Compiling bone metric variables from South American camelids. 40 years of osteometry development in the southern cone

IZETA, ANDRES DARIO; SRUR, MARIA GABRIELA; LABARCA ENCINA, RAFAEL

San Rafael

Conferencia; XII International Conference International Council for Archaeozoology; 2014

Museo de Historia Natural de San Rafael

In South America, the four existing species of the Camelidae family have a very similar skeleton, which has greatly hindered the taxonomic assignment of bones from archaeological sites using traditional compared anatomy. A solution for this difficulty is obtaining metrical data from osteometry, a tool used in the last forty years in the zooarchaeology of South American camelids. Throughout the history of South American camelid faunal studies, different protocols have been developed, which together have generated a significant amount of metric variables in all the bones of the appendicular skeleton, as well as the pelvic and scapular girdle. Nevertheless, the way in which the bones measures are taken is extremely important because allows comparable results between current archaeological and reference samples. This paper compiles and organizes much of the osteometric variables that have been used in the study with camelids which are published in various scientific journals or dissertations annexes. Especially we focus on those variables defined for the postcranial skeleton, particularly in the anatomical units that are most often recovered from archaeological sites. The result is the definition and standardization of 328 continuous variables coming from 24 elements. Thus, this contribution attempts to present a critical analysis of the description of each variable in order to avoid errors in the values obtained during the measurement time