In the Fall 2009 ICAZ International Committee (IC) approved the establishment of the Taphonomy Working Group. The first meeting to set up this working group was held during the 11th ICAZ Conference (Paris, France) in August 2010. Since then, the TWG has been a very active group. Currently, it has more nearly 100 members from 20 countries and four international workshops have been organized: in Paris (2010), Santander, Spain (2012), in San Lorenzo, Argentina (2014) and the last one in Ankara (Turkey). Today, the number of professionals working on taphonomy is steadily increasing and their contribution to prestigious scientific journals is becoming a regular trend. However, no formal international forum specific to taphonomy existed in which scholars could disseminate new research and exchange knowledge and experience. The Taphonomy Working Group (TWG) was created to fill this void and encourage wider dissemination and greater collaboration and multidisciplinary in taphonomic research. Key subjects include (but are not restricted to):
- Diachronic and regional differences in the butchering process: identification and interpretation at prehistoric sites
- Approaches to anthropogenic bone breakage interpretation
- Equifinality in body part representation: human behaviour versus attrition
- Carnivores: experimental studies, methods of recognition
- Other biological agents: weathering, birds, rodents, insects, etc and their effect on the deposit
- The structural properties of bone and the susceptibility of different classes of remains to modification and destruction.
- Approaches to diagenesis (including histology, isotopic, aDNA, etc.)