“We want to go, where everyone knows, mussels are all the same…”: a comment on some recent zooarchaeological research on Mytilus californianus size prediction

Abstract

Two new but similar approaches to California mussel (Mytilus californianus) size prediction using archaeological fragments, are compared with known mussel biology. Some assumptions, traditional in zooarchaeology but unfounded zoologically, have made prediction formulae that are likely to be generally inaccurate. A standard statistical exploratory technique shows archaeologically informative underlying structure in the data.