The history of “laundry lists― in North American

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
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Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa
The history of ‘‘laundry lists’’ in North American zooarchaeology
R. Lee Lyman
Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, United States
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 16 September 2014
Revision received 29 January 2015
Keywords:
Laundry lists
North America
Species lists
Zooarchaeology
a b s t r a c t
North American zooarchaeologists regularly state that prior to about 1970, most zooarchaeological
reports were made up of lists of the animal taxa identified, sometimes with taxonomic abundance data.
These reports are typically labeled laundry lists or species lists, terms meant to be pejorative. Some reports
that appeared between 1900 and 1979 are guides to taxonomic identification, others discuss analytical
techniques, and some represent thoughtful analyses. A sample of 286 titles authored by zooarchaeologists that appeared between 1900 and 1979 shows that laundry lists made up 55 percent of the titles
published between 1900 and 1959; 20 percent of the titles that appeared between 1960 and 1979 are
laundry lists. Adding titles authored by zoologists increases the relative frequency of laundry lists to
68 percent between 1900 and 1959, and to 24 percent between 1960 and 1979. Ironically, the originator
of the term laundry list and its derogatory implications (Stanley J. Olsen) produced only laundry lists after
he introduced the concept. Laundry lists are part of the legacy of North American zooarchaeology, but
previous characterizations of disciplinary history have not been based on empirical data and have been
inaccurate. The data in laundry lists is today analytically valuable.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Studying the history of archaeology has become an important
undertaking over the past several decades and as a result we today
know much about our discipline’s past. Yet there are still unexplored chapters in that history, and some aspects of disciplinary
history are accepted as fact despite a lack of substantiating empirical evidence. The history of any science should be founded on
empirical data to ensure accuracy (Kuhn, 1968; Laudan et al.,
1986). In this paper, I examine a particular claim about the history
of North American zooarchaeology. I do so to illustrate the point
that we risk inaccurate conceptions of the past if we do not study
evidence of that past, a point that is, ironically, the essence of
archaeology. Despite deep theoretical differences, our intellectual
predecessors were not ignorant; they often had research goals
and explanatory models in mind. We are the intellectual descendants of those individuals. Knowing our discipline’s history provides understanding of the research paradigm under which an
early project was undertaken and this in turn provides insight to
why materials and data were collected (or not) in particular ways.
Inaccurate historical knowledge may result in past research being
ignored because it is thought to have produced incorrect information and materials that are of no modern analytical value.
North American zooarchaeologists have often stated that prior
to the 1970s, most faunal analyses involved construction of a list
E-mail address: lymanr@missouri.edu
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2015.02.003
0278-4165/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
of species identified in a collection, sometimes with taxonomic frequency data. Those early analyses are labeled ‘‘laundry lists’’ or
‘‘species lists.’’ No data have been presented to justify this standard
characterization of pre-1970s zooarchaeology. In this paper I
explore the notion of zooarchaeological laundry lists. Review of
the North American zooarchaeology literature that appeared
between 1900 and 1979 shows that indeed, some reports that
appeared prior to 1970 comprise a laundry list and little else.
However, that literature also indicates that well prior to 1970
North American zooarchaeological studies produced more than
just laundry lists. Ironically, the originator of the term laundry list
and its derogatory implications himself produced only laundry lists
after he introduced the concept.
I first identify the origin of the concept of zooarchaeological
laundry lists and determine what the concept means and who first
proposed the term. Then, I phrase the received wisdom about the
history of zooarchaeology research as an hypothesis. The kinds of
data and analyses necessary to test the hypothesis are then
described. Analytical results suggest the hypothesis cannot be sustained. Reasons why laundry lists were produced are evaluated,
and the role of zoologists in the production of laundry lists is found
to be important.
2. Origin of the laundry list concept
Many authors who have used the terms ‘‘laundry list’’ and synonyms such as ‘‘species list’’ and ‘‘list of species’’ (Table 1) do not
43
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
indicate precisely what the terms signify. (Henceforth, I use the term
‘‘laundry list’’ as shorthand for these and related terms.) Some
authors who used the term did so in their Master’s thesis or doctoral
dissertation, likely because such use implied the author knew something about the history of the research field to which he or she was
contributing. Further, the 1970s witnessed major growth in the production of zooarchaeological reports and some of those who contributed to that growth likely hoped to demonstrate they were
intellectually advanced relative to their predecessors.
