Abstract

Taphonomy is often understood as the science of decay – the study of how animal remains move from the living world into the archaeological record. Yet this view limits taphonomy to naturalistic processes and frames human action as secondary or distortive. I propose instead a framework of social taphonomy, which redefines the field as a study of transformation rather than loss. Drawing on ethnographic work with fishing and shellfish-gathering communities in Zanzibar, I argue that taphonomy begins at the moment of encounter, when animals are caught, divided, shared, and circulated through networks of practice. These actions create patterned absences and presences that shape what ultimately becomes visible to archaeologists. Social taphonomy brings together the technical and the social by treating butchery, cooking, exchange, and discard as taphonomic processes in their own right. Each act that alters an animal also repositions it within ideological, economic, and ecological relationships. Seen this way, taphonomy is not simply a tool for controlling bias but a lens for tracing how living beings become archaeological matter through intertwined natural and social transformations. It shifts the field from a science of decay to a theory of becoming, revealing how the making of the archaeological record is itself a deeply cultural process.