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A Zooarchaeological Signature for Meat Storage: Re-Thinking the Drying Utility Index

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

T. Max Friesen
T. Max Friesen*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George St., Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3
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Abstract

Although the practice of food storage is important to many questions addressed by archaeologists, demonstrating its presence in archaeological contexts can be difficult or impossible. One potentially useful approach to meat storage is the concept of the Drying Utility Index, introduced by Lewis Binford (1978) to predict which carcass portions, with attached bone, will be selected for storage by drying. However, this index has not been widely used by zooarchaeologists, at least in part because the calculations involved in its derivation are extremely complex. This paper presents a new, simplified index, the Meat Drying Index, which is easier to calculate and more transparent than the Drying Utility Index, yet which retains all of its key attributes. This new index is applied to caribou bone samples from two regions: Binford's (1978) Nunamiut data from northern Alaska, and the contents of three caches from the Barren Grounds of Canada, near Baker Lake, Nunavut. In both cases, the Meat Drying Index correlates with the observed element frequencies as well as, or better than, the original Drying Utility Index. As a result, the new index may prove applicable to element distributions from a wide range of archaeological contexts in which storage of meat by drying is suspected.

Résumé

Résumé

A pesar de que la práctica del almacenaje de alimentos es importante para muchas de las cuestiones planteadas por arqueólogos, demostrar su presencia en un contexte arqueológico sigue siendo dificil о imposible. Un acercamiento potencialmente prove-choso al almacenamiento de carne es el concepto introducido por Lewis Binford (1978) en su Indice del Método de Desecación, para predecir cuáles porciones de cadáver, aûn pegado al hueso, serán seleccionadas para el almacenamiento y desecación. Sin embargo, este índice no ha sido apliamente usado por zooarqueálogos, al menos en parte, porque los calcules que requiére su derivación son extremadamente complejos. Este estudio introduce un nuevo y simplificado índice, el Indice de Desecación de Carne, el cual es más fácil y claro para calcular que el Indice del Método de Desecación, al mismo tiempo que mantiene todos sus atributos claves. Este nuevo índice es aplicado a muestras de huesos de dos regiones: La información sobre los Nunamiut del norte de Alaska (Binford 1978), y los contenidos de trés escondrijos de víveres de Barren Grounds en Canada, cerca del Lago Baker, Nunavut. En ambos casos, el Indice de Desecación de Carne, se correlaciona con lafrecuencia de los elementos observados, del mismo modo, о mejor que, el original Indice del Método de Desecación. Como resultado, el nuevo índice se puede aplicar a elementos de distribución en una amplia gama de contextes arqueológicos en los cuales se sospeche que exista almacenamiento de carne por desecación.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , April 2001 , pp. 315 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2001

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