Testing osteometric species determination on zooarchaeological dolphin remains from Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites in Ash-Sharqiyyah, Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

Different Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites located in the Ras al-Hadd cape and Ras al-Jinz Bay area (Ash-Sharqiyyah South Governorate, Sultanate of Oman) have provided thousands of zooarchaeological dolphin remains suggesting a strong reliance on the exploitation of these animals. Dolphins are hard to identify to the species level due to a highly comparable interspecies osteological morphology as well as a general lack of extensive osteological reference collections. As a result, such remains are frequently identified as “dolphin”, without any further species identification being undertaken. In this study, we assess whether an osteometric method for distinguishing the nine dolphin species that are present in Omani waters can be used to identify the zooarchaeological specimens. Zooarchaeology by Mass-Spectrometry (ZooMS) was also undertaken on a subset of the specimens but proved ineffective due to the poor preservation of the material in an arid climate. This evidence strengthens the need for effective species identification methods based on traditional zooarchaeological methods. This research is based on our ongoing analysis of the thousands of dolphin remains from the Omani zooarchaeological assemblages.