Taphonomy, Regional

Abstract

Taphonomy is a discipline common to many fields, like paleontology, geology, paleoecology, or archaeology. Its basic goal is to understand the transition of organic materials, for example, bones or soft tissues, from the biosphere to the lithosphere (Lyman 1994). Taphonomic information is routinely used by archaeologists to assess the quality of archaeological data, to evaluate the loss of cultural and ecological information, to pursue paleobiological questions, and sometimes also to acquire paleoecological information (Gifford 1981; Behrensmeyer 1993; Lyman 1994; Marean 1995). In other words, the conditions which are adequate for the formation of fossils are a central concern of taphonomy. Archaeological applications are usually focused on the preservation of bones, but they also cover cases involving transformations of lithic tools, pot- tery, or other kinds of materials. In most cases local scales of analysis are used – usually, the site – and indeed those scales are adequate to performmost of these tasks. The literature is full of successful examples of application of taphonomic analysis at a local scale (Pickering et al. 2007; Stuart & Larkin 2010). However, the fact that the scale at which most archaeological problems are usually stated is regional is a valid reason to also advocate for a regional scale of taphonomic analysis (Borrero 1988).