By Laerke Recht, Associate Editor for Zooarchaeology
As with other archaeological sciences, Covid-19 has made teaching and analysis of animal remains very challenging. As a practical discipline, it is difficult to be without access to both teaching and reference collections; sampling and carrying out museum-based research has been nearly impossible. Nevertheless, the zooarchaeological community is wonderful, and I have never seen more activity on the ZOOARCH listserv than in these past months. Scholars from around the world are helping each other out with questions and access to resources – something which I have also personally benefitted from, and am extremely grateful for. The associated ZooBook is as always also very useful for zooarchaeologists to help each other identify ‘mystery’ bones.
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| Here's me playing around with a horse femur on the Vertebrae App (scene shot). |
While it is unlikely that we can ever fully replace the experience of handling the primary material itself, teachers of zooarchaeology are exploring and playing with ways of learning about and presenting animal bones, including those that make use of digital technologies. Fortunately, there are already some excellent websites offering open access resources that are extremely useful to both students and researchers. Some of the possible solutions include the use of face masks and gloves when handling specimens (while maintaining appropriate social distancing), but concerns remain, for example to what extent, if at all, we can sanitise faunal remains, or how long the virus might survive on bones. Other options might be to send out small teaching kits to students individually, or the use of casts. So far, none of these have been ideal, but we are learning as we go along.
3D-modelling is proving particularly useful. For example, Laetoli Production has created full, high definition 3D models of a range of animals, which can be examined in their free Vertebrate App (laetoli-production.fr/en/works/12). This allows you to choose either a full skeleton or a single bone, which can be turned and twisted as desired; picking a specific bone in the full skeleton mode will also provide zoological data on it. A similar website for birds can be found at Aves 3D (www.aves3d.org/) or Fauna Toolkit (faunatoolkit.com). Further online resources and collections are listed at Knochenarbeit (www.knochenarbeit.de/skeletal-collections-identification-keys/?lang=en).
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