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The Science of Taphonomy and Why It Matters Here

Taphonomy — the study of how organisms decay and become part of the geological record — is the analytical framework within which the distinction between animal gnawing and human cut marks at Loch Borralie was established, and it deserves more attention than it typically receives in popular accounts of archaeological discoveries.

The word comes from the Greek taphos (burial) and nomos (law), and the discipline was formally established by the Soviet paleontologist Ivan Yefremov in 1940, though the questions it addresses had been part of paleontological and archaeological practice long before they were given a formal name.

Taphonomy asks: what processes, after an organism’s death, shaped the physical remains that archaeologists or paleontologists eventually encounter?