Invertebrate, Plant, and Geological Effects on Bone

Abstract

This chapter reviews the diverse effects that invertebrates, plants, weathering, sedimentary processes, and diagenesis can have on bone surfaces, interior structure, and ultimate survival. It aims to alert zooarchaeologists to processes that can affect skeletal elements soon after their discard, and thus possibly be displayed by archaeofaunal specimens as surface modifications or altered element frequencies. Abrasion presents interpretive challenges because several processes mobilize the same effectors to alter bone surfaces, and the chapter presents the useful distinction between impact and sliding abrasion, giving examples and illustrations. Microbial organisms have been shown to enlarge bone tissue pore spaces, in some cases enhancing diagenesis and in others enabling bone dissolution and destruction. Diagenesis was once thought to begin only after burial, but actualistic research has shown that this can begin when bones rest upon soil surfaces, and the chapter offers a guide to literature of this topic.