Distinguishing African bovids using Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS): New peptide markers and insights into Iron Age economies in Zambia

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Paper Summary

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Got Bones? ZooMSing African Bovids Reveals Secrets of Iron Age Zambia

This study developed the first comprehensive set of peptide markers for wild African bovids and applied ZooMS to fragmented faunal assemblages from six Iron Age sites in Zambia. The results revealed greater taxonomic diversity than traditional morphological analysis, indicating cattle-based pastoralism supplemented by hunting, particularly of duikers, and shedding light on the persistence of wild bovid exploitation during the Iron Age.

Possible Conflicts of Interest

None identified

Identified Weaknesses

Small sample size

The small sample sizes for some of the archaeological sites limit the generalizability of the findings and the ability to draw strong conclusions about past subsistence practices.

Uneven collagen preservation

The uneven preservation of collagen at different sites introduces potential biases in the taxonomic identifications and interpretations of past subsistence economies.

Reliance on morphology

The reliance on morphology for some identifications, especially in cases where ZooMS spectra are incomplete, may lead to misclassifications due to the morphological similarity among many bovid species.

Limited species analysis

The limited number of species analyzed within some subfamilies, such as Cephalophinae, restricts the ability to make broader generalizations about the ZooMS marker profiles for those groups.

Lack of peptide markers for certain taxa

The lack of peptide markers for many African taxa, including viverrids, rodents, and mustelids, prevents the identification of these species through ZooMS and may lead to underestimation of taxonomic diversity at some sites.

Rating Explanation

This study presents a valuable contribution to the field of zooarchaeology by developing the first comprehensive set of peptide markers for wild African bovids. The application of ZooMS to highly fragmented faunal assemblages from Iron Age sites in Zambia demonstrates the method's potential to reveal greater taxonomic richness than analyses based solely on morphology. This, in turn, provides new insights into past subsistence economies and foodways. Although the study is limited by small sample sizes at some sites and uneven collagen preservation, it offers a novel avenue for future research on African archaeofaunal assemblages.

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