Historical zooarchaeology: The need of a comprehensive taphonomic approach in Argentina

Abstract

Animal bones remains are usual parts of the archaeological records of any chronology and its study is important to all investigation. It’s well known that there are different processes that can modify the cultural information that bones can provide, but in archaeology of historical moments these processes are ignored when archaeofaunal remains are analyzed. When doing an integral research, it is necessary to take into account that zooarchaeology shares methods and common problems in any given historical time. Nevertheless, the tendency in historical zooarchaeology in general (and in Argentina particularly) was that taphonomy processes can were ignored, which produced misleaded or incomplete  interpretations of his-torical remains. Some aspects connecting with natural and cultural process that affect the zooarchaeology-cal remains of historical sites are presented in this paper, in order to provide more accurate interpretations about the past human behavior.