Statements describing pre-1970s North American zooarchaeology and using the term range from implying a laundry list categorization indicates a lack of analytical sophistication (e.g.,
Glassow and Joslin, 2012; Jones, 2010), through being critical of such
lists (e.g., Reitz and Wing, 1999, 2008; Robison, 1978), to being
derogatory about the analytical value of such lists (Medlock,
1975b; Smith, 1976). Precisely what a laundry list is, however, is seldom discussed.
Smith (1976:279) characterized a zooarchaeological laundry list
as consisting ‘‘of a list of species represented, including the number
of skeletal elements per species and perhaps minimum number of
individual counts and corresponding projected meat yield values.
The brief text that accompanies such lists does little more than
describe in words what is shown in the species list.’’ Continuing,
Smith (1976:283) noted that ‘‘the primary research goal of faunal
analysis [has been] the identification of each individual skeletal
element as to species, body part, side, and so on, and the presentation of this information in the final report. Such reports are
almost entirely descriptive in nature. Any attempts at interpretation or explanation of the presented data are brief, to say
the least.’’ (Smith (1975) does not use the term, but characterizes
early zooarchaeology using similar wording.) The preferred alternative, in Smith’s (1976:284) view, is the ‘‘ecological approach.’’
What, then, might the ecological approach comprise?
Smith (1976:284) stated that the ‘‘primary research goal of the
ecological approach in faunal analysis is to explain, in the form of
predictive models, the interface that existed between prehistoric
human populations and the faunal section of the biotic community.’’ He presented five questions that he argued should serve
as guides toward identifying and understanding the interactions
between prehistoric people and their animal prey.
What was the relative dietary importance of exploited animal
taxa?
Was exploitation of an animal taxon seasonally restricted or did
it take place year-round?
What procurement strategies were used to exploit animals?
To what degree was exploitation of taxa selective?
What was the seasonal pattern and strategy of human exploitation of animals?
Smith (1976) borrowed the term laundry list from Stanley
Olsen. Olsen (1971:1) reported that until the late 1960s, ‘‘it was
common practice to place a faunal list at the end of an archaeological site report. Such reports were rarely more than one or two
pages long and were in reality ‘laundry lists,’ tabulating a specific
number of animals as being present on the site.’’ And by saying that
‘‘Interpretation, rather than identification, should be stressed as
the final goal of bone examinations,’’ and that laundry lists were
the result of ‘‘no thought of interpretation as to what those remains
really meant in the overall evaluation of the excavations,’’ Olsen
(1971:1) established that the ‘‘laundry list’’ term was a derogatory
one.
No one used the term laundry list or the similar species list in
their writings prior to Olsen’s (1971) publication. Entering either
‘‘zooarchaeological laundry list’’ or ‘‘zooarchaeological species list’’
in the web-based Google search engine produces titles in North
Table 1
Chronology of use of the terms laundry list and species list, or a synonym thereof.
a
b
Year
Laundry list
1971
1972
1973
1975
1976
1978
1982
1983
1985
1986
1987
1988
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1997
1999
2000
2003
2004
2005
2007
2008
2009
2010
2012
2014
Olsen
Kasper
Peres
Sum
25 times (after Olsen, 1971)
Medlock (X2)
Species list
Feldman
Penman
Berwick
Smith
Sammis; Robisona,b
McCormick
Olson
Parmalee
Lyman
Robisona
Adams and Kearney; Seyers
McMillan
Murray
Reitz
Darwent; Stewart
Darwent
Walker
McMillan
Brewer
Marrinan; Reitz and Winga
Chapin-Pyritz
Lee
Emery
Lawson; Smith-Lintner
Orr
Kavountzis
Jones; Powell
MacKinnon
Reitz and Winga
Peres
Glassow and Joslin; Russell
17 times
First and second editions.
Robison uses the term ‘‘grocery list’’ rather than ‘‘species list.’’
American zooarchaeology ranging from the 1970s to 2014
(Table 1). But the concept of a laundry list was present prior to
1970. Daly (1969:146) noted that until about 1960, most archaeologists in both the Old and the New Worlds, ‘‘were often content to
merely publish a list of species present.’’ A few years earlier and considering only the New World, Ziegler (1965:51–52) surmised that
‘‘all too often [zooarchaeologists] have unknowingly held back a
large amount of usable information by presenting in the finished
[site] report only a simple listing of the animals present, without
reference to such very relevant factors as numbers of bones per species, depth of occurrence, degree of maturity, condition of the
remains, and so on.’’ The common theme throughout the pertinent
literature (Table 1) is that laundry lists are of little analytical value.
