The UNM Zooarchaeology Laboratory supports the analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites. Our osteological collection contains comparative mammalian and avian specimens of taxa common in New Mexico (both domestic and wild) and the greater southwest, as well as a less-representative selection of specimens from other locations around the globe. Additional resources available in the lab include a reference library, a specimen photography setup, two 3D scanners, visualization analysis software, microscopes, and standard measurement equipment.

Lab projects focus on identification, taphonomy, morphometrics, isotopic analysis, and more; and the collections with which we work are from varied regional and temporal contexts, including Paleolithic Europe, Pleistocene and Holocene southeast Asia, Bronze and Iron Age north-central Asia, pre-Colombian and contact-era Central America and Argentina, as well as the Southwest US/Northwest Mexico (from the Pleistocene through the present day). We collaborate with the Anthropology Department's Paleoecology Lab, the Maxwell Museum, the Center for Stable Isotopes, and the Museum of Southwestern Biology. 

The Zooarchaeology Laboratory is open on a limited basis to visiting researchers.

For more information about the Zooarchaeology Laboratory (including access information!) contact  Dr. Jones.

Zooarchaeology Laboratory projects and press:

The Colombian Exchange and Environmental Rebound

• Questioning Rebound: People and Environmental Change in the Protohistoric and Early Historic Americas

Horses

• American Archaeology: Horses and People
  
• Horses and Human Societies in the North American West

Tijeras Pueblo

• UNM anthropology team analyzes life in pueblo at crossroads
  
• The Community at the Crossroads: Artiodactyl Exploitation and Socio-environmental Connectivity at Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581)

Dogs in the Southwest

• UNM student, professor coauthors of book chapter about Pueblo dogs
  
• Domesticated dogs weren’t Man’s only best friend: UNM anthropologists look to answer ‘What makes a dog?’

Pueblo Fishing

• Body size from unconventional specimens: A 3D geometric morphometrics approach to fishes from Ancestral Pueblo Contexts
• New research explores how fish became a bigger part of pueblo people's diet
• Resource risk and stability in the zooarchaeological record: the case of Pueblo fishing in the Middle Rio Grande, New Mexico