Taphonomy - Research Methods in Human Skeletal Biology - page 232

CHAPTER
9
Taphonomy
Kerriann Marden, Marcella H. Sorg, William D. Haglund
INTRODUCTION
We start with the premise that research about death and its resulting skeletal changes, i.e.,
taphonomy, is a relevant focus of study within human skeletal biology. Taphonomy 1 is the
study of the postmortem processes ( Efremov, 1940 ), encompassing all phases beginning at
the moment of death, potentially extending even to fossilization. It is a field that was created
when paleontologists realized that in order to correctly interpret the fossilized remains they
were studying, they would have to mentally “strip away” the changes that had occurred to
the bones since death, in order to reveal the biology of the organism. Therefore, taphonomy
(from the Greek words for burial, “ taphos, ” and law, “ nomos ”) was originally envisioned as
the study of death assemblages, involving postmortem phenomena. One had to under-
stand d and essentially remove or ignore these phenomena d in order to reconstruct the char-
acteristics of the (previously) living organism in its environment.
Efremov described taphonomy as “the study of the transition (in all its details) of animal
remains from the biosphere into the lithosphere” (1940:85). However, with wider applica-
tion in archaeology and forensic anthropology, use of the term has broadened to describe
the study of all human and nonhuman processes that act upon an organism from the
time of death through the moment of skeletal examination. Such increased scope is neces-
sary for two reasons. First, human action d such as perimortem violence, corpse desecra-
tion, mortuary treatment, burial disturbance, and looting d canhaveanenormousimpact
on skeletal remains. Second, human action ranging from pre-depositional to post-collection
effects on bone must be observed and understood in order to distinguish these effects from
natural processes. Most archaeologists now recognize the importance of understanding
taphonomic changes in “the reconstruction of perimortem and postmortem processes
and the discrimination of natural from human-induced trauma” ( Ubelaker, 1997a :77).
Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of rigorous standards in discerning
the etiology of taphonomic modifications to bone ( Brain, 1981; Potts and Shipman, 1981;
Behrensmeyer et al., 1986; Blumenschine, 1988; Olsen, 1988; Bunn, 1989; Fiorillo, 1989;
1 All bolded terms are defined in the glossary at the end of this volume.