3. What is a laundry list?
In Smith’s (1976) view, anything short of producing answers to
the five questions in the human ecological approach comprises a
laundry list type of zooarchaeological report. This makes it difficult
to falsify a hypothesis that the majority of pre-1970 zooarchaeological reports are laundry lists. Some reports that would be categorized as laundry lists under Smith’s (1976) criteria would,
however, be considered human ecological studies under Olsen’s
(1971) criteria. Further, Smith (1976) and Reitz and Wing (1999)
agree that laundry lists result from lack of interest in human ecology, but they differ on what precisely makes up a laundry list other
than a list of identified taxa and perhaps (but not necessarily) taxonomic abundance data in one or more forms. For my purposes,
clarification of the concept of a laundry list is necessary.
Published histories of zooarchaeology in other areas indicate
the concept of laundry lists is largely limited to North America
(e.g., Allen and Nagaoka, 2004; Bartosiewicz and Choyke, 2002;
Cosgrove, 2002; Darwent, 1994; Driver, 1993; Horwitz, 2002; Lin,
44
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
2015; Mengoni Goñalons, 2004, 2007; Nagaoka and Allen, 2009;
Reitz, 1993; Stewart, 1993, 2003; Stewart, 1998, 2002; Yuan,
2002). Some histories indicate that, like in North America, zooarchaeological research was first accomplished by zoologists and
paleontologists. Only a few of these histories characterize early
research as producing laundry lists (Horwitz, 2002; Mengoni
Goñalons, 2004; Yuan, 2002). Even those histories that concern
Canada seldom describe early zooarchaeology as producing mere
lists of taxa represented, indicating that the concept of a laundry
list is nearly exclusively a product of the United States.
Anthropological zooarchaeology addresses any topic involving
the interaction of humans with animals. Thus diet, ritual use of animal parts, manufacture of tools from animal parts, seasonality of
resource exploitation, habitats exploited, selective hunting, prey
mortality, differential transport of carcass (skeletal) parts, butchering practices, domestication, and animal burials are included.
Interpretations of faunal remains as indicative of past ecological
conditions or prehistoric environments—research pursued by
many zoologists who served as the first zooarchaeologists—should
also be included as representing more than laundry lists. In short, if
a zoorchaeological report does not represent anthropological
zooarchaeology, then it is a laundry list.
includes a list of the species identified, and taxonomic abundance
data. The literature also suggests that the term species list denotes
reports that list the taxa identified without taxonomic abundance
data. For purposes of this paper I make no such distinction and
use laundry list to signify both kinds of reports.
5. Materials and methods
By ‘‘North American zooarchaeology’’ I mean the faunal remains
came from archaeological sites located in North America (Panama
north to Alaska and Newfoundland), including much of the
Caribbean. In virtually all cases, authors published in journals with
a North American focus and were trained in North America. Journal
articles, book chapters, monographs, theses and dissertations were
included. Titles focusing on faunal remains from continents other
than North America were excluded. I did not include zooarchaeological appendices from unpublished site reports, of which there
are countless instances, particularly in the 1950s and later. Some
references included in the literature examined represent zooarchaeological appendices included in published site reports (e.g.,
Adams, 1956; Enbysk, 1956; Lawrence, 1944; White, 1954). I did
not examine the hundreds of published site reports to determine
if they included zooarchaeological appendices; those data might
overturn conclusions drawn here. I did not record published site
reports that included a zooarchaeological chapter, section, or
appendix authored by the lead archaeologist (e.g., Mills, 1906;
Stanford, 1976) for similar reasons. I here refer to the list of zooarchaeology titles as the 1900–1979 bibliography.
Although it is likely that some titles are not in the 1900–1979
bibliography, I assume that the known sample (N = 1028 titles) is
sufficiently robust that general trends will be apparent. As might
be predicted, the number of titles per five-year bin increases over
the eight decades represented, with a not unexpected decrease
during World War II (Fig. 1). The frequency trend is at least partially the result of concomitant increases in the numbers of college
students, the numbers of practicing archaeologists, and the
increasing tempo of cultural resource management (e.g., Schiffer,
1979).
Many titles in the 1900–1979 bibliography concern analytical
methods rather than analyses of collections; these reports are
4. The hypothesis
The hypothesis to be tested is: North American zooarchaeological reports published prior to 1970 mostly comprise laundry lists.
