Xin'anzhuang Bone Fragments

Abstract

In 2007, a great number of bone fragments were excavated in Xin’anzhuang, Anyang. The excavation uncovered four ashpit units, H144, H221, H46, and H179. H144 alone generated 9188 pieces of skeletons and fragments, approximately 496kg. 20% of the H144 fragments, mainly cattle and deer bones, exhibit degrees of manufacture wear, leading the archaeologists to speculate that Xin’anzhuang was a part of the Tiesanlu large-scale bone workshop (a site located merely 60m to the east of Xin’anzhuang) in operation during Yinxu Phase II to IV (c. 1188-1045BC). For the cattle bone fragments, zooarchaeological identification shows that the fragments were mainly extracted from limb bones, with the radius and tibia being the most present elements. Examining the raw material selection, utilization, and manufacturing at the Xin’anzhuang site based on a close observation of the bone fragments would give answers to 1) the estimated production scale; 2) the degree of standardization of the manufacturing process; 3) the question of utilization vs. re-utilization of the bone fragments: in other words, were some of these fragments the leftover offcuts stored in the pits for further re-utilization as raw materials?

This paper focuses on a sample of 883 identified cattle bone fragments with manufacturing wear, presumably rescaled and then hand-drawn on paper skeletal element templates. One of our aims is to digitize the scanned records of skeletal fragments into quantifiable vector shape objects. The digitization involves the use of ArcGIS, by treating the scanned templates as a “map” and then “plotting” the polygons of bone fragments onto the polyline templates. The advantage of digitizing the fragments in this way is that useful secondary faunal analyses such as the calculations of MNE (minimum number of elements) and MNI (minimum number of individuals; some use MAU, minimum animal units) can be easily performed utilizing some geospatial processing features offered by the software. The methodology will be presented in full, along with some problems with the records, the method itself, and suggestions for further improvement.

Keywords

The Locus: Xin'anzhuang West

Excavation Date

2007

Institutions

Anyang Archaeology Team, Institute of Archaeology, CASS

Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange

The Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

Individuals

Yue Zhanwei (CASS)

Yung-ti Li (University of Chicago)