most of the dissociated complete jaw bones used to identify Australian native rodents (all Muridae). But they fail to retain first molar teeth that have become dissociated from the jaws by pre-depositional fragmentation, predator digestion or damage during excavation. A 1.63 mm sieve (the approximate metric equivalent of 1/16th inch) differentially recovers all isolated first molars of Australian ratsized rodents, but not small mice, or some first molars of large mouse species. Our results show that differential recovery statistically significantly biases the relative abundances of rodent species retained on a sieve, although there is considerable inter-species variability. The diagonal dimension of the mesh aperture is confirmed to be at least as important as the side dimension in determining what is lost through a sieve. The demographic structure of species can also be biased by differential loss of isolated molars from the youngest individuals, but only in species whose molar dimensions precisely span the threshold of retention on a particular sieve size. Some data suggest that a greater proportion of small objects will be lost through a sieve when immersed in water, than with sprayed water wet sieving or dry screening. Because highly fragmented faunal materials are characteristic of many Australian archaeological deposits, complete recovery of isolated first molars is essential for detection and identification of rodent species to produce the comprehensive assemblages needed for valid comparisons with accumulations by single predators such as owls, and for the multivariate analyses used in palaeoenvironmental interpretations. Complete recovery of first molars of Australian rodents requires a sieve mesh aperture no larger than 1 mm square. A recent archaeological collection made with such methodology provides an opportunity to demonstrate that a more meticulous standard is worth the time and effort to pursue.

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The role of terrestrial, estuarine, and marine foods in dynamic Holocene environments and adaptive coastal economies in Southwestern Australia

Monks

2021

Quaternary International

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There's something fishy going on around here

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Marine fish exploitation during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa

Marine fish exploitation during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa

An experimental investigation of differential recovery of native rodent remains from Australian palaeontological and archaeological deposits

The role of terrestrial, estuarine, and marine foods in dynamic Holocene environments and adaptive coastal economies in Southwestern Australia

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