Butchery Analysis in Australian Historical Archaeology

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with testing one aspect of faunal analysis in Australian historical archaeology. This is butchery analysis. The thesis critically evaluates Lee Lyman's 1979 butchering unit method as a means of quantifying faunal remains. It is concluded that Lyman's method has several theoretical flaws, the most serious being the failure of the basic premise of the method, that archaeological bone from domestic animals can be equated to meat. A new approach to analysing faunal remains using butchery analysis is suggested. This new method is tested using archaeological bone specimens from a nineteenth-century European midden. The results of this testing of the method proved most rewarding in the interpretation of fauna from this site. It is concluded that the current methodologies available for quantifying faunal remains suffer from many difficulties and that more behavioural information might be gained from the study of archaeological bone using a butchery analysis approach.