Adventures in fish bone preparation
Cold water maceration If you follow my Twitter feed you may have noticed a string of posts discussing the best methods for preparing specimens for animal bone reference collections. This all started a while back when I decided to take the Sheffield Zooarchaeology short course . Having had little training in bones I thought it would be a good idea to get some basic skills, as I am responsible for the reference collections at Newcastle. However the majority of our existing collection is large domesticates, and being an environmental archaeologist, I figured we needed some microfauna. I already have a lecture in my Environmental Archaeology module that covers animal remains as environmental indicators, and wanted to expand this to include a practical. Being a second year undergraduate module this is very much an introduction to the subject, and the learning outcomes focus more on understanding the implications of recovery and taphonomic issues, rather than developing expertise in spec...