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Allie Rae TaylorMarch 10, 2014Anth 421, Archaeological Theory

Theory, Method, and Technique of Historical Zooarchaeologyand the Implications of Social Stratification

Introduction

Many historical archaeologists strive to identify the

social statuses of the inhabitants of the sites they study,

whether or not this can be determined scientifically is the

largest concern of this paper. To assess whether or not the

theories presented by the multiple authors I discuss are

scientific, I will apply performance criteria (Lyman et al,

1997). These criteria include dynamic and empirical

sufficiency and tolerance limits. Dynamic sufficiency

assesses if the author uses proper elements. These elements

or units must first be measurable and they must also

interrelate, interact, and respond to one another (Lecture,

1/27/2014). In sum, dynamic sufficiency analyzes whether or

not the units of analysis used in the different studies make

sense and relate to one another. Another performance

criterion is empirical sufficiency. This criterion

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determines if the units of measurement are measurable in the

real world (Lecture, 1/27/2014). The final criterion that

judges whether or not a theory is scientific is tolerance

limits. This measures the amount of error within the tests

(Lecture, 1/27/2014). It looks at the acceptability of the

measurements meaning how accurate do the measurements have

to be based on the questions presented. Overall, these

criteria will assist me in the analysis of these theories,

methods, and techniques and help me to determine if a

certain theory is acceptable to use in my own research with

historic faunal remains.

Consumer Theory

David Singer developed consumer theory in the article

Threshold of Affordability: Assessing the Fish Remains for Socioeconomics. The

theory seems rather commonsensical and bases a lot of its

findings on assumptions. Overall, the main idea of consumer

theory is that one has the ability to measure product value

and reflect the preferences of inhabitants’ through the

changes in marketing systems (Singer, 1987). These market

variables are things like the number of buyers, income

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levels, preferences, prices, availability, quality, and

more. Singer believes that prices provide the best and only

way to view consumer preferences and economic trends. An

example of one of the many assumptions through out this

article is that consumers will purchase more goods at a

lower price than at a higher one (Singer, 1987). While this

could be the normal choice for most people there are always

exceptions and Singer does not say how he came to that

assumption or back it up with any evidence, which lead me to

believe that it was an assumption made by common sense and

his own ethnocentrisms. These elements also provide the

basis for an explanation, but do not interrelate to any

variables or tests directly stated in the rest of the

article. With all this in consideration it lead me to

believe this article’s theory is not dynamically sufficient.

Another example of this is that if the prices of a food item

are low inferences can be made that the product is widely

available, it has a high number of buyers, and the income

levels of the area were sufficient enough to bring the

product within reach of most customers (Singer, 2006). Once

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again Singer did not describe why these inferences were made

or how they applied to his research.

Consumer Methods

First Singer performed some historic documentary data

analysis. This study consisted of nineteenth century

wholesale and retail prices of fish in the Northeast.

(Singer, 1987) This information was taken from over 120

newspapers particularly from the Boston area that dated from

1832- 1887 (Singer, 1987). Each species of fish sold and

their prices were noted. He found the mean value and ranked

the fish in descending order based on that value. Since no

economic data was recorded and could be used in the index

Singer assumed that the actual prices were different than

his ranking but that it would be comparable to that time.

This method can be found empirically insufficient because

there are problems with historical documents being biased

towards the author’s perspective. However, I would think

that food price values from newspapers could be more

reliable than other forms of historical documents.

Consumer Technique

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In Singer’s article he discusses many different

variables. He looks at butchering patterns and skeleton

ratio analysis of fish to help determine the threshold of

affordability or the threshold within each household can

afford to spend for food items. Singer preformed these

analyses by assessing what portion or forms in which the

fish were acquired. Meaning trunk, caudal vertebra, skull

portions, and more. These specimens may also have cut marks

from a knife or a cleaver. By looking at the different

portions of fish bones or the cut marks Singer can infer the

types of fish cuts being consumed at the various sites. The

different variables and units Singer looks at can be

measured in the real world. Making it easy to preform

scientific repeatable techniques in order to infer ideas

about the socioeconomic status. These units are therefore

empirical and help to make this theory more scientific.

