The taphonomic interpretation of avian skeletal part frequencies

Two archaeological avifaunas from the Great Basin region of western North America are compared with published avifaunal data to reveal that: (1) the relative frequency of anatomical parts is not significantly different between paleontological and archaeological sites, or between archaeological sites in different environments; and (2) a statistic used to distinguish naturally-deposited avian specimens from those accumulated by prehistoric people in European sites reflects differences in locomotor abilities of the birds in the Great Basin assemblages rather than processes of deposition as reconstructed by independent evidence.