Internet Archaeol. 17. Popkin. Introduction

1 Introduction

Generally accepted zooarchaeological practice for recording butchery marks and other types of bone modifications involves two steps: producing a drawing of the bone showing the exact location and orientation of the modification, and recording all of the pertinent information about the bone and its modification into an electronic database (Lyman, 1987, 306).

To encourage accurate and standardised recording practice amongst zooarchaeologists, this article presents a series of caprine (sheep and goat) bone templates specifically designed to record bone modifications. Also presented, in Appendix 2 is a list of database fields that can be used when recording bone modifications to aid comparability of data between researchers. An example of a completed template is provided to illustrate how these templates and database fields work together.

These templates show every bone in a goat skeleton, apart from the skull and distal sesmoids, from six views at life size (when printed on A4 paper). They have a minimum of shading or stippling, in order that butchery marks and bone modifications recorded on them are clearly visible. Because the skeletal morphology of sheep and goats is so similar these templates are interchangeable for both species. Also, because no scale has been added to the templates, it is possible to use them to represent other skeletally similar artiodactyls such as cattle and deer, though species specific templates would be more appropriate.