How to Identify Animal Bone

Animal bone is one of, if not the most, commonly recovered finds material from archaeological sites.

Identifying the full range of species that you could potentially find on an archaeological site requires access to a comparative collection and hours of study gaining experience with archaeological material.

Whilst this is beyond the scope of a short introduction, having the knowledge to identify the most commonly found species can be of great help on site.

This guide will hopefully enable you to distinguish between human and animal bones and broadly distinguish between cattle, horse, sheep, pig and dog remains.