The Laboratory maintains a comparative skeletal collection of over 4,000 modern vertebrate and invertebrate specimens from Georgia, the southeastern United States, and adjacent coastal waters. Over 550 theses, dissertations, scholarly papers, journal articles, book chapters, other publications, and reports have been authored by laboratory students, staff, and faculty.

Studies are based on the identification and analysis of over 250 archaeological faunal assemblages from throughout the southeastern United States, the Caribbean basin, Peru, and Ecuador. Most analyses focus on coastal settings. This research examines such questions as differences in rural/urban subsistence strategies, Native American contributions to European subsistence strategies, and the impact of human use on marine resources. The comparative collection has recently been used to study faunal materials from Bayou St. John, Alabama; the Fountain of Youth Park site, Florida; the St. Catherines Shell Ring and Sapelo Shell Ring, Georgia; the Charleston Beef Market and Dock St. Theatre Privy, South Carolina; and the Presidio San Sabá, Texas.

Students are strongly encouraged to participate in these projects. The comparative collection is an important resource in teaching the Zooarchaeology course every other year and the Laboratory also welcomes the participation interns in the Georgia Museum of Natural History.

The curator of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory is Dr. Reitz

Dr. Elizabeth J. Reitz. Reitz received her PhD in 1979 from the University of Florida and is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. She has served as an officer, board member, or committee member for the Society for Historical Archaeology, the Society for American Archaeology, the International Council of Archaeozoology, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, and the Society of Ethnobiology. Her research focuses on the interpretation of vertebrate remains from coastal archaeological sites dating from the Late Pleistocene into the twentieth century throughout the Americas. She has studied collections from Peru, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Montserrat, Barbuda, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the southeastern United States.

Inquiries about the Zooarchaeology Laboratory and its projects may be directed to Dr. Elizabeth J. Reitz by telephone at 706-542-1464 or by email at ereitz@uga.edu.

History of the Zooarchaeology Laboratory

The Zooarchaeology Laboratory at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia (USA) was established in 1977 with support from Heritage Preservation Grants administered through the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GDNR). The Laboratory provides researchers and students with resources to identify and analyze animal remains from archaeological sites. The laboratory specializes in the identification of vertebrate remains from coastal archaeological sites in the southeastern United States.

People

Sarah Bergh Sarah Bergh is investigating changes in resource management and landscapes on St. Catherines Island, Georgia for her doctoral dissertation. Archaeological and documentary evidence indicates that late prehispanic populations (A.D. 1300 - 1580) on the island were organized on a different scale than were earlier coastal groups. Zooarchaeological evidence, however, does not show a corresponding change in subsistence strategies. Her research addresses resource management strategies and human impacts on the island’s landscape that were associated with changing social and political conditions. Measures of these changes focus on diet breadth, relative abundances of taxa, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic analysis of mammal remains, and size-at-age of fishes and shellfishes.