The date of 1970 is approximate, so to insure adequate temporal
coverage, I consider North American literature that appeared
between 1900 and 1979 (see below). Those who have stated that
laundry lists were common prior to 1970 have not characterized
post-1970 zooarchaeology. The literature in which the term is used
suggests, however, that those commentators would not strongly
disagree with the suggestion that after 1970, most zooarchaeological reports that appeared were not laundry lists. This is treated as a
secondary hypothesis here.
The tone of much of the literature cited in Table 1 implies that a
large majority of the pre-1970 literature, say at least 80 percent, is
made up of laundry lists. I begin, nevertheless, with >50 percent as
a majority. The literature in Table 1 suggests that a laundry list
300
298
Number of North American
Zooarchaeology Titles
per Five -YearBin
250
251
Number of Titles
200
157
150
117
100
64
43
50
27
15
5
4
3
4
6
18
7
9
0
1900–04
1910–14
1920–24
1930–34
1940–44
1950–54
1960–64
1970–74
1905–09
1915–09
1925–29
1935–39
1945–49
1955–59
1965–69
1975–79
Five - Year Bin
Fig. 1. Frequency of titles in North American zooarchaeology per five-year bin from 1900 to 1979.
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
not included in my analyses. In some cases samples of faunal
remains were so small that analyses beyond production of a species list or laundry list would even today not be undertaken; in
these cases the number of identified bones and teeth often numbered a few dozen or less. These titles were included in my analysis
so as to not bias results toward falsifying the hypothesis. Finally,
many early reports are authored by zoologists; these, with some
notable exceptions (e.g., Howard, 1929; Lyon, 1937), represent
laundry lists (e.g., Baker, 1941; Burt, 1961; Eyerdam, 1936;
Harris, 1968). This is not unexpected given that zoologists were
seldom interested in or knew relevant archaeological questions. I
kept track of these types of reports but do not include them in initial analyses, with the notable exceptions of the significant zooarchaeological publications by zoologists John E. Guilday, Stanley J.
Olsen, Paul W. Parmalee, Theodore E. White, and Elizabeth S. Wing.
I tallied the number of titles that minimally include a list of species identified in a collection and the year when each title
appeared. I noted titles that were laundry lists, and those that discussed some aspect of human ecology. Because the number of
titles examined increased with decreasing age, I determined the
percentage of titles per 10 year or 5 year temporal bin that were
laundry lists. I assume the sample of titles (N = 286) authored by
zooarchaeologists is representative given that it displays the trend
of decreasing frequency of titles with increasing age shown by the
total zooarchaeological literature (Fig. 1).
6. Results
Prior to 1970 many reports were in fact laundry lists (Fig. 2).
Between 1900 and 1959, 55 percent of the titles that appeared
represent laundry lists. This is a majority, but not a large one.
Fifty-five percent is lower than expected given the tone of the
literature (Table 1) which implies P80 percent of the titles should
be laundry lists. In addition, the major change in proportion of
titles that represent laundry lists occurs at about 1960 rather than
88
1970–74
76
1965–69
51
1960–64
31
1955–59
16
1950–54
10
1945–49
3
1940–44
2
1930–39
6
1920–29
0
1910–19
2
1900–09
1
0
20
40
60
80
Number of Titles by Zooarchaeologists
1975–79
Number of Titles by Zooarchaeologists & Zoologists
authored by zooarchaeologist or zoologist
authored by zooarchaeologist
96
81
61
37
24
14
5
7
22
6
5
2
100
Percentage of Titles that are
Species Lists or Laundry Lists
Fig. 2. Frequency of North American titles in zooarchaeology that are species or
laundry lists per temporal bin. Note that temporal bin duration changes from
10 years to 5 years in 1940. Also note that publications by John Guilday, Stanley
Olsen, Paul Parmalee, Theodore White, and Elizabeth Wing (all trained as
zoologists) are tallied as if these individuals were archaeologists.
45
about 1970. Together, these two observations suggest the original
hypothesis cannot be maintained in its original form.
In the 1960s and 1970s, about 20 percent of all titles per decade
represent laundry lists. These lists did not disappear completely during those two decades, contrary to what is implied by the literature
(Table 1). Thus the secondary hypothesis that nearly all titles
appearing after 1970 (actually, 1960) were not laundry lists cannot
be sustained.
