Tag: Taphonomy

Since its creation in 2009, the TWG has maintain a high level of activity. It has organized five biannual conferences starting in the 11th ICAZ Conference. First meeting was held in Paris, France (2010), followed by Santander, Spain (2012), 3rd one in San Rafael, Argentina (2014), 4th in Paris, France (2016) and the last one in Ankara, Turkey (2018).

Regularly, the proceedings have been published in peer-reviewed journals including, by chronological order: International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (2012), Quaternary International (2014), Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2016), Historical Biology (2018) and Quaternaire (2018). Due to the high number of communications undertaken (79), The proceedings of the last meeting were published in two different journals revealing a notable increase of taphonomic studies in archaeozoology as well as a new generation of taphonomists. Curently, the TWG has more than 100 members from around the world.

Collaborative research projects are ongoing among TWG members such as the Global Weathering project. This project is led by Yolanda Fernandez Jalvo (MNCS, Madrid), Alexander H Parkinson (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa) and Peter Andrews (NHM, London). It aims to study how weathering processes affect macromammal bones in different climates and environments all over the world. Worldwide taphonomists are invited to participated. The project has already started in Australia, Argentina and Spain.

In paralallel to the TWG, in January 2018 a European Network for Quaternary Taphonomy (TaphEN) was established in collaboration with several working-groups based in France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal. This network is initially funded by the CNRS and led by Jean Philipp Brugal.  All the participants share similar goals on Taphonomy which favor fertile and active collaboration and exchange within a European network.