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The Taphonomy of Cooked Bone : Characterizing Boiling and its Physico-Chemical Effects

Roberts, S.J.; Smith, C.I.; Millard, A.R.; Collins, M.J.

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Authors

S.J. Roberts

C.I. Smith

M.J. Collins



Abstract

Cooking is perhaps the most common pre–burial taphonomic transformation that occurs to bone, yet it is still one of the least understood. Little progress has been made in determining a method of identifying cooked bone in the archaeological record, despite its import for various branches of archaeology. This paper attempts to describe boiling in terms of its physico–chemical effects on bone, and uses a suite of diagenetic indicators to do this. It is shown that cooking for brief periods of time has little distinguishable effect on bone in the short term, but that increased boiling times can mirror diagenetic effects observed in archaeological bone. The relationship between the loss of collagen and alterations to the bone mineral is explored through heating experiments, and the results compared with archaeological data.The possibility of boiling being used as an analogue for bone diagenesis in future studies is raised, and the key relationship between protein and mineral is once again highlighted as vital to our understanding of bone diagenesis.

Citation

Roberts, S., Smith, C., Millard, A., & Collins, M. (2002). The Taphonomy of Cooked Bone : Characterizing Boiling and its Physico-Chemical Effects. Archaeometry, 44(3), 485-494. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4754.t01-1-00080

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Aug 1, 2002
Deposit Date Aug 1, 2008
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Archaeometry
Print ISSN 0003-813X
Electronic ISSN 1475-4754
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 44
Issue 3
Pages 485-494
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4754.t01-1-00080

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