Recall that no zooarchaeological analyses prepared by zoologists (with the exceptions of Guilday, Olsen, Parmalee, White,
and Wing) are included among the data. Thus many reports
authored by Frank C. Baker (malacologist) in the 1930s and
1940s, W. I. Follett (ichthyologist) in the 1950s and 1960s,
Herbert Friedmann (ornithologist) in the 1930s through 1950s,
Max R. Matteson (malacologist) in the 1950s, Gerrit S. Miller, Jr.
(mammalogist) in the 1910s and 1920s, Loye H. Miller (ornithologist) in the 1950s and 1960s, and Alexander Wetmore (ornithologist) between 1918 and 1945 are not included. Many of these
reports, particularly those on mollusks, birds, and fish, comprise
laundry lists, likely because the species present in an area were
what was of interest to these zoologists. At that time biologists
in general were learning which species of plants and animals
occurred in particular regions (e.g., Bailey, 1931; Dalquest,
1948; Hall, 1955); zooarchaeological data provided some insight
to that topic. For example, Friedmann (1934:84) stated that he
was ‘‘attempting to analyze the [avian zooarchaeological] data
from the viewpoint of ornithology, rather than ethnology or
anthropology,’’ and that the ‘‘bones that were perfect enough to
be useful as specimens, or that were of particular interest as
[zoological] records, have been saved and incorporated into the
skeletal collections of the U.S. National Museum’’ (Friedmann,
1937:431).
The zooarchaeological titles written by zoologists and paleontologists that appeared between 1900 and 1979 (N = 74) represent
mostly laundry lists (N = 52, or 70.3 percent). Adding these to the
reports authored by zooarchaeologists does not change the trend
over time shown in Fig. 2; that trend still indicates a major drop
in the frequency of laundry lists and increase in analyses after
1960. However, adding these titles to the analysis also enhances
the appearance that the pre-1960 literature comprised mostly
laundry lists. Between 1900 and 1959, 68.2 percent of all titles that
appeared, regardless of author, represent laundry/species lists
(versus 55 percent when only zooarchaeologist-authored titles
are included); between 1960 and 1979, 24.0 percent of the titles
represent laundry lists (versus 20 percent). In other words, a portion of the responsibility of producing laundry lists must be attributed to zoologists.
Between 1900 and 1944 zoologists authored 73.8 percent (31 of
42) of the titles included in Fig. 2. Between 1945 and 1959, zoologists authored 32.6 percent (14 of 43) of the titles, and between
1960 and 1979 they authored 10.5 percent (29 of 275 titles). This
decrease in the contribution of zoologists reflects the professionalization of zooarchaeology—training archaeologists to study
animal remains. Interestingly, zoologists seem to have picked up
on pertinent archaeological questions after World War II. Of the
titles authored by zoologists in Fig. 2, between 1900 and 1944,
93.5 percent (29 of 31) of the titles comprise laundry lists; between
1945 and 1959, 50 percent (7 of 14 titles) comprise laundry lists;
and between 1960 and 1979, 55 percent (16 of 29) are laundry
lists. Although beyond the scope of the present analysis, it may
repay the effort to examine correspondence between the zoologists
who authored these titles and the archaeologists who provided
them with collections of faunal remains. For example, perhaps
the increased pace of construction and land modification after
World War II was a catalyst for greater communication between
archaeologists and zoologists. Theodore White, who was hired as
46
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
the first (and only) River Basin Surveys paleontologist and first
published on zooarchaeology in 1952, addressed anthropological
zooarchaeological topics in part because of his close interaction
with RBS archaeologists (Lyman, 2016).
Research topics covered by the pre-1970 titles represented in
Fig. 2 include studies of procurement techniques, butchering practices, diet, changes in diet over time and variation across space,
cooking practices, prey demography, seasonality, selective hunting,
foraging area or habitats exploited, use of bone as raw material for
tools, purposeful burial of animal carcasses, and paleoecology.
Butchering and seasonality are particularly prominent topics.
Some early studies involved innovative analytical techniques
(e.g., White, 1952, 1953), the use of biological measures of community structure (Wing, 1963), or unique techniques for summarizing
data (Fowler and Parmalee, 1959; Wing et al., 1968).
