An X-ray diffraction investigation of bones from archaeological sites in India: a taxonomic discrimination method for archaeozoology

Correct identification of animal remains is one of the foundations of faunal studies. It ensures a correct understanding of subsistence patterns, past life styles, and socio-economic and religious attitudes of the people who hunted animals for food or kept them as domesticates.

Against this backdrop, the present paper examines the mineral component of bone from different species of animals from present, archaeological, and paleontological contexts using X-ray diffraction. Hydroxyapatite (HAP) is one of the inorganic components of such hard tissues of living vertebrates as bones and teeth. The present study examines the apatite mineralogy and structural pattern of this inorganic matrix to see whether every taxon has its own distinctive bone mineral chemistry, which can be employed for taxonomic discrimination between morphologically similar forms. The emerging results of this first-ever attempt to examine bone mineral chemistry for taxonomic assessment in India promise to provide a valuable addition to earlier studies using mtDNA, tooth enamel ultrastructure and skeletal morphometric analyses to discriminate between morphologically difficult to differentiate pairs such as sheep/goat and cattle/water buffalo. Furthermore, the method has wider applications including toward understanding diagenesis and its effects on archaeofaunal assemblages.