Complementarity between morphological and proteomic taxonomic identification methods of Late Upper Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic bone fragments from the NE Iberian Peninsula

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Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) has been widely used for taxonomic identification of fragmented bones, yet most direct comparisons with morphological identifications originate from European Palaeolithic contexts. This study provides a general assessment of the two taxonomic identification approaches of one Late Upper Palaeolithic and three Early Neolithic bone assemblages, all located in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The results confirm previously reported patterns where large-bodied taxa, especially Bos sp., were either more abundant in the ZooMS component or showed close similarity between identification methods regardless of local subsistence economy. These trends were broadly consistent across temporal, cultural, and environmental contexts, as well as in comparison with 27 other contexts from previously published studies comparing ZooMS and morphological data. However, variation among cervid taxa suggests that finer taxonomic subdivisions may prove important for further comparisons between identification methods. Although broad taxon- and body-size-related patterns are evident across bone assemblages, their expression within individual assemblages remains dependent on context specific taphonomic histories. Such trends should therefore not be interpreted as intrinsic properties of particular taxa, but as the outcome of taphonomic events that differentially influence taxonomic identifiability within fragment size classes.

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