Achaeometrical Research in Hungary II., 1988

ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY - László BARTOSIEWICZ: A quantitative assesment of red deer antler as raw material

Table 2, very small archaeological specimens would disproportionately underestimate beam length. Extremely large fragments, on the other hand, would predict beam lengths even longer than could be reasonably expected. Since, however, the allometric coefficients range between 0.557-0.858, that is they not radically differ from 1, this bias is negligible in the case of antler fragments close to average size. Thus, the coefficients calculated provide appropriately accurate estimates for technical interpretations. Antler evolution as a source of potential bias The gross tendencies of relative antler growth obviously reflect a basic evolutionary pattern. Recently, however, this pattern has been distorted by several generations of deliberate selection. For centuries attention has been paid by hunters to antler conformation (Figure 2). The cumulative effect of artificial selection has, to some extent, reinforced the perception as to the ideal antler configuration. Figure 2: Non-desirable antler conformations in red deer shown in a 18

th century etching Although the effect of human preferences would be difficult to separate out, a priori knowledge of the standardized trophy evaluation system suggests that "...while details 222