Contributions and Discussions in Zooarchaeology from the Museo de La Plata

Abstract

Zooarchaeology has become one of the pillars of archeology of the twentieth century (Borrero 2011), and in a broad sense, it is understood as the subdiscipline that studies the remains of animals found in archaeological sites. Following Lyman (1994), we can consider two main objectives of the study of archaeofaunas: the reconstruction of paleoecological conditions and subsistence patterns. In that same sense, Mengoni Goñalons (2007: 14) highlights two variants within the disciplinary field: zooarcheology proper and biological archeology. While the first, our focus is on the cultural relevance of bone remains, seeks to know the different forms of interaction between human groups and animals over time, including from changes in subsistence and mobility strategies to aspects Social and symbolic, the second, is more interested in comparing the distributions of wildlife in the past and in the present. Both perspectives are complementary and synergistic (Borrero 2011; Mengoni Goñalons 2007), and their objectives go beyond the necessary exhaustive analysis of faunal remains found in archaeological sites and that the interests of zooarcheology are shared by those of other disciplines, which according to Borrero (2011) gives him the characteristic of transdiciplinaria. Because of this, the interaction with information from other materials and disciplines (for example, ethnohistory, ethnoarcheology), becomes relevant to these purposes.