The Economic Anatomy of Game Species

在国家科学基金会的支持下，詹姆斯·奥康奈尔博士和凯伦·卢波博士将研究肉类在东非各种野生动物物种中的解剖分布及其营养价值。在与肯尼亚政府的密切合作下，他们将获得肯尼亚野生动物服务机构扑杀的大约五种野味的身体。他们将以传统的方式运输和屠宰身体，然后从不同的解剖部分确定肉类和骨髓的数量。还将进行营养分析，并在此基础上确定每一部分的相对“价值”。还可以衡量加工过程中涉及的成本，并建立成本/效益比。代表食物残留物的动物骨骼通常是从非洲史前遗址中发现的，考古学家试图在此基础上重建史前行为模式。通常，在现场发现意外和非随机的身体部位分布，这些可能很难解释。为了解开这个明显的谜团，奥康奈尔博士和他的同事们研究了哈扎人，这是一个由东非狩猎者和采集者组成的今天的群体，结果再次令人惊讶，因为它们不符合简单的最小努力模型。然而，涉及受控屠宰的研究从未对非洲野生物种进行过，希望收集到的有用信息将为这个问题提供新的线索。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。由于动物遗骸是从许多考古遗址中发现的，并构成了主要的数据来源，许多考古学家将重点放在对这些材料的分析上。O‘Connell博士和Lupo博士收集的信息将提供有价值的数据，这些数据将在许多考古学背景下广泛使用。目标是了解人类的生存战略以及这些战略是如何随着时间的推移而发展起来的。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. James O'Connell and Karen Lupo will study the anatomical distribution of meat and its nutritional value in a variety of East African wild game species. Working in close collaboration with the Kenyan government, they will be given access to the carcasses of ca. five species of game culled by the Kenyan Wildlife Service. They will transport and have the carcasses butchered in a traditional manner and then determine the amounts of meat and marrow from different anatomical portions. Nutritional analyses will also be conducted and on this basis the relative "value" of each portion can be determined. The costs involved in processing can also be measured and a cost/benefit ratio established. Animal bones which represent the remains of meals are often recovered from prehistoric African sites and on this basis archaeologists attempt to reconstruct prehistoric behavior patterns. Often unexpected and non-random distributions of body parts are discovered at sites and these can be difficult to explain. In an attempt to solve this apparent puzzle, Dr. O'Connell and his colleagues have studied the Hadza, a present- day group of East African hunters and gatherers and again the results are surprising because they do not conform to a simple least effort model. However, studies which involve controlled butchering have never been conducted on wild African species and hopefully the utility information collected will shed new light on this question. This research is important for several reasons. Because faunal remains are recovered from many archaeological sites and constitute a major data source, many archaeologists focus on the analysis of such material. The information collected by Drs. O'Connell and Lupo will provide valuable data which will be widely used in many archaeological contexts. The goal is to understand human subsistence strategies and how these developed over time.