Hello all,
        Last week when I posted asking about chicken burials, I had no
idea that it would snowball into such a large discussion.  Thanks to all
who have responded to me personally, and to the list at large.
        Of particular interest to me is the gizzard stone discussion that
has resulted.  The peacock burial yielded a collection of gizzard stones,
and if memory serves, many of them were white pollished shards that we
thought were stones, but I'm thinking now may have been something else.
I'll look over the faunal material this week, and look closely at the
gizzard stones.  I'll post the approximate sizes of the stones in the hope
that they might be useful to others.  This of course is the ideal
situation, as we know for a fact that they are gizzard stones, and were
recovered from a secure context, and may shed new light on those items
from other sites that are suspect.
        The size of the gizzard stone is determined by the size of the
bird, and I expect by the species as well.  I can remember as a child my
father was cleaning a freshly shot partridge and he was giving me a tour
of its anatomny (I'm sure he's happy to have been responsible for
kindling an interest that would later develop into the study of dead
animal bones from archaeological sites).  Anyways, he cut open the
gizzard and explained to me what it was used for.  But the contents of
that gizzard, if memory serves, was more sandy and gravelly than being
comprised of small pebbles.  In addition, the chicken skeletons did not
possess gizzard stones, but instead had dark 'charcoal-like' spots where
the gizzards should have been.  Perhaps the smaller birds have a much
finer gizzard?  Any naturalists/biologists out there?
 
        Anyways, I'll check on those stones an get back to you.
 
        Dwayne James
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