To analyze all the data he collected Singer used a

technique called a weighted mean analysis (Singer, 1987). In

this he used the frequency of a butchering unit or minimum

number of individuals (MNI) and multiplied each unit by its

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assumed price taken from the historical documents. He then

divided this by the total number of different units from

that site to find the weighted mean value (Singer, 1987).

After this he compared that value to the relative rank

market index to infer what economic level each household

fell within. Overall, it seemed that the technique used was

not within tolerance limits because comparing weighted mean

values to infer an economic level would cause too much

error. This causes errors because it assumes that specific

levels of economic status only purchase food items in their

price range it does not give room to the variability in

peoples choices. Although Singer did state that the indexes

made were not the exact amounts of prices of fish in the

nineteenth century but that the prices he found were

comparable to the possible prices in that century (Singer,

1987). Therefore I think the assumed mean values may not be

an acceptable result to use when looking at each household’s

ability to afford certain food items.

Colley’s Theory

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In Colley’s article she discusses the interpretations

of faunal remains in cultural terms. Meaning the

determination of meat cuts and meals from faunal remains,

which can be linked to aspects of history and cultural

identity (Colley, 2006). This article goes over a historical

archaeological site in Sydney, Australia dating to the

1830s-1860s, which represented a mix of residential housing

and industrial buildings. This site yielded 10,000 faunal

remains and one million artifacts overall. (Colley, 2006).

Colley believes these bones and meat cuts have the ability

to provide insight on the diet and lifestyle of people who

lived in the site area. Colley uses nineteenth and early

twentieth- century British documents to as a basis of

knowledge for her analysis. Colley also agrees with some of

the ideas from the book: Meat Technology. A Practical Textbook for

Student and Butcher. An example of this can be “No individual,

not even an Ancient Briton, would go through the trouble of

chopping through a bone if it were possible to find a

convenient joint which could be severed with far less

physical effort” (Colley, 2006). This idea implies that when

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people are butchering animals for meat consumption they

would cut through the part of the animal that provided the

least amount of difficulty. This idea overall is using

common sense to make assumptions about meat cuts and that

there is a systematic way of butchering an animal. However,

these butchering patterns relate to cultural traditions and

butchering technologies that result in some bones being cut

through (Colley, 2006). Overall, Colley had similar issues

with her theory pertaining to Lyman’s performance criteria

as Singer did. Since Colley uses common sense as a mental

framework for her theory it is my belief that it is

dynamically insufficient. I think this because she uses

historical documents from Britain to infer butchering

technology and other ideas for Australian historic sites.

While these two cultures maybe similar in some ways they are

in completely different environments and do not directly

relate to one another which is one of the main points of

dynamic sufficiency. In sum it is not very scientific to

assume the relationship between these two cultures.

Colley’s Method

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The first thing Colley does in her research is to

gather the British sources and compare the nomenclature for

joints and cuts of beef from the nineteenth century (Colley,

2006). Next, she divided 5,500 cattle specimens from the

10,000 faunal remains to analyze. When analyzing these bones

she identified the bone portion or body part and compared

them to the historic documents. Her main unit of analysis in

this project was beef cuts. Overall, these units are

empirically sufficient when looking for the portions of the

bones because they can be measured in the real world.

However, the unit of beef cuts for this particular case may

not be empirically sufficient because in order to determine

this culturally derived cut one must look at historical

documents and compared them to the identified bone portions

in your assemblage. Since Australia does not have many

historic documents on the subject Colley had to use the

British documents instead which can cause errors because one

cannot assume that the cultures used the same butchering

technologies.

Colley’s Technique

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The main technique of this project includes the idea of

gross body part analysis (Colley, 2006). First, the skeletal

elements she identified were linked to a beef cut using a

relational database. She then interpreted the value/

edibility and cost. Collecting the “gross body part,” which

groups individually named skeletal elements into common

names for mammal skeleton portions allows one to extract an

interpretation of the value of meat by comparing the common

names to other historic sources (Colley, 2006). In sum I

believe Colley’s technique is not within tolerance limits.

