Comment on ‘Purpose, Permanence, and Perception of 14,000-Year-Old Architecture: Contextual Taphonomy of Food Refuse’, by Reuven Yeshurun, Guy Bar-Oz, Daniel Kaufman, and Mina Weinstein-Evron
posted on 2015-10-30, 16:16authored byPenelope M. Allison
This paper aims to demonstrate how careful and detailed intra
-
site analyses of refuse
and refuse contexts associated with buildings provide a more useful tool for
understanding practice than do analyses of the stru
ctures alone. As the authors are
well aware a comparable approach was taken by Lewis Binford some thirty years ago
,
so
studies of the Epipaleolithic
-
Neolithic Near East have been slow to engage with
this scholarship. More specific objectives of this paper,
though, are to demonstrate
that animal bone taphonomies and their sequential contexts can be used to
differentiate between short
-
term and long
-
term occupation in Natufian structures, and
also to identify their communal o
r
residential use. Fundamental to a
study
that
concerns more consumption
-
oriented approaches to lived space are
four
levels of
analyses. These consist of: detailed
analyses of
artefact taphonomies;
detailed
context
ual
analyses
;
analyses of
artefact assemblage
patterning
;
and approaches to t
he
use of space. Here I use the term ‘artefact’ to include faunal remains
as
the refuse of
human action. [Opening paragraph]
History
Citation
Current Anthropology, 2014, 55 (5), pp. 606-607
Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of Archaeology and Ancient History/Core Staff
Version
VoR (Version of Record)
Published in
Current Anthropology
Publisher
University of Chicago Press for Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research