ABSTRACT
Taphonomy was de ned by Efremov (1940) as the “laws of burial.” As such, taphonomy refers to the depositional history of a particular set of remains, explaining the natural and in some cases arti cial processes that have acted upon the remains until the time of their discovery and removal from that depositional environment. Taphonomic research that is drawn from multiple academic disciplines, including ethology, botany, paleontology, archaeology, and physical anthropology, can illuminate the natural processes that have aœected a particular crime scene or other forensic archaeological sites. Research focused on taphonomic processes in large part began as a method to interpret osseous data about past environments and ecological relationships in an eœort to determine the causative agents of bone destruction and alterations that might bias these interpretations (Behrensmeyer 1991, Weigelt 1989). Taphonomic research is also rooted in diœerentiating between bone modication caused by hominids from bone modi cation caused by other animals (Binford 1981, Brain 1981, Kerbis Peterhans 1990, Payne 1983). Current taphonomic research covers a variety of topics ranging from weathering (i.e., the eœects of exposure to sunlight, precipitation, etc.), damage from plant root growth, gnawing by scavengers, modi cations made by «uvial transport or thermal damage, and the eœects that burial in acidic soil will have on skeletal remains. See Chapters 16, 18, and 19 for a detailed discussion of various taphonomic processes.