The overall question she wished to address was the idea of

whether or not meat cuts and meals can show cultural

identity. However, she had some issues with the necessity of

more historical documents from Australia to compare to and

assess the developments of butchery practices and of more

detailed study of fragmentation patterns and cut marks on

the bone. With the absence of these documents and the

ambiguity in Colley’s identifications it makes it difficult

to address the question she asked. Finally the gross body

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part, in my understanding, assesses value based mostly on

assumptions made from historical documents.

Internal Relations Theory

Louann Wurst discusses the ideas of internal relations

theory in her article Internalizing Class in Historical Archaeology. The

idea of this theory is that the dialect of or the web of

social relations makes up the whole idea of class (Wurst,

1999). This theory believes that the entity does not exist

without a relation. For example, the definition of husband

and wife cannot exist without one another and their

relationship. If the relationship of the husband and wife

has changed or been severed as in divorce the entities are

changed to ex-husband and ex-wife (Wurst, 1999). When

applying this to historical archaeology it is the belief of

Wurst that historical documents supply the so-called

relations. Wurst defines class as the agents of social

relations that cannot be defined as an analytical category.

Overall, I think this theory is again similar to Colley’s

and Singer’s ideas in that it is also dynamically

insufficient based on the use of historical documents. Wurst

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suggests using historical documents to access the

relationships to define class. However, as I said before

these documents can have cultural biases based on the

author’s point of view therefore tainting the inferences one

would make when comparing them to archaeological data.

Internal Relations Methods and Techniques

This article does not have a specific case study

pertaining to historic zooarchaeology. Meaning that there

are no specific methods in Internal Relations. However, the

units that would be used within this theory are empirically

insufficient because relationships cannot be measured in the

real world. Finally, the techniques this article uses Marx’s

idea of abstraction: this is when you break down the whole

component into units. I think this technique does not fit

within tolerance limits because the amount of error when

classifying components from either vantage point. Referring

to the abstraction made from different points of views like

the meanings of a relation, deciding where you change the

focus from specific relations to more general relations, or

abstraction of extension; when you refer to delimiting space

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and time boundaries (Wurst, 1999). To me these types of

techniques all seem prone to biases within your

classifications making your interpretations more susceptible

to errors.

Schmitt and Lupo’s Theory

This article’s purpose was to test how well faunal

assemblages reflect socioeconomic status among contemporary

farmer households in two rural villages in the Northern

Congo Basin (Schmitt and Lupo, 2008). They believe that

using ethnographic information to compare to faunal remains

will reflect socioeconomic status. It is my belief that this

is dynamically insufficient. Schmitt and Lupo are using

ethnographic information to infer whether or not it is

practical to use faunal analysis to answer questions on

socioeconomic status. This relates to the Direct Historical

approach presented by William Duncan Strong (Lecture,

1/27/2014). This is where ethnology supplies the framework

for interpretations of what happened in the past. You cannot

assume that people react the same way they do now as they

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did in the past. These ideas cannot necessarily relate to

one another.

Schmitt and Lupo’s Method and Technique

Schmitt and Lupo use various methods and units in their

analysis. These include species, material goods, bone,

shell, and more (Schmitt and Lupo, 2008). These types of

methods are empirically sufficient because they can be

measured in the real world. However, Schmitt and Lupo also

include their ethnographic field recordation as a method,

which can be seen as non-measurable in the real world.

Schmitt and Lupo use the technique in their faunal analysis

of number of identified species, which can present problems

in quantifications because it allows for the chance to count

an animal twice. This is called interdependence. Overall,

this can account for a high amount of inaccuracy, which

leads to my determination of this study not being within

tolerance limits.

Shultz and Gust’s Theory

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Shultz and Gust discuss their theory relating to social

stratification found in faunal remains in the article Faunal

Remains and Social Status in Nineteenth Century Sacramento. They believe

that faunal remains can show socioeconomic differences.

