van den Hurk, Y. orcid.org/0000-0002-0573-0163, Bormetti, M. and Maini, E. (2023) Testing osteometric species determination on zooarchaeological dolphin remains from Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites in Ash-Sharqiyyah, Sultanate of Oman. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 19 (4). pp. 854-870. ISSN 1556-4894
Abstract
Different Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites located in the Ras al-Hadd cape and Ras al-Jinz Bay area (Ash-Sharqiyyah South Governorate, Sultanate of Oman) have provided thousands of zooarchaeological dolphin remains suggesting a strong reliance on the exploitation of these animals. Dolphins are hard to identify to the species level due to a highly comparable interspecies osteological morphology as well as a general lack of extensive osteological reference collections. As a result, such remains are frequently identified as “dolphin”, without any further species identification being undertaken. In this study, we assess whether an osteometric method for distinguishing the nine dolphin species that are present in Omani waters can be used to identify the zooarchaeological specimens. Zooarchaeology by Mass-Spectrometry (ZooMS) was also undertaken on a subset of the specimens but proved ineffective due to the poor preservation of the material in an arid climate. This evidence strengthens the need for effective species identification methods based on traditional zooarchaeological methods. This research is based on our ongoing analysis of the thousands of dolphin remains from the Omani zooarchaeological assemblages.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Dolphin; Oman; osteometrics; zooarchaeology by mass-spectrometry; Neolithic; bronze age |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Archaeology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Feb 2024 15:58 |
Last Modified: | 25 Oct 2024 12:01 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/15564894.2023.2244913 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209115 |