On one hand, the data (Fig. 2) indicate we should no longer
boldly endorse the hypothesis that the majority (>50 percent) of
North American zooarchaeological analyses prior to 1970 were
laundry lists. In fact, only 38 of the 122 titles authored by zooarchaeologists and that appeared prior to 1969, or 31.1 percent,
represent laundry lists. Further, of the 40 titles by zooarchaeologists that appeared between 1900 and 1959, 22 (or 55 percent)
represent laundry lists. So the hypothesis should be rephrased as
indicating that prior to 1960, a weak majority of North American
zooarchaeological reports were laundry lists. But even that is a
poor characterization of the past for two reasons. First, including
the titles authored by zoologists who were interested in zoological
topics and had little knowledge of archaeological interests results
in incomplete history at best and inaccurate history at worst and
a skewed perception of the early work of zooarchaeologists.
Second, as noted above, some analyses that appeared between
1900 and 1959 were innovative.
7. Discussion
7.1. Why did laundry lists appear?
The first generation of North American zooarchaeologists, by
which I mean those who did zooarchaeological research and published in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g., John E. Guilday, Barbara
Lawrence, Stanley J. Olsen, Paul W. Parmalee, Theodore E. White,
Elizabeth S. Wing), were without exception trained or worked as
zoologists or paleontologists, not as anthropologists (e.g., White,
1935; Wing, 1962; see also Dawson, 1984; Marrinan, 1999;
McMillan, 1991; Meadow, 1997). Thus not surprisingly, they often
(but not always) did not work toward answering questions of
interest to anthropological archaeologists because they had minimal notion of what those questions were other than perhaps the
composition of human diet, something White (1953), Lawrence
(1957), Olsen (1959), and Wing (1963) recognized. The closest
other zoologists got to archaeological topics was when they considered the paleoecological implications of a zooarchaeological collection (e.g., Gustafson, 1968; Harris, 1963), though there were
occasional exceptions when a zoologist made a significant
anthropological interpretation (e.g., Elder, 1965; Lyon, 1937).
Medlock (1975a:223) attributed laundry lists to archaeologists’
focus on ‘‘cultural chronology and amassing huge collections of
points and sherds, [plus the assumption] that faunal remains had
little to contribute.’’ Brewer (1992) and Robison (1978, 1987)
agree. Olsen (1971:2), on the other hand, suggested laundry lists
were produced because the identification of faunal remains was
often done by a zoologist ‘‘to the detriment of his own research’’
and thus ‘‘only a bare minimum of time is expended and the result
is the ‘laundry list’ type of report’’ (see also Olsen, 1959). Some
zooarchaeologists agree with Olsen (e.g., Bonnichsen and Sanger,
1977; Lawrence, 1957; Meadow, 1978; Smith, 1976). Parmalee
(1985:62), for example, suggested that when provided with a collection of faunal remains and little contextual information, a species list was to be expected from a zoologist who had little
training as an archaeologist.
Some early archaeologists (e.g., Wintemberg, 1919) and some
zoologists (e.g., Gilmore, 1949) were well aware of the biological
value of zooarchaeological remains. That such remains could also
reveal much about human behaviors was also apparent early on
to at least some zoologists who studied zooarchaeological material
(e.g., Howard, 1929; Lyon, 1937; White, 1952). My impression, and
that is all that it is, is that North American archaeologists, first, had
little clear conception of the analytical potential of zooarchaeological remains (see for example Meighan et al.’s (1958) very basic
statement about such potential) and, second, they had little interest in zooarchaeological remains because their goal was to map the
spatio-temporal distributions of prehistoric cultural traits manifest
as artifact types in order to write culture histories (Lyman et al.,
1997). Thus I think there are several reasons why laundry lists
occur in the literature.
7.2. The development of zooarchaeological technique
Prior to the 1970s analytical methods for answering
anthropological zooarchaeology questions were poorly developed,
provided coarse resolution and were largely based on common
sense. The first textbook on zooarchaeology (Cornwall, 1956)
devoted only 10 of 245 pages to analysis and interpretation of faunal
remains; the other pages focused on skeletal anatomy, taxonomic
identification, and determination of age and sex of the individual
animal represented by a particular bone. The second zooarchaeological textbook (Chaplin, 1971) devoted 100 of 159 pages to analysis and interpretation. Five textbooks on zooarchaeology were
published in the 1970s and four in the 1980s (Casteel, 1976;
Chaplin, 1971; Davis, 1987; Evans, 1972; Gilbert, 1973; Grayson,
1984; Hesse and Wapnish, 1985; Klein and Cruz-Uribe, 1984;
Smith, 1979). Several of these skim briefly over taxonomic identification and focus on analytical techniques, indicating that by
the 1970s, the topics zooarchaeologists thought important to discuss had changed.
