Sclerochronological analysis of archaeological mollusc assemblages: methods, applications and future prospects
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sclerochronological analysis of archaeological mollusc assemblages: methods, applications and future prospects Robin W. Twaddle & Sean Ulm & Jane Hinton & Christopher M. Wurster & Michael I. Bird
Received: 9 September 2014 / Accepted: 7 January 2015 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract Accreting skeletal tissues found in bone, teeth, otoliths and molluscan shell act as sensitive recorders of local environmental and climatic conditions. Owing to their robust nature, ubiquity and abundance in the archaeological record as well as the potential for high-resolution data acquisition, the accreting skeletal tissues of archaeological molluscs are increasingly employed as palaeoenvironmental proxies. Researchers have chiefly utilised such proxies to extend instrumental records of environmental conditions through palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and explore the impact of environmental and climatic change on human populations. However, the use of environmental proxies from the archaeological record can be hampered by a number of methodological challenges including inadequate sampling strategies, appropriate calibration, the use of inappropriate proxies and the broad extrapolation of localised results. This paper reviews the use of molluscan shell from archaeological contexts as
palaeoenvironmental proxies. We focus on the application of sclerochronology—a suite of high-resolution physical and geochemical data recovery methods widely used in conjunction with molluscan shell. This paper presents an overview of the potential of these techniques in approaching more nuanced understandings of human-environment interactions and how they can be more successfully incorporated into archaeological research. Keywords Palaeoenvironmental proxy . Human-environment interaction . Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction . Sclerochronology . Stable isotope analysis . Trace element analysis
Introduction R. W. Twaddle (*) : S. Ulm College of Arts, Society and Education, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia e-mail: [email protected] S. Ulm e-mail: [email protected] J. Hinton School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C. M. Wurster : M. I. Bird College of Science, Technology and Engineering, James Cook University, PO Box 6811, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia C. M. Wurster e-mail: [email protected] M. I. Bird e-mail: [email protected]
Archaeologists are increasingly citing environment and climate as important variables impacting human decisionmaking in prehistory (e.g. Brockwell et al. 2013; Burchell et al. 2013c; Faulkner 2013; Hallmann et al. 2013; Hiscock 1999; Nunn 2003; Rowland 1999; Sim and Wallis 2008). Gaining increased understandings of the environments with which past populations engaged is therefore an integral first step towards more accurate interpretations of human behaviour. However, as large-scale palaeoenvironmental reconstructions can be geographically removed from con
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