Tag Archives: bird bones

Measuring Bird Bones

Author: Ariel Taivalkoski

While it has become more common to identify the bird bones from archaeological sites to family, it is rare to have a bird bone assemblage as large as that from the Rat Islands Project site KIS-050 test excavation. The midden context of this Kiska Island site has preserved the bird bones in excellent condition. We have over 5,000 bird bones, many of which are whole. It was initially daunting to organize the data collection for this assemblage and our analysis spreadsheet went through several iterations before I was able to create a database that allowed us to collect the most useful information while still allowing us to finish the analysis of this collection within a timely manner.

During one of the revisions of our spreadsheet, I decided that I would need to begin measuring our bones, following standards in Gilbert (1996) and Driesch (1976) that aid in species identification. My primary goal for recording these measurements was to help us quickly differentiate between the large numbers of Alcids, which range greatly in size, that were present at the site. Additionally, this will help us to conduct our overall species identifications in a timelier manner.

This revision came after I analyzed 15 level assemblages to family. Dr. Funk and I have spent a couple days recently revisiting the identified elements to record these standard measurements. This process has allowed us to expand our data set, as well as served to double-check my family level identifications for the first identfications I made.

Ariel Bird Bone

Sorting Midden, Analyzing Bones

Author: C. Funk | UB Rats Project Lab | May 29

Our bins of unsorted midden and unanalyzed bird bones are emptier every day as we work through our sorting and analyses. Darren Poltorak just spent three months sorting 1/4″ screen bulk samples  – we sent the fish he sorted to Megan Partlow of Central Washington University for analysis. Her data will be posted on our results page soon.

Darren sorting fish from the 1/4" bulk samples.
Darren sorting fish from the 1/4″ bulk samples.

I’m weighing, counting, and measuring the shellfish from the bulks Darren sorted. Soon Josh Howard will be sorting the 1/8″ screen bulk samples. He’ll be measuring many sea urchin mouth elements so that we can look for changes in sea urchin body size over the more than 2,000 years people harvested them from the Corvie Bay intertidal zone. Ariel Taivalkoski and I are working to identify our more than 5,000 bird bones. So far she (with a little help from me!) has identified 1,700 bones to avian family. We are seeing interesting shifts in the types of birds present over time and in differentl behavioral contexts.

Ariel entering avian faunal analysis data.
Ariel entering avian faunal analysis data.

Bird bones in the lab at Buffalo

Author: C. Funk | University at Buffalo | October 9, 2014

We’re working here in the Rat Islands research lab at University at Buffalo. It’s a Thursday afternoon – outside it’s windy and sunny, a perfect fall day. In here the lights are shining brightly on Ariel, Bobbi, and me. Bobbi is cataloging bone tools and I’ll talk to her about that a bit next week.

Ariel sorting bird bones.Today I’m interested in what Ariel is doing.

Ariel is a second year graduate student here in the department. She is planning to specialize in monumentality and colonialism in Europe for her dissertation research. She happens to have a skill set in bird osteology and that’s why she’s here with us.

“What are you doing over there?” I ask her. She rolls her eyes at me a little bit because I can clearly see what she is doing, “sorting a sample bag of bird bones into elements,” she says. After a moment she says, “I think this is just one bird, part of the thoracic area and the wings. The vertebrae are articulating and the tarsometatarsi are paired.” We do a quick check in the bird book and it seems to be a small cormorant. Our comparative osteological collection will arrive from the Burke Museum in Seattle next week. We’ll identify the bird then.

Ariel with a mostly intact bird skeleton.Bobbi and Ariel and I are talking about excavation sampling strategies and their impacts on which elements were collected and on the patterns of bone presence we’ll use to talk about Aleut resource exploitation, processing, and discard strategies. Ariel says that she thinks she is seeing more humerii and ulnae in general – those are the bones in the bird wing. But some samples have a higher concentration of leg elements. “Mostly,” Ariel looks up at me from her study of the bones on the table, “mostly we seem to have more wings than butts.” Bobbi looks interested at this. “Maybe they were making a lot of bird butt hats. In the field, Debbie said Aleuts made duck butt hats for babies. They cut the legs off and sewed the thighs so the feathered legs stuck up like feathery little ears.” We talk about wearing bird butt hats for a bit before we settle back into work.

I ask Ariel if she has worked with birds at other sites. She has. She worked on the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia. But she worked with flotation samples there, so the specimens were small and fragmented. She says that the Rats materials are larger, that there are more whole elements, and that the preservation of this collection is excellent.

“Why birds?” I ask Ariel. “Because another researcher asked me what I’d like to look at. I picked birds because I don’t want to do fish and it turns out birds aren’t studied often. People think they are difficult but they are actually easy to identify to family. There’s a lot of room for research.”

Ariel and Bobbi working.I’ve stopped bothering Bobbi and Ariel and they are working away. I can hear the bones shuffling around on the table in front of Ariel, and the keyboard clattering while Bobbi enters artifact catalog data on the lab computer.