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Evaluation of size-related salmonid fish vertebrae deformation due to compression: an experimental approach

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Abstract

An experimental program of uniaxial compression forces on fresh and dry salmonid vertebrae of different sizes is presented to show what diagnostic features compression generates on these bones. The study found that diagnostic features exist, but their frequency often depends on size and the amount of fat that vertebrae contain when subjected to uniaxial compression. These signatures provide reference tools to assess formation processes of fish bone assemblages, whether archaeological or paleontological. The experimental data were later applied to a case study of a salmonid assemblage from the Late Upper Paleolithic to Mesolithic site of Santa Catalina (Basque country, Spain), to assess the validity of a hypothesis postulating that prehistoric salmonid populations from the Cantabrian region were subjected to overexploitation and that this phenomenon brought about a decrease in the mean size of specimens before the onset of the Neolithic in the region.

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Data availability

The data underlying this study are within the paper. Also, experimental specimens are available at the Laboratory of Experimental Taphonomy, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain.

Code availability (software application or custom code)

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Also, we thank the editors of the special issue.

Funding

This work was supported by Spanish Ministerio de Tecnologia y Competitividad [grants numbers HAR2014-55722-P, HAR2017-88325-P and PID2020-118662 GB-100 granted to AMM and ER]. The experiments at the LET/LEA laboratory were covered by projects CGL-2016 79334-P (MINECO) and i-COOP2017B-20287 (CSIC) granted to YFJ and MINECO contract PTA2015-10834-I granted to M.D. Pesquero-Fernández; RF work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica, Argentina [grants numbers PICT PICT 2015–0272 and PICT 2016 0368], and the Secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad Nacional del Sur [grant number PGI 22/I266].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Arqueozoología (LAZ-UAM), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Arturo Morales Muñiz & Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo

  2. Departamento de Humanidades, Universidad Nacional del Sur- CONICET, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

    Romina Frontini

  3. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo & María Dolores Pesquero-Fernández

  4. F.R.B.B, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

    Alicia B. Hernández

  5. Departamento de Matemática, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina

    Liliana A. García

Authors
  1. Arturo Morales Muñiz
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Contributions

Arturo Morales-Muñiz, Romina Frontini, Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo, Eufrasia Roselló-Izquierdo, María Dolores Pesquero-Fernández: Conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; funding acquisition; investigation; methodology; writing—original draft, review, editing. Alicia Hernández and Liliana García: Data curation, formal analysis.

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Correspondence to Romina Frontini.

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Morales Muñiz, A., Frontini, R., Fernández-Jalvo, Y. et al. Evaluation of size-related salmonid fish vertebrae deformation due to compression: an experimental approach. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 13, 215 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01466-2

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