The 1970s also produced the first generation of zooarchaeologists trained as archaeologists who studied archaeological faunal
remains (e.g., Casteel, 1972; Cumbaa, 1975; Duffield, 1970;
Grayson, 1973; Hill, 1975; Johnson, 1976; Lippold, 1971; Monks,
1977; Pohl, 1976; Reitz, 1979; Smith, 1973; Styles, 1978; Yesner,
1977). Zoologists continued to study zooarchaeological material
into the 1970s (e.g., Gustafson, 1972; Holbrook, 1975), but their
numbers were dwindling. Further, the popularity of the culture
history approach had faded (Lyman et al., 1997) and interests
shifted to making archaeology both more anthropological—concerned with human behaviors and the operation of past human
cultures—and more scientific, that is, more law generating and less
particularistic (Binford, 1962; Caldwell, 1959; Meggers, 1955).
Facilitating this shift was the increasing popularity of Julian
Steward’s (1955) ecological approach to anthropology (e.g.,
Rhode, 1999), an approach to which zooarchaeology could make
significant contributions (e.g., Meighan et al., 1958; Ziegler, 1965).
7.3. The irony of Stanley Olsen
Ironically, the originator of the laundry list term and its negative connotation, Stanley Olsen, produced laundry lists for nearly
a decade after he coined the term (e.g., Olsen, 1974, 1976, 1978;
Olsen and Olsen, 1974; Olsen and Wilson, 1976). I am unaware
of a zooarchaeological study Olsen produced that might be considered human ecology, beyond the presumption that the bones
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
identified represented human food waste.1 I suspect Olsen
described early zooarchaeological research as producing laundry
lists yet continued to produce just such reports himself for two reasons. First, at the time (late 1960s) North American archaeology was
undergoing a shift to the new analytical goals of processual archaeology (e.g., O’Brien et al., 2005; Reid and Whittlesey, 2005). The preceding (allegedly) descriptive culture history approach was being
derogated by many who sought to do a more anthropological kind
of archaeology (e.g., Binford, 1968; Deetz, 1970; Leone, 1972;
Longacre, 1970; Watson et al., 1971). Olsen likely joined the rhetoric
to show he was on the then current bandwagon.
The second likely reason Olsen produced laundry lists resides in
his academic background (following details from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_John_Olsen). His formal education consisted
of a high-school diploma. After service in World War II, he worked
in Alfred Sherwood Romer’s vertebrate paleontology lab until 1956
when he became State Vertebrate Paleontologist with the Florida
Geological Survey. In 1968 he joined Florida State University’s
Department of Anthropology and built a zooarchaeology laboratory. He went to the University of Arizona in 1973, serving as
Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Zooarchaeology in the
Arizona State Museum until his retirement in 1997. When he
was working on writing his well-known osteology guides (e.g.,
Olsen, 1960, 1964), he consulted Barbara Lawrence.
Lawrence knew something about zooarchaeology (e.g.,
Lawrence, 1944, 1951, 1957, 1973), but she was trained and worked
as a zoologist (Meadow, 1997; Rutzmoser, 1999). It seems unlikely,
then, that Olsen had an opportunity through education, work
experience, or collegiality to learn much about zooarchaeological
technique. In the 1960s, for example, there was no formal textbook
that discussed analytical techniques; a brief article by Ziegler (1965)
was about as close as one could come to a statement on analytical
technique. Not surprisingly then, in Olsen’s (1971) treatise on zooarchaelogy wherein he introduced the term laundry list, he focused
largely on taxonomic identification of faunal remains; of 28 pages
of text and illustrations, 1.5 pages summarize the history of zooarchaeology (and introduce the concept of laundry lists), 8 pages illustrate skeletons of the vertebrate classes, and about 14 pages discuss
issues of osteological identification. The remaining 4–5 pages identify research topics such as human diet, season of site occupation,
butchering practices, tool and ceremonial use of animal parts, and
skeletal preservation concerns. Only about 16 percent of Olsen’s
treatise concerns anthropological zooarchaeology, yet descriptions
of analytical techniques are absent.
Olsen likely was aware of the intellectual context of his
time—that North American archaeologists were seeking to do
anthropological archaeology rather than continuing to do
descriptive culture history. What better way to signify he knew of
that difference than to introduce a term characterizing early zooarchaeology as merely descriptive? But based on his subsequent
zooarchaeological research, it appears that Olsen was unsure how
to actually do anthropological zooarchaeology. And as noted above,
anthropological zooarchaeology only really began to come into its
own in the late 1970s (Figs. 1 and 2).
