GEOMETRIC MORPHOMETRICS IN ARCHAEOZOOLOGY: APPLICATIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

The 11th ICAZ International Conference of ICAZ (International Council for Archaeozoology) will take place in Paris, from 23 to 28 August 2010.

The main objectives of the conference are to:

• promote archaeozoology (zooarchaeology) as a domain of study that provides increasingly important contributions to both prehistoric and historical archaeology and to the history of biodiversity;
• strengthen interactions between archaeozoologists from all continents, in particular those who find themselves in situations of partial isolation. The 2010 conference will particularly focus on giving voice to and generating closer links with archaeozoologists based in Central/Eastern Europe and Asia, without neglecting Latin America, where the previous ICAZ Conference took place;
• promote the archaeozoological study of hunter-gatherers societies.

Scientific Session on Geometric Morphometrics
Morphometrics, which study variations and changes in the form (size and shape) of an organism or an object, is one of the main techniques used in archaeozoology to extract biological information from animal remains. Morphometric technics in archaeozoology have mainly relied on combined uni/multivariate statistics and quantitative morphology based on linear measurements. Although useful, traditional morphometrics face several limitations (size correction, absence of homology in the linear distance, difficulty to capture geometry of complex shape, absence of graphical representation of shape changes) and prevent the addressing of old research questions and therefore the meeting of new challenges in bioarchaeology.

The so called “revolution” of Geometric Morphometrics in Biological science and Physical Anthropology during the 90’s has now addressed these issues by providing a new statistical theory to not only capture and retain the geometry of an object throughout the analyses but also to allow the visualization of its changes. These advances provide an opportunity to see if i) this revolution has helped archaeozoology to reach new insights into old questions; ii) to evidence the limits of its application on animal remains and iii) to identify the new directions in the field of archaeozoology within the following topics:

► Biogeography.

► Ecomorphology and Phylogeny.

► Taxonomy and chronospecies.

► Domestication.

► Ontogeny.

The objective is to get researchers together in order to investigate possibilities and limitations of GM applications to tackle complex biological questions with osteoarchaeological remains and therefore widen the fields of investigation in archaeozoology.

Thomas Cucchi
CNRS, UMR 7209 « Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique : sociétés, pratiques, environnements »,  MNHN, Dpt Écologie et gestion de la biodiversité, 55 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France ; email
Sabrina Renaud
UMR 5125 CNRS – Université Lyon 1, Bâtiment Géode, 2 rue Dubois, campus de la Doua, 69622 Villeurbanne.

Web site:  http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/icaz/ICAZ2010/00-1st%20page/1st%20page.htm