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SUMMARY:The Social Lives of Faunal Remains: Rethinking Taphonomy as Social
  Process - Akshay Sarathi (Department of International Studies\, American 
 University of Sharjah)
DTSTART:20251104T130000Z
DTEND:20251104T140000Z
UID:TALK239365@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:133447
DESCRIPTION:Taphonomy is often understood as the science of decay - the st
 udy of how animal remains move from the living world into the archaeologic
 al record. Yet this view limits taphonomy to naturalistic processes and fr
 ames human action as secondary or distortive. I propose instead a framewor
 k of social taphonomy\, which redefines the field as a study of transforma
 tion rather than loss. Drawing on ethnographic work with fishing and shell
 fish-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 a
 bsences and presences that shape what ultimately becomes visible to archae
 ologists. Social taphonomy brings together the technical and the social by
  treating butchery\, cooking\, exchange\, and discard as taphonomic proces
 ses in their own right. Each act that alters an animal also repositions it
  within ideological\, economic\, and ecological relationships. Seen this w
 ay\, taphonomy is not simply a tool for controlling bias but a lens for tr
 acing how living beings become archaeological matter through intertwined n
 atural and social transformations. It shifts the field from a science of d
 ecay to a theory of becoming\, revealing how the making of the archaeologi
 cal record is itself a deeply cultural process.
LOCATION:Garrod Seminar Room\, MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Rese
 arch
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