7.4. Positive use of the term
Few authors use the term laundry list in a positive way. Grayson
(1981) did not use the term but suggested that taxa could be treated analytically as variables that vary in frequency of occurrence
within a series of faunas or as attributes that vary in terms of presence–absence within faunas. The latter requires only laundry lists
1
Olsen’s zooarchaeological studies of domestication (e.g., Olsen, 1985) are
important and exceed the criteria of a laundry list, but they are irrelevant in the
present context.
47
to analyze and interpret taxa that are present; a taxon could be
absent from a collection for any number of reasons (Ervynck,
1999; Lyman, 2008). Thus, for example, Graham (1984) used the
presence of a taxon in several collections to argue for environmental differences between the past and present in central Texas. He
did not use the term laundry list. In a study similar to Graham’s
(1984), Lyman (1986) used the term and noted species lists can
be analytically valuable for inferring paleoecology. Reitz and
Wing (1999:172) indicate the ‘‘much-maligned laundry list may
be the best choice for some questions and for some samples,’’
but they do not identify what those questions and samples might
be (see also Reitz and Wing, 2008).
Two examples of the modern value of laundry list data recorded
prior to 1960 seem particularly pertinent to archaeological
research. The first involves one of the (if not the) first computerconstructed paleozoological databases. Constructed in the early
1990s, FAUNMAP (e.g., Faunmap Working Group, 1996) is made
up of a list of late Quaternary, chronometrically dated occurrences
of mammals in the contiguous forty-eight United States. It is, in a
very real sense, a truly huge laundry list. Yet it generated a tremendous amount of research and significant publications, and the database itself has been updated and upgraded into several other
forms. Were it not for site-specific zooarchaeological laundry lists,
none of these databases would have been worthy of compilation
and analysis for want of pertinent data.
The second example of the analytical value of laundry list data
is the on-going debate over the possibility of a human cause of
terminal Pleistocene extinctions (e.g., Cannon and Meltzer, 2004,
2008; Surovell and Waguespack, 2009). Virtually all recent analyses undertaken on this issue have used lists of species rather than
taxonomic abundance data. This directly contradicts any suggestion that zooarchaeological laundry lists have no analytical value.
8. Conclusions
It is unclear how many inaccuracies have been said about the
history of North American archaeology. The notion that pre-1970
zooarchaeology produced mostly laundry lists is one. The notion
that there was a ‘‘stratigraphic revolution’’ during the second decade of the twentieth century has been stated in many histories of
North American archaeology (Brown and Givens, 1996; Givens,
1992; Lyon, 1996; Schuyler, 1971; Willey, 1968; Willey and
Sabloff, 1974, 1993) but this is another misperception. It has been
corrected by detailed historical research (e.g., Browman, 2002,
2003; Lyman and O’Brien, 1999). This is not to say that what happened or causes thereof during some historical episodes are not
debated. It is rather to say that detailed historical research not only
detects misrepresentations of our discipline’s past, but it can often
correct them, as for example debates about and clarification of Aleš
Hrdlicˇka’s role in North American Paleoindian studies (Meltzer,
1991 [and selected references therein], 2006).
The typical characterization of pre-1970 North American zooarchaeology as largely involving the production of laundry lists of
taxa represented in a collection of animal remains is only weakly
accurate. Early zooarchaeologists, some of them trained as zoologists rather than archaeologists (e.g., Guilday, Parmalee, White,
Wing), often provided interpretations of the faunal remains they
studied that are readily categorized as human ecology studies.
Topics these early researchers addressed involve the human
behavior of butchering, season of animal procurement, prey demography, catchment area or foraging radius or exploited habitats,
and of course diet. Laundry lists are a part of the pre-1970 literature, but they are also a fair part (20+ percent) of the 1970s literature. Not only should the history of North American
zooarchaeology prior to 1970 no longer be characterized as
48
R. Lee Lyman / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 39 (2015) 42–50
resulting only or even mostly in laundry lists, but it should be
recognized that laundry lists have always been and likely always
will be a part of zooarchaeological research in part because the
data they contain have analytical value.
Acknowledgments
My research into the history of North American zooarchaeology
was inspired by the ground-breaking contributions of Theodore E.
White to anthropological zooarchaeology. An early (longer, more
convoluted) version of this manuscript received valuable comments from Lisa Nagaoka and an anonymous reviewer.
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