Internet Archaeology (Aug 1997)
Fish remains and humankind
Abstract
The four papers in this issue represent a trawl of the reports presented to the Fourth meeting of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) Fish Remains Working Group, which met at the University of York in 1987. The conference discussed material from many parts of the world - from Australasia to the north-west coast of America - and many eras, ranging in date from the early Pleistocene to the 1980s. It demonstrated both the variety of work being carried out and the growing interest in ancient fish remains. Internet Archaeology plans to publish other batches of papers from this conference. These reports will demonstrate the effort being made to distinguish between assemblages of fish remains which have been deposited by people and those which occur in ancient deposits as a result of the action of other agents. To investigate this area, experiments with modern material and observations of naturally occurring fish bone assemblages are supplemented with detailed analysis of ancient and modern fish remains. The papers published here illustrate the breadth of research into osteology, biogeography, documentary research, and the practicalities of recovering fish remains. Read, digest and enjoy them! Using the Internet for publishing research papers is not only ecologically sound (saving paper, etc.) it disseminates scholarship to anyone anywhere on the planet with access to what is gradually becoming necessary technology in the late 20th century. Hopefully, future groups of papers will include video and audio material recorded at the conference, and so enable those who could not attend to gain further insights into the meeting and the scholarship underpinning this area of research.
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