Bones can show the reflections of social stratification from

which they are derived if they are graphed cumulatively by

butchering units (Shultz and Gust, 1983). The status of the

depositing population can be reflected in the faunal debris

since the retail meat cuts from different sections of the

carcass are ranked differently economically. This being said

the frequency of consumption of differently priced cuts

would vary with the status of the consumers (Schultz and

Gust, 1983). They think this because the differential access

to food sources on the basis of class is a common factor in

social organization (Shultz and Gust, 1983). The unequal

access to basic resources can be reflected through the

archaeological record. In my opinion Shultz and Gust’s

theory could be dynamically insufficient. Although the

elements they suggest can relate to one another, these

elements being the social economic status and the different

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meat cuts. They also assume the relationships between the

historical documents and meat cut prices are correct,

however these prices could have varied with different stores

and other factors.

Schultz and Gust’s Methods

This study involved the comparison of frequencies of

various beef cuts with two other sites and the abundance of

these cuts that show different values. Shultz and Gust used

historic documents to produce an ordinal ranking scale of

meat cuts. Since cattle were consumed a high percentage of

the time in the Sacramento area in the nineteenth century,

the specimen in that taxonomic category was separated out

for their analysis. Finally, the types of beef cuts were

determined based on the types of bones and cut marks found

in the assemblage (Shultz and Gust, 1983). Overall, their

units of analysis were both empirically measured because

they can both be found in the real world. Meaning both meat

cuts and prices are measurable. However, both of these units

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can be swayed by the biases presented in historical

documents.

Schultz and Gust’s Techniques

Shultz and Gust tabulated the frequencies of meat cuts.

This was done using a technique called number of identified

specimens or NISP (Shultz and Gust, 1983). They also

produced the ordinal ranking scale of meat cut prices to

compare to the NISPs (Shultz and Gust, 1983). The

comparisons of these two techniques were used to infer the

socioeconomic status of four different historic sites in

Sacramento (Shultz and Gust, 1983). Overall, Shultz and Gust

use a ratio system of measurement or frequency of beef cuts

and applies it to an ordinal scale of meat cut prices. This

form of analysis does not seem to be within tolerance

limits. I think this because Shultz and Gust use NISP this

technique does not take into account the possibility of

certain bones being from the same animal. This would raise

the amount of different meat cuts present therefore swaying

the possibility of different social classes making their

analysis more inaccurate.

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Lyman a Critique of Shultz and Gust’s Technique

In Lyman’s article he goes over the ideas presented by

Shultz and Gust and discusses the reliability and whether or

not this theory has a scientific basis. He begins with the

introduction and summary of Shultz and Gust’s project. He

then follows that with his critiques. Schultz and Gust say

that their earlier studies suffer from analysis problems

because they did not break up the data into comparable units

with those used by the butchers (Lyman, 1987). However,

Lyman believes that while they had the right unit of

analysis being beef cuts they did not tabulate it in the

correct way. Using the technique of NISP, as I said before,

can cause problems with the measurement of abundance or

interdependence and since Shultz and Gust do not attempt to

make corrections to the frequencies their data is not within

tolerance limits (Lyman, 1987). Interdependence is the

likelihood of a specimen from the same animal being counted

separately. Lyman also states that Shultz and Gust attempt

to use ordinal scale rather than interval scale and failed

to explain their reasoning for using ordinal scale. To

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eliminate these problems Lyman believes that they should

calculate the minimum number of beef cuts (MNBC). This would

eliminate the issues with the possibility of

interdependence. Another issue Lyman discusses is that they

use NISP to calculate the percentage of beef cut frequencies

but interpret these with ordinal scale data. This would also

produce problems with the reliability of the interpretations

produced from the study. It is also discussed that it is

impossible to demonstrate empirically the cost-efficiency of

beef purchases (Lyman, 1987). Overall, Lyman seems to think

that the study Schultz and Gust have done is possible to do

scientifically, however, changes should made to it. These

changes include the type of frequency measurements and

defining the scales more clearly.

