A Re-examination of Sheep Bone Density and its Role in Assessing Taphonomic Histories of Zooarchaeological Assemblages: PhD Thesis, University College London (2002)

A PhD Thesis submitted to University College London. Destructive taphonomic processes can preferentially remove certain bones from the archaeological record thereby introducing bias into element frequencies. Bone density is the major factor in destructive taphonomic processes hence a knowledge of a bone's density can therefore be used to assess the likelihood that it will survive. Using photodensitometry the author has produced density data for 95 well-provenanced modern sheep skeletons and shows that bone density is extremely variable between very similar individuals. The data produced by this project were used to assess the taphonomic histories of the assemblage from ??atalh??y??k, Turkey. Density data were not able to explain fully the observed element frequencies, other factors must contribute significantly to the ability for a bone to survive taphonomic destruction.