Introduction

Most faunal remains paleobiologists and zooarchaeologists study are recovered from subsurface contexts. An important taphonomic problem then, concerns gaining an understanding of burial processes. For example, humans do not seem to be the only biological agent that buries animal parts. Sexton beetles (Microphorus sp.) bury rodent carcasses (Milne and Milne 1976), fossorial rodents often die in their burrows and thus are already buried, and trampling (Chapter 9) by any number of biological agents can result in the burial of animal remains. And there are numerous geological processes which result in the burial of animal carcasses and remains (Behrensmeyer and Hook 1992). The burial process is important because not only are bones and teeth placed in the sedimentary matrix in which they undergo diagenetic processes (Chapter 11), but they may be variously moved, reoriented, broken, and/or abraded during burial by the taphonomic agents of burial (Chapter 6).

Burial as a taphonomic process has undergone little intensive study relative to biostratinomic processes that modify vertebrate remains. Straus (1990:261) suggests that depositional and formational processes were initially ignored by archaeologists in favor of the more immediate and interesting task of building cultural chronologies once the deep antiquity of hominids was established in the last half of the nineteenth century.