A Zooarchaeological Signature for Meat Storage
Re-Thinking the Drying Utility Index
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7606089 |
|---|---|
| Authors | T Max Friesen (0000-0002-8622-3883, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 315-331 |
| Publication date | 2001-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Antiquity (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7316 • E-ISSN: 2325-5064 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2694611 |
| PMID | 20043370 |
| OpenAlex | W2335670801 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 37 |
| References cited | 21 |
Although the practice of food storage is important to many questions addressed by archaeologists, demonstrating its presence in archaeological contexts can be difficult or impossible. One potentially useful approach to meat storage is the concept of the Drying Utility Index, introduced by Lewis Binford (1978) to predict which carcass portions, with attached bone, will be selected for storage by drying. However, this index has not been widely used by zooarchaeologists, at least in part because the calculations involved in its derivation are extremely complex. This paper presents a new, simplified index, the Meat Drying Index, which is easier to calculate and more transparent than the Drying Utility Index, yet which retains all of its key attributes. This new index is applied to caribou bone samples from two regions: Binford's (1978) Nunamiut data from northern Alaska, and the contents of three caches from the Barren Grounds of Canada, near Baker Lake, Nunavut. In both cases, the Meat Drying Index correlates with the observed element frequencies as well as, or better than, the original Drying Utility Index. As a result, the new index may prove applicable to element distributions from a wide range of archaeological contexts in which storage of meat by drying is suspected
Archaeology · Element (criminal law · Geography · Index (typography · Range (aeronautics · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Computer Science · Engineering · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies · Law · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
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Faunal exploitation by Early Holocene hunter/gatherers on the Great Plains of North America
Animal carcass processing, cooking and consumption at Early Neolithic Revenia-Korinou, northern Greece
Animal carcass processing, cooking and commensality at the Late Neolithic lakeside settlement of Dispilio, Northern Greece
What Explains the Carcass Field Processing and Transport Decisions of Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers? Measures of Economic Anatomy and Zooarchaeological Skeletal Part Representation
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Nunamiut ethnoarchaeology
Bison kills and bone counts
Vertebrate Taphonomy
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| Unique citing works | 37 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,54 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2026 (25) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 36 |