Offering a field-tested analytic method for identifying faunal remains, along with helpful references, images, and examples of the most commonly encountered North American species, Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual provides an important new reference for students, avocational archaeologists, and even naturalists and wildlife enthusiasts. Using the basic principles outlined here, the bones of any vertebrate animal, including humans, can be identified and their relevance to common research questions can be better understood. Because the interpretation of archaeological sites depends heavily on the analysis of surrounding materials—soils, artifacts, and floral and faunal remains—it is important that non-human remains be correctly distinguished from human bones, that distinctions between domesticated and wild or feral animals be made correctly, and that evidence of the reasons for faunal remains in the site be recognized. But the ability to identify and analyze animal bones is a skill that is not easy to learn from a traditional textbook. In Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones, veteran archaeologist and educator April Beisaw guides readers through the stages of identification and analysis with sample images and data, also illustrating how specialists make analytical decisions that allow for the identification of the smallest fragments of bone. Extensive additional illustrative material, from the author’s own collected assemblages and from those in the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton University in New York, are also available in the book’s online supplement. There, readers can view and interact with images to further understanding of the principles explained in the text.

This reference and guidebook offers illustrations, descriptions, and measurements for the skulls of some 275 animal species found throughout North America. The skull is the key anatomical feature used to identify an animal and understand many of its behaviors. This book describes in words and pictures the bones and regions of the skull important to identification, including illustrations of all the bones in the cranium, leading to a greater understanding of a creature's place in the natural world. With life-size drawings, this guide is a reference for wildlife professionals, trackers, and animal-lovers.

It's a book of world records... of bones! Guess whose bones are the longest, shortest, heaviest, spikiest, and more. With touchable skeletons! An International Literacy Association Teachers' Choice Title (2018) A Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List Title (2019) Ten record-breaking animal bones are introduced through a series of superlatives set up as a guessing game with clues. Readers examine animals' skeletons and guess to whom they belong; the answers are revealed in vibrant, full-color scenic habitats, with easily understood — and humorous — explanations. This entertaining introduction to the connection between animal bones (anatomy) and behavior is playful, relatable, and includes touch-and-feel finishes that bring the bones to life!

In growing numbers, archeologists are specializing in the analysis of excavated animal bones as clues to the environment and behavior of ancient peoples. This pathbreaking work provides a detailed discussion of the outstanding issues and methods of bone studies that will interest zooarcheologists as well as paleontologists who focus on reconstructing ecologies from bones. Because large samples of bones from archeological sites require tedious and time-consuming analysis, the authors also offer a set of computer programs that will greatly simplify the bone specialist's job. After setting forth the interpretive framework that governs their use of numbers in faunal analysis, Richard G. Klein and Kathryn Cruz-Uribe survey various measures of taxonomic abundance, review methods for estimating the sex and age composition of a fossil species sample, and then give examples to show how these measures and sex/age profiles can provide useful information about the past. In the second part of their book, the authors present the computer programs used to calculate and analyze each numerical measure or count discussed in the earlier chapters. These elegant and original programs, written in BASIC, can easily be used by anyone with a microcomputer or with access to large mainframe computers.

This handbook provides advice on best practice for the recovery, publication and archiving of animal bones and teeth from Holocene archaeological sites (ie from approximately the last 10,000 years). It has been written for local authority archaeology advisors, consultants, museum curators, project managers, excavators and zooarchaeologists, with the aim of ensuring that approaches are suitable and cost-effective.

The bold illustrations and humorous text of this board book, printed at the perfect size for the little hands of children aged 2-4, help children to learn all about the bones in their own bodies through guessing games and by comparing their bones to those in animals Set up as a guessing game with visual and narrative clues, Whose Bones? invites the youngest readers to examine six animal skeletons and guess to whom they belong. The answers are provided in vibrant, foldout reveals, each accompanied by read-aloud text that explains why each animal's bones and bodies are so special. This playful, informative introduction to bones for the youngest readers has been created by the author and illustrator team behind the global bestseller Book of Bones.

This volume in the ICAZ series deals with the technical advances made over the last twenty years in the field of ageing and sexing animal bones. The analysis of ancient DNA holds great possibilities for sexing certain faunal assemblages (though by no means all), which is an urgent issue in the study of hunting and animal husbandry. It can be assumed that our forebears used more subtle taxonomic criteria than we do today, and it is important therefore that we are able to recognise traits that will allow for more accurate classification in terms of calendar age or sex. The eighteen papers in this book examine the state of research for various techniques of age/sex determination and assess potential future development.