Summary and Discussion

Overall, the determination of social class from

historic faunal remain seems to be a popular interpretation

historical archaeologists strive to define. However, there

are many problems with these studies abilities to be

scientific in theory, method, and technique. Most of the

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studies had an empirically measurable unit of meat cuts.

These types of cuts can be determined by the comparisons of

historical documents of the area. The problem with

comparing cut specimens from their assemblage to that of

historical documents is that these can be biased. While one

would think that a document about meat cuts should not be

biased, there could be points of view from different

butchers of where exactly to cut the bones or different meat

cuts being consumed because of ethnical differences. This is

the reason that most of the theories presented by these

authors are dynamically insufficient. While most of the

ideas, elements, and units could interrelate most of the

theories I discussed above just assumed that they were

related. They never went into the details of why or how they

did. Finally, most of my sources also used the technique of

tabulating frequencies of MNMC. This technique solved the

issue of interdependence problems (Landon, 2005). Most of

the techniques were also within tolerance limits, meaning

they addressed the questions presented by the authors in an

accurate way.

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Conclusion

In sum I do not think it is possible to imply social

class with studies of historical faunal remains because it

leads to too many assumptions. I think one have to be very

careful with word choice when making determinations about

the data you recorded. I think this because, according to

Louann Wurst, social class is a concept that has commonly

been used to classify and label groups of people. There are

two possible ways to think of class: as a thing and as a

formulation (Wurst, 2006). Class as a thing is used mostly

in these types of studies by historic archaeologists (Wurst,

2006). From this perspective it is defined as hierarchical

rungs on a ladder (Wusrt, 2006). Meaning that there is an

inequality between each rung. Each class relies on the

quantity of resources, income, education, or occupational

prestige of that individual (Wurst, 2006). Overall, this

seems like a lot to assume when only looking at the faunal

remains of a household or community. It is not possible to

infer a social class of the inhabitants of a site using only

a faunal analysis scientifically. Instead one should infer

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the cost efficiency or diet preferences of the area (Landon,

2005). For example, stating that an area preferred higher

priced or lower priced items based on the frequency of

ranked meat cuts. Since the topic of social class is far to

broad too define with that little of information about the

inhabitants historic archaeologists should change the

wording of their inferences to something like cost

efficiency or diet preferences instead of social class in

order to make their determinations scientifically accurate.

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Work Cited

Colley, Sarah2006 A Preliminary Beef Meat cuts Typology for nineteenth-

century Sydney and Some Methological Issues. InAustralasian Historical Archaeology (24) 47-54

Landon, David B. 2005 Zooarchaeology and Historical Archaeology: Progress and

Prospects. In Journal of Archaeology Method and Theory. 12(1):1-36

Louann, Wurst 1999 Internalizing Class in Historical Archaeology. Historical

Archaeology 33(1)7-21.2006 A Class All Its Own: Explorations of Class Formations

and Conflict. In Historical Archaeology (Martin Halland Stephen W. Silliman ed.) Blackwell Publishing.Malden, MA Pg 190-209

Lyman, R. Lee. 1987 On Zooarchaeological Measures of Socioeconomic

Position and Cost-Efficient Meat Purchases."Historical Archaeology (1987): 58-66

McCutcheon, Patrick 2014 Archaeological Theory Lecture. Central WashingtonUniversity.

Schmitt, Dave N. and Lupo, Karen D. 2008 Do faunal remains reflect socioeconomic status? An

ethnoarchaeological study among Central Africanfarmenrs in the northern Congo Basin. In Journal ofAnthropological Archaeology. 27(2008) 315-325

Schulz, Peter D. and Sherri, Gust M. 1983 Faunal Remains and Social Status in Nineteenth Century

Sacramento. Historical Archaeology 17(1): 44-53

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Singer, David A. 1987 Threshold of Affordability: Assessing Fish Remains for

Socioeconomics. In Consumer Choice in HistoricalArchaeology (Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood ed.) Plenum Press,New York. Pg. 85-99.

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