Presenting a talk at the Society for American Archaeology – Dr Jo Osborn

In April 2024, I presented a talk at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology titled, “The Missing Mammals of Cerro Azul.” In it, I suggested that the low frequency of medium and large-bodied mammals among the faunal remains which LASTJOURNEY has excavated at Cerro Azul is not a reflection of local hunting practices or dietary preferences, but rather the result of taphonomic processes which have rendered them analytically absent. After being buried for thousands of years in the Colombian Amazon, these animal bones are intensely fragmented. In my talk I demonstrated that although this fragmentation has complicated all identifications, it has a particularly strong impact on identification of larger animals, thereby skewing the representation of different animal taxa present at the site. While this is a relatively simple observation about the composition of the Cerro Azul archaeofaunal assemblage, moving forward these findings will influence how we interpret the faunal assemblage and the human decision making which led to its formation.