Did I miss something in this discussion or has someone suggested they
ate that raccoon and then tossed part of the left overs into a convenient
hold near the door? Is everything near a building opening ritual or more
to do with waste disposal. An upside down "witch bottle" with pins in
it near a door is fairly clear (e.g. 18th century site near Philadelphia)
but common items in the same setting may be common behavior. It is a
difficult problem because African American religious behavior probably
frequently involved the use of common objects - or rare common objects
(e.g. rock crystals) in a ritualistic  setting which is hard to prove in an
archaeological context.
                                        RL Schuyler


At 08:39 AM 6/11/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Differential preservation does not completely destroy
>ribs and vertebra while leaving all other bones in
>tact.  All bones would show some degree of
>destruction, some more than others.  The time period
>suggested by Maureen is generally too recent for
>differential preservation due to natural decomposition
>to be an issue for a mammal.
>
>Also, much carnivore and scavenger activity is aimed
>at the internal organs of prey, not the long bones.
>Carnivore gnawing would not necessarily need to be
>evident on long bones to confirm this as a carnivore
>kill.
>
>-April
>
>__________________
>April M. Beisaw, RPA
>Zooarchaeology and Taphonomy Consulting
>[log in to unmask]
>http://www.taphonomy.com
>__________________
>
>--- geoff carver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> couldn't be a case of differential preservation?
>>
>> basedowm schrieb:
>> > I had a paleozoologist specializing in wild
>> mammalia look this over (in
>> > consultation with an environmental zoologist) -
>> and she looked for evidence
>> > of carnivore activity and didn't find any. She had
>> several arguments against
>> > this which I can ask her to write up and post
>> either here or on the excavation
>> > website. The feet may have been disarticulated (as
>> a result of skinning) --
>> > the bones were so small they had to be fine-sieved
>> out of the fill. We could
>> > only be sure that the skull/jaw was articulated --
>> for the long bones it was a
>> > reasonable assumption given their deposition.
>> Smaller elements were
>> > distributed throughout the fill.
>> >
>> > I thought of this one too - that it was a buried
>> pet that had been devored by
>> > a dog or something similar, having come across
>> similar, though not identical
>> > (I've never seen all of the torso gone with no
>> damage or disarray to the other
>> > skeletal parts) remains in a non-archaeological
>> context before.
>> >
>>
>>
>> geoff carver
>> http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
>> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>=====
>---------------------------
>April M. Beisaw, RPA
>http://www.taphonomy.com
>[log in to unmask]
>---------------------------
>
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Robert L. Schuyler
University of Pennsylvania Museum
33rd & Spruce Streets
Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324

Tel: (215) 898-6965
Fax: